hi it's Elissa Weinzimmer founder of Voice Body Connection and it is time for
another How to Warm Up video
how to warm up
in today's video we're going to be
discussing how to do a belly massage and why doing a belly massage can be
beneficial for your voice so let's talk about why here's the deal when we
breathe for voice and speech and really when we breathe in general it's really
important that our belly is able to squish around and move we're doing a
sustained exhalation while we speak so that we can support the airflow and
support our voice and then we need to do a quick inhalation where the belly
recovers and allows space for the inhalation when our belly is tight and
rigid then it can't squish around enough to allow us to really support our voice
let's actually talk about exactly how this works by using a prop
the prop that I want to use is a dun dun dun water balloon okay so a water balloon is
actually really similar to the contents of your abdominal sac because all of our
visceral organs are contained in a sac called the peritoneal sac and just like
a water balloon they can squish around right now for the sake of breathing no
air actually goes down into the belly the diaphragm is the muscular boundary
between the chest cavity and the abdominal cavity and there's no tube
that goes through the diaphragm to send air down into your abdominal cavity
right all of the air stays up in your lungs but it's confusing because a lot
of people talk about belly breathing and what they're actually talking about is
the ability of the belly to change shape as we breathe so you can imagine if this
water balloon had really rigid really rigid edges around it it wouldn't squish
around very easily we want our water balloon
just like a water balloon to be nice and squishable
now another common misconception about breathing and the
belly is that we need to push our belly out on the inhalation but the water
balloon can help us understand why that doesn't make any sense if you were to
use abdominal muscles on the outside of your
belly to push out do you see how it doesn't really like why why is that
helpful for the water balloon the water balloon doesn't really get affected when
we pull on it in a place what does affect the water balloon is
when we squeeze it and it distends upwards and this in fact my friends what
I just did is exactly what breath support is breath support is when you
engage the lowest part of the abdominal muscles and that distends the top of the
water balloon upwards which by the way is right underneath the diaphragm and
supports the movement of the diaphragm back to its dome shape and the air going
out of the lungs more on all of this if you watch the shh, let it go
breathing video as well
okay thank you water balloon for being such a fantastic
model and now let's actually go to our body so one thing to say before we dive
into this belly massage is that I learned it from Ayurveda Ayurveda is
Indian medicine and my Ayurvedic practitioner actually taught me how to
do this belly massage for digestion if you think about it if you massage the
actual organs of your intestines then it helps the action of peristalsis it's
called which is the movement of stuff through
the intestines it manually helps everything move a little bit better now
that's really amazing for digestion and for our health so this will help you in
that realm as well but another reason that it's helpful is because when we
release any tension happening in and among the muscles and the intestinal
walls themselves then everything's able to squish around better
so here is how belly massage works
so the hand position you're gonna want to use for the belly
massage is to take your two hands like this with fingers back against each
other creating a sort of paddle with your fingers and then you're gonna bring
that down to your belly now just one more thing I want to say before we go in
is that this visceral massage idea is actually something that I learned from
Indian medicine but it comes from a lot of different traditions okay here we go
bring your hands to your solar plexus right underneath the center of your
rib cage now we want to actually give some good pressure here it doesn't need to be
super intense but if you think about it you don't want to massage the skin
you're not actually even massaging the muscle you're going deeper towards the
intestinal tissue and you'll know because it'll feel a little bit maybe
queasy maybe uncomfortable but just be gentle about this of course now once our
hands are in there we're gonna do a little clockwise circular motion it's
actually very important that you go clockwise because the movement the
peristalsis through the intestines the small and large intestines is clockwise
so we want to support that movement that our body is already trying to do you're
gonna spend about 5,10, 15 seconds in this spot which will think about a clock
as we move around the entire belly so this is the 12 o'clock point if someone
were looking at me and one good way to know that you've spent enough time is if
you feel just a little bit of release in the same way that if you are doing a
muscular stretch and suddenly staying there for longer you felt a release you
felt a release here okay once you've done that spot take a little break just
take a breath see how you feel this may be much different than anything you've
ever experienced so give your body a chance to calibrate and then what we're
gonna do is come down to a point along the slant of the ribs towards the left
side of your body so essentially if someone we're looking at me we're moving
from 12 o'clock to 1:30 on the clock we're gonna do eight points around the
outside massaging here we are underneath the rib cage now we're on the soft
tissue of the abdomen of the belly and fun fact by the way while we massage in
little clockwise circles here this area of our body is not called our stomach
even though a lot of people refer to it as our stomach your stomach is up inside
underneath your rib cage over here on the left side so we're right underneath
your stomach right now but this whole area of your body is not your stomach
okay so just if you want to use your language
anatomically in a correct way once you've done that spot you can take a
little breath take a break
see how you feel and then we're gonna move to the three o'clock spot now we're not
all the way over on the side of the body we're still on the front of that abdomen
and over towards the side so I'm basically halfway between my ribs and
the top of my iliac crest of my pelvis go ahead and do your five to
ten seconds maybe 15 seconds really as long as you'd like of clockwise circular
massage here breathing letting your whole body be relaxed letting your
tongue your jaw your face be relaxed
and then when you've done that go ahead and
let it go take a breath
and the fourth point that we're gonna come to is along
the slant from the iliac crest down towards the pubic bone so right about
here on my body ladies this is kind of close to where
your ovaries are just above so just so you're aware anatomically some landmarks
massaging in little clockwise circles here now something else that might
happen while you're doing this belly massage is you might need to burp
because if there are air pockets in your intestines they may want out that's fine
let yourself burp and then when that yields when that lets go go ahead and
take a break let it go
as you get better at this sequence you can do it a little
bit faster but for now as we're learning take your time
the next point is going to be down at the 6 o'clock point right above the
pubic bone probably about halfway between the navel and the pubic bone you
may also find that this spot is right where a normal pair of pants cuts off so
massage there clockwise circles and I'll speed up the process right now as you're
getting the point of this go ahead and let go take a breath
and then bring yourself over to the equivalent point along the slant from the pelvis down to
the pubic bone on the right side
then you can always take a break just for a moment as you bring your hands up
to what we could call the 9 o'clock point
and then up to the final point
around the outside so this is our last point along the outside if you think
about it this whole area this diamond that we have access to the soft tissue
of the front of our belly we just did eight points around the outside now
we're gonna come to the inside just about one finger width away from the
belly button in four spots above to the side below and to the other side of the
belly button here we go right above the belly button same paddle fingers and
this especially when you get right into the middle of the small intestines there
might be some gurgling some burping some sensitivity here so be gentle
see if you can let it go let the tissues yield to your touch and your massage and then
take a break take a breath
come to the left side of the belly button and massage
a break and a breath come underneath the belly button and massage
a break and a breath and then to the right side of the belly button and massage
a couple final steps you can do once you've done the eight points along
the outside and the four along the inside you could also draw from the
outside points towards the inside like you're pulling energy towards the center
of your belly and you could also take the flats of your hands and just squish
the whole thing around now another thing that I didn't demonstrate yet but of
course you're welcome to do because this is an exercise for voice is make some
sound so let's do it on the end here as I squish the belly around just make some
sound huh just jiggling your guts okay great
now I just demonstrated this belly massage sitting up but you could do it
standing and another really nice way to do it if you want to really find more
release is lie on your back and do it with gravity helping your abdominal
contents on the floor so you can do this while you're lying down on your back
I highly recommend this belly massage it's so valuable and then once you have let
everything go in here a really nice exercise to go straight into in your
warm-up is the shh, let it go breathing exercise where you then now that you
have released abdominal contents can go shh let go shh let go and squish them
around so watch that video and you'll see what I mean
I hope you find this belly massage as transformative as I do
for supporting my voice and by the way
if you're following along at home with the how to warm up series this of course
is an exercise that corresponds both to body and to breath so enjoy and let me
know if you have any questions down below the video
how to warm up