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Stand up straight, not rigid, with your feet slightly apart. Take a deep breath and let it out in a big sigh. Shrug your shoulders, right up to your ears, and let them drop. Do it again.  Shake out your arms, flexing the elbows and keeping the wrists loose.

Drop your head down and forwards, and then look level again.

Raise up on your toes, and gently back down onto your heels. Do this again.

Flex your knees, and bounce a few times... and straighten up. Don't lock you knees firmly back:  leave them flexing a bit. 

Now, imagine you have a thread running right out of the top of your head, from the crown. let the thread pull you upwards. Allow it to lengthen your spine ... feel how it gets your shoulders falling into an easy place.

Exercise 2: Breathing

In all of the breathing exercises, hold one hand on the Solar Plexus to become familiar with the movement of the breathing mechanism

Finding the Lower breathing mechanism

Start off standing nice and relaxed as in the previous exercise.

Place a hand on your solar plexus, just covering the spot where your ribs make a V shape at the front. This is the centre of the lower breathing movement.

Now say the sound sha sha sha.

Feel for movement in your solar plexus area.

Other sounds you can try are huh huh huh - and ff ff ff

The surprise breath

Now lets feel a short sharp inhale, the kind of breath you take when speaking or singing. Just do a little, slightly theatrical gasp, like you just got a surprise. Make sure you don't use your upper chest. Watch yourself in a mirror if you can.  Like this (gasp). Once again, feel the movement in your solar plexus area. And again (gasp)   Do that a few more times until you are familiar with the sensations.
 

Exercise 3: Controlling the Rhythm of Breathing
 

Once we know how to get in touch with the lower breathing mechanism, we need to be able to contol the rhythm of our breathing. You can do this exercise in the relaxed standing position, or even better, lying down flat on the floor. The exercise is to inhale, hold, exhale and hold, each to the count of four.

Place your palm on your solar plexus, and just relax for a few moments, feeling the natural rhythm of your breathing. 

Now take in a big breath and let it out in an easy sigh, and then breathe in 2 3 4 hold 2 3 4 out 2 3 4 and hold 2 3 4 and .... relax

Once you have completed this recorded version, you may like to extend this exercise, and count yourself though a number of breathing cycles. It is particularly good for de-stressing and general relaxation, particularly when done lying down.

Exercise 4: Voicing on the turning breath

Now lets take in a breath to the count of four, and in that momentary pause as the inhale turns to exhale, close the cords and add voice to the sound so that the sound sits firmly on the breath. We'll use the sound MM, and sustain the sound to the end of the count of four.

So we inhale 1 2 3 4 and as we exhale... mmmm 

Lets do that again. And again with O

Exercise 5: Controlled pressure exhale.

This useful exercise is done with nothing more than a sheet of A4 paper. Hold a sheet of light blank paper (80gsm)  between thumb and forefinger, in the centre of the short edge. Make sure the paper is hanging down freely and is not curved or bent. Hold the sheet in front of your face so that the bottom edge is level with the bottom of your chin. It should be about 4 inches from your face.

Place your free hand on your solar plexus. And after taking a full breath, purse your lips as if whistling or blowing out a candle, and blow gently against the sheet of paper so that it moves at an angle away from your mouth. Just blow it about an inch, and try to maintain the paper at a steady angle, using the stream of breath. Continue until the breath is finished, feeling the full stroke of the exhale cycle at the solar plexus.

Repeat this a few times with  a few variations. Try blowing the paper further by increasing the air-stream; try varying the stream within each breath cycle so that the paper moves away and back towards you in a controlled way one or two times per breath cycle.

Watch out that you don't use your lips to control the breath. You need to control the stream from the lower breathing mechanism. 

 

Exercise 6: Listening Posture

 This is an exercise for creating a mental state which enhances the linkage between body, brain, mind and ear.

Have you ever seen video of a herd of wild animals peacefully grazing, when suddenly they raise their heads and begin listening intently? Perhaps they heard something, maybe a predator...

Well we too can place ourselves in that state where the ear expands its control of the body. This is called the listening posture. Once you have your regular posture under improvement, the listening posture is the full expression of body/brain/voice coordination. 

Let's begin

However you are sitting or standing,  become aware of all the sounds in your environment... the overall ambient sound wash. You may hear road traffic, birds, machine noise (heating pumps, computers) and so on. Now far, far away you hear someone calling your name. Or do you. Listen. Your body activity stops, your breathing becomes small, your brow widens and clears, and your ears focus. Can you pick up that distant sound...?

 Variation: if you have someone to work with, and you have a pin, you can literally try to hear a pin drop. Focus your self as above, not on the imaginary calling of your name, but listen for your friend to drop that pin. If you hear it too easily, she should move further away, and repeat the exercise.

Exercise 7: Tone Model

Listen to the following two excerpts. Hear how the sound is strong but not forced. These are good tone models. The material is presented as if being read out loud in an average sized classroom.

(readings)

In the following short excerpts, the voice is increasingly forced and tense. These are a poor tone model.

(readings)

Exercise 8: Open Throat

Keep your lips together but drop your jaw, as if you were holding a sip of water in your mouth. Then, allowing the lips to open in a small rounded shape, say 'Aww. Feel what happens to your jaw, your tongue, and your throat.

Try another one: take a small breath and say huh... not a word , jut a kind of grunt... huh. This is a non-linguistic sound, just the sound of the relaxed throat.

Exercise 9: Cord Closure

To get the cords to close in a natural and easy way, stand relaxed, take a short breath  and say HUH to get into the 'Open throat' posture.  Say MM MM.

Also try this, taking care your throat remains open. Uh oh.

Now make the MM sound, and work your jaw is if you were chewing.

Exercise 10: Onset

Practise allowing your cords to close gently and naturally. Ideally we need the cords to close at the moment when exhale begins. Start by introducing an H at the start of the sound. Say HO. The try Hall right. Now keep the H in there, but let it diminish until its invisible... All Right

Exercise 11: Vowel Shape & Resonance

There are two types of vowels, round vowels and acute vowels. In the trained voice, the round vowels are produced almost entirely in the throat. The acute vowels are round vowels modified by using the tongue and teeth. Producing vowels in this way  will modify your speech... common spoken English uses many sounds that lack strength and are awkward for the vocal tract to produce. But although they may sound and feel strange, your voice will still be recognisable to those who know you. Relaxing awkward voice production is like de-stressing the face... it looks the same but better.

Start by making a 'hooty owl' sound in your upper voice... hoo hoo. Note the shape you make in your mouth and throat. Then being sure to keep the shape the same, make the same sound lower down... oo. Put a bit of weight onto the sound, like OOO ... feel how your breath reacts to the weight in the sound by feeding a little more pressure.

Now say the word 'Bottle'. Note now deep and round the vowel is. Say just the vowel . O. Again, put some weight onto it. O.

Next we join those two vowels together, like 'WO'. The OO and the O sound are the endpoints of the round vowels. Once you have this movement, slow it right down so you get all the vowels in between.

That's it for the round vowels.

Get back to the deep round OO and move OO-EE.

Make sure your tongue presses forward, with the tip behind the back of the bottom teeth. Feel how the EE is made predominantly at the front of the mouth, in a little cavity formed by the tongue and the teeth.

Then move to EH. YEE - EH. Don't go too far... the movement is very subtle. This is a very powerful sound, and these acute vowels help give your voice a strong projection. 

The sixth and last vowel is AGH as in 'Bad' Again it is made with the tongue making a front cavity.

In common English speech EH is merged with the AGH sound into a kind of generic puff. Compare 'Then' and 'Than'... Most people say them the same.

Exercise 12:  Natural Pitch

Now say, "Mmm-hmm one. Mmm-hmm two. Mmm-hmm three." Can you feel that sensation carry over into the words "one," "two," and "three?"

Exercise 13:  Singing Registers and Range