Circular Breathing
While we were discussing the respiratory system in class the other day, I began to remember my High School band days. I played the clarinet in High School, and still play it here, but what the lecture made me think about was when a friend of mine mentioned circular breathing. This is a technique that wind musicians use to play notes continuously without having to pause for a breath of air. When I first heard this, it seemed impossible; how can you breathe in air and blow out air at the same time. Although I never learned to use this technique, I did try it, and it was pretty hard to do. Kenny G. is the musician that is most famous for using this technique. Anyways, here is an exerpt from Wikipedia that tells how this technique is suppossed to work, it's pretty interesting.
"The person inhales fully and begins to blow. Once the lungs are nearly empty, the last volume of air is blown into the mouth, and the cheeks are inflated with this air. Then, while still blowing this last bit of air out by allowing the cheeks to deflate, the person must very quickly fill the lungs by inhaling through the nose prior to running out of the air in the mouth. If done correctly, by the time the air in the mouth is nearly exhausted the person can begin to exhale from the lungs once more, ready to repeat the process again. Physiologically, the process is similar to drinking at a water fountain and taking a breath of air while water remains in the mouth, without raising the head from the water stream. The body "knows" to not allow water into the lungs. It is this same instinct that a circular breather taps to play their instrument."
Even though I have played the clarinet for a while, this concept is still hard to comprehend. I also found an abstract of a study that monitored the effects of circular breating on a musician's autonomic nervous system (ANS) control of the heart. They found that circular breathing increases the heart rate and decreases the high frequency heart rate variability (HRV). It's kinda interesting, and I wish they had said more about it. Here are the two sites I looked at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10834249&dopt=Abstract
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_breathing
"The person inhales fully and begins to blow. Once the lungs are nearly empty, the last volume of air is blown into the mouth, and the cheeks are inflated with this air. Then, while still blowing this last bit of air out by allowing the cheeks to deflate, the person must very quickly fill the lungs by inhaling through the nose prior to running out of the air in the mouth. If done correctly, by the time the air in the mouth is nearly exhausted the person can begin to exhale from the lungs once more, ready to repeat the process again. Physiologically, the process is similar to drinking at a water fountain and taking a breath of air while water remains in the mouth, without raising the head from the water stream. The body "knows" to not allow water into the lungs. It is this same instinct that a circular breather taps to play their instrument."
Even though I have played the clarinet for a while, this concept is still hard to comprehend. I also found an abstract of a study that monitored the effects of circular breating on a musician's autonomic nervous system (ANS) control of the heart. They found that circular breathing increases the heart rate and decreases the high frequency heart rate variability (HRV). It's kinda interesting, and I wish they had said more about it. Here are the two sites I looked at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10834249&dopt=Abstract
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_breathing
posted by Anonymous at 7:35 PM
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