Posture for singers: improve your singing right away!
In today’s video, I tell you all about posture for singers. How your posture affects your voice, and how to find a posture that is actually functional for singing!
Posture for singers: video transcript (modified to suit blog post format)
Don’t spend another minute getting confused about what posture you should use for singing. In this video, I’m going to tell you exactly how your posture affects your voice and how to use it in a way that makes your singing much more easy and natural.
My name is Jorgelina, I’ve been a vocal coach for 13 years and I specialize in teaching adults how to sing contemporary music from a holistic and integral approach.
How does your posture affect your singing?
There are three ways in which your posture mainly affects your singing.
1- Your posture communicates your emotions to your brain (and vice-versa) – which affects your voice
Firstly, the posture that you adopt tells your brain things about your environment.
For example, if your posture is closed, and you are sort of protecting your internal organs like this (demonstrates) (and you can get this posture from the computer), your brain is going to understand that you are in danger. When your brain understands that you are in danger, your voice is closed It doesn’t make much sense that you’re in danger and that your voice is, is nice and free and flowy, right? You’re gonna have a much harder time singing. So the way you stand tells your brain how you’re feeling and that has a big, big effect on your voice.
2- Your posture affects how efficient your singing process is
Always remember that you don’t work with muscles in isolation. Your whole body is all interconnected. So any movement that you do, the whole body has to reorganize to keep you upright.
For example, if you are in a position in which the head is displaced like this (demonstrates), my head is not in the central line. And as a result, my neck has to work hard on keeping the head there. Not sure if you noticed how my voice got really tight when I did that! So ideally, when you work with singing, you want to have these three points:
It’s gonna be, of course, different for everybody because we are all different, but in general, you’re gonna have the hips, the shoulders, and the ears in kind of the same line.
3- Your posture affects your breathing… Your breathing affects your voice!
Any different posture that you use will give you different breathing. And that has to do with the spaces that your body can expand to breathe. For example, if you try to ‘keep your shoulders back’ like this (demonstrates)…in this posture, for example, I actually have to be holding my abs quite tightly and that restricts the breath in a way that is not helpful for the voice. Equally, if my posture is like this (demonstrates), then I’m not going to be able to breathe in a place that is functional for singing.
How to find a good posture for singing – 3 practical tips
Ideally, in addition to those three points that you want to have more or less aligned for singing (hips, shoulders, and ears), you want to have a balance of the muscle tone.
If the front of your body is too stretched, then the back part of your body is going to have to constrict quite, and equally, if you are stretching the back part too much, then the front part of the body has to constrict. Both ways are not too good for the voice.
Also, something that really helps is to support your body weight from the legs. Very often singers start holding the body from the top part of the body like this (demonstrates). The legs are ‘disconnected’ from the ground and that makes singing really hard. So if you can’t find a posture in which you are releasing body weight through your legs then the torso is going to be able to move more nicely and freely and you need that for healthy and free singing.
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I help people to develop their voice and singing from a holistic approach. I teach vocal lessons in person in Auckland, NZ, and online. Also stay tuned for my new online singing programs!❤️
My greatest passion has always been the voice, music and energy arts.
My personal and artistic journey has led me to understand that the voice and the body are fully connected, and that includes not only the physical body but also the mental, emotional and spiritual body.
Through holistic vocal training you not only learn to become a great singer while taking care of your voice, but you also improve your mental and physical wellbeing❤️
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