Breathing By Numbers

Breathing by Numbers is a great way to keep track of your breath control. It will help you improve your breathing technique and manage your breath more efficiently. If you are singing, it will also help you sing longer phrases without running out of air.

To make sure you are engaging your core muscles, you can check our video on Diaphragmatic Breathing.

The exercise has three parts: inhaling, pause, and hissing out. Each part lasts a definite number of beats. The sequence is progressive so that we shorten the inhalation, while we make the hissing out longer. Try these sequence times two or three times before you move on to the next one:

4 – 4 – 4

4 – 4 – 6

4 – 4 – 8

2 – 2 – 6

2 – 2 – 8

2 – 2 – 10 (and then 12, 14, 16, … check how long you can hiss out!)

You can practice this exercise for around 5 minutes, a couple of times a day, either standing or sitting down. A good way of keeping track of your progress is to write down what is the longest you could hiss out every day.