When you’re confident that you can feel when your hips are centered under you, you can move your hips from left to right. Many people stand with their hips sticking out to the left or right. That posture may be fine for casual conversation, but it’s not helpful for singing. When your hips are off to one side, your back is out of alignment, causing tension. Watching yourself in the mirror, move your hips from left to right or front to back until you feel the centered position underneath your torso. This centered position, neither front, back, right, nor left, is the ideal position for singing.
Because many people sink into their hips, you want to understand what it feels like to lift out of your hips. Lifting out of your hips means that you feel an opening between your hips and your torso. You can intentionally sink into your hips to feel the added pressure on your body. You may feel heavier and slumped when you sink into your hips. To lift out of your hips, feel the spring or shock absorber between your hips and torso, and imagine your torso rising out of your legs.
Lengthening your spine
The spine is the marvelous curvy set of bones stacked on top of each other inside your body. Figure 3-1 shows the natural curve of the spine. Tension in the spine causes tension for breathing. To lengthen and release the spine, you want to open and lengthen your body from the inside out. Visualize your spine as long and flexible, and feel the distance between your tailbone and your skull. For great posture, you want your tailbone under you and headed to the floor while your skull lifts to the sky. You don’t want to feel a pulling sensation in your body; you want an opening and lengthening sensation. You can visualize space between each bone or vertebrae of your spine. Your spine connects with your rib cage, and you want your spine to lengthen and open with your rib cage.
Balancing your head and shoulders
At the top of the spine is your neck. The neck is supposed to be curved — check out the curve of the neck in the skeleton in Figure 3-1. If you remember the opening and lengthening of the spine from the previous section, you can continue that idea of lengthening through the neck up into the head so that the head balances on top of the spine. Think of the bobble-head dolls that sit on the dash of the car: The body of the dolls doesn’t move, but the head bobs around. You want your head balanced that easily on top of your spine.
To feel the weight of your head, allow your head to feel heavy, as if it sits right on your shoulders. This weight and pressure doesn’t feel good after a while, so you want to feel an opening up and lifting of the head that comes from inside the body. Trying to push up the head only causes tension in your neck. Your head weighs about the same as a bowling ball — it’s pretty heavy, so it needs some help to stay up.
To keep your head balanced on your body, you want your shoulders to be evenly balanced. Your shoulders sit on top of your rib cage, and their position and balance are important. Roll your shoulders forward to feel how it stretches and curves your back and collapses your chest. Then roll your shoulders back to feel how it thrusts your chest forward. The ideal position for your shoulders is neither forward nor back, and pressing neither up nor down; it’s an even balance.
When you move your shoulders, you can also feel your shoulder blades moving. If you tighten your shoulder blades, you feel tension in your rib cage. For good alignment, you want your shoulder blades open and released across your back; you want the shoulder blades to release downward as you inhale. To balance the shoulders, you also want to feel the connection between your arms and your chest. Look at Figure 3-1 to see the connection between the arms and shoulders and notice how the shoulders sit on top of the rib cage.
Releasing Tension
Releasing tension in your body allows for a more open sound and easier breathing. You may notice that I don’t ask you to relax. If you relax, you may fall limply on the couch to watch your favorite sitcom. For singing, you want your body aligned but released and free of tension. Releasing means keeping your body in a state of readiness: ready to move, breathe, and crawl out of your comfort zone and sing for the world. Think of body movement as fluid motion even when you’re still.
Letting go of tension in your upper body
To release any tension in your arms and hands, you also want to check in with the areas surrounding the arms and hands.
Chest: Check the position of your chest to make sure that it’s open and lifted, not pushed up.
Shoulders: With your chest open and lifted, notice the position of your shoulders. You want your shoulders centered, neither too far forward nor too far back.
Arms: Tighten your arms and notice what that feels like. When your arms are tight, you feel tight across your back and perhaps across your chest. Release the tension in your arms and notice that they feel as if they opened.
Elbows: You may have discovered that when your elbows are tight, your back and shoulder blades are really tight. All your muscles are connected and need a balanced relationship to support the body. Your elbows can also feel like they have a spring in them, similar to the visual you may have explored with your ankles and knees earlier in the chapter. Your elbows and your body should have distance between them; you don’t want your elbows to press against your body or push out from your body.
Hands: The same tension release can apply to your hands. If you tighten your hands and wrists, you can feel the tension move all the way up your arms and across your back and chest. When you release the tension in your hands, you may feel as if they aren’t as heavy as they were when you tensed the muscles in your hands.
Opening space in the head
Believe it or not, tension in the head and face is pretty common in singers. You can see tension in the face when the eyebrows lift or the brow furrows. The facial muscles may also hold tension, even though you may not see the face wrinkle. Read on for information about how to release both obvious and invisible tension.
Look in the mirror at your face. Tighten your face so that you can see the muscles squeezing together. Now release that tension and notice what it feels like. When the tension releases, your face may feel wider or more open. Tense and release several more times so you can really feel the difference. Notice any tension in your forehead from the muscles wanting to either lift or furrow the brow.
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