What is Singing from the Diaphragm?

Have you ever heard someone say sing from your diaphragm or put your hand on your diaphragm?

While many people use this phrase, they never seem to follow up with an explanation about what singing from the diaphragm actually entails.

When we ask new students what they have been told about breathing, they almost always mention singing from the diaphragm. This phrase is bandied about by choir directors and voice teachers alike, usually without much explanation about what singing from the diaphragm actually entails.

First of all, it is impossible to sing from your diaphragm; the diaphragm is incapable of creating sound. The basic voiced sound is created by the opening and closing of the vocal folds. This basic sound is subsequently filtered in the vocal tract.

You might have been told that we create support with the diaphragm. That is not exactly true either. The diaphragm has no volition or independent ability to create support or sound. It simply goes down and up automatically when we breathe in and out.

The diaphragm is a flexible muscle, attached to the ribs, that separates the lungs and heart from the stomach, liver, and intestines. It is part of the autonomic nervous system, automatically contracting and lowering when we inhale and returning to a dome shape when we exhale.

At rest, before inhalation, it looks like a parachute or upside-down bowl. When a breath is taken, the ribs expand and the diaphragm lowers and flattens, drawing the lungs downward and decreasing the air pressure in the thorax so air is drawn in.

We don’t have to think about this process, just as we don’t have to think about our heart beating.

In singing, however, we exert conscious control (indirectly) over the diaphragm by first relaxing the abdominals and expanding the ribcage for a 360 degree expansion during inhalation, and then delaying the ascent of the diaphragm to its original dome shape during the extended exhalation phase of breathing by engaging appoggio, or resistance to the collapse of the ribcage and abdominal wall. 

If breath pressure is not excessive, an even and consistent flow of air is sent to the vocal folds (not too much and not too little).

So, although we do not have direct control over the diaphragm and cannot see or feel it, we control it indirectly with breath management and appoggio.

And that is what “singing from the diaphragm” really is!

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