Diaphragmatic breathing involves using your diaphragm, the large muscle located between your abdomen and chest, to help bring air into the lungs and expel air out of the lungs. It is also called abdominal or abdomen breathing. You may encounter the concept in a yoga class or as a method to counter anxiety attacks. Used correctly, both singers and athletes can improve their stamina and stutterers can help improve or remove their stutter. To train yourself to involve your diaphragm when breathing, exercise it consciously to help make it a habit.
Make Your Hands Move
You need to be consciously aware of your breathing to understand how to invoke your diaphragm muscles. One of the easiest ways to do this is to see your diaphragm in action.
Lying on your back or sitting back in a chair, place one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach. Breathe only through your nose to inhale and use your diaphragm muscle to raise the hand on your stomach, leaving the hand on your chest level or even drawing in. Hold your breath for a count of seven, or a lower count, if that's more comfortable. Exhale through your mouth and watch the hand on your chest rise as the hand on your stomach contracts with the exhale. Diaphragmatic breathing is not just the inhalation---it's also involved in exhaling.
By ensuring that your diaphragm contracts on the exhale, you're fully involving your diaphragmatic muscle. Try this cycle of breathing for a total of five deep breaths to help relax and engage your diaphragm.
Focus on Your Breath
Another diaphragmatic exercise is a type of yoga breathing. It should be done for only 15 seconds the first time while sitting or lying bed, as it may cause hyperventilation. The idea is to breathe swiftly through only your nose. Think of a bellows pump; in fact, this exercise is sometimes called bellows breathing.
To try the exercise, breathe swiftly in and out of your nose, as if pumping up a tire. Feel the breath forcing in and out of your abdomen as it rises and falls with each breath. As you get more experienced with this exercise, increase it by five seconds.
Pause When Speaking
A more advanced method of diaphragmatic breathing involves pausing while focusing on using your abdomen and not your chest to breathe. This method helps stutterers. The exercise trains stutterers to relax their laryngeal muscles, often a cause of stuttering in young children, and breathe diaphragmatically.
To try this exercise, a stutterer first specifically focuses on creating a stutter. Then the patient identifies with words the areas that are stressed while she is trying to speak. Next, she again stutters, and pauses. Using diaphragmatic breathing of pushing her abdomen out and pulling her breath in actively, she then continues her sentence. Over time, the goal is to teach children to breathe correctly to avoid stuttering at all or to learn to manage stuttering by pausing and correcting their breathing technique.
