THE SCIENCE

Your voice is wired to your nervous system. The vagus nerve controls your rest-and-digest state. It also controls your voice box, and it is the same nerve doing both.

Breath is the one thing you can control

You cannot slow your heart on command. You cannot lower your stress hormones by thinking about it. You cannot change your digestion by choice. But you can change your breath. It runs automatically, and you can also take control of it when you want.

Your diaphragm is a muscle, and almost no one trains it

The diaphragm is the main muscle you breathe with. It is a muscle like any other. It gets weak when you don’t use it well, and it gets stronger when you train it. Under stress, your breathing moves up into your neck, jaw and chest, and the diaphragm stops doing its job. Many people breathe this way for years, until it starts to feel normal.

This is not relaxation. This is training a muscle. The same muscle your voice and your calm both need.

Trained in movement, because that is where you live

You get good at what you practice. If you only train your breath sitting still, your breath only works when you sit still. But you need your breath when you stand up. When you walk into a room. When you speak on the street. When you hold a long note to the end.

So we train in movement. I use slow, flowing movements, passed down over many years from the Shaolin tradition, joined together with the breath. We work standing, walking, alone, and together.

1 nerve, 3 centres

Your heart has its own network of nerve cells. Around 14,000 of them. Your gut has its own too, far more, in the hundreds of millions. It runs much of your digestion on its own. The vagus nerve connects both of them to your lungs and your voice.

Most of its signals travel one way: from the body up to the brain. About 80% go upward. While your body is doing the talking, your brain is mostly listening.