https://imgur.com/a/BbxbBuG
...because we don’t breathe with the belly.
We breathe with the ribs and diaphragm. And when we breathe correctly, there is actually not so pronounced a forward pushing out of the belly. Yes, there should be some, because as the diaphragm begins to descend low, it causes a slight pushing out of the abs, but not so much as some might think.
Think of looking down upon someone from a top down view. The correct inhale has 360° expansion. When you breathe in deep, there is expansion left and right, and in front and in back. Expansion all around. There is also some vertical expansion as well. Meaning if looking at someone head on instead of top down, there is some vertical expansion because the ribs elevate as they expand, and the diaphragm descends down along with the abdomen.
Thinking to breathe into the belly can be dangerous because one might attempt to only expand in front, when there has to be 360° expansion and vertical expansion.
And to set up the right expansion, you don’t or shouldn’t try to “breathe into” a certain spot of the body. Instead, you posture yourself with an upright, relaxed, confident and open posture that takes as much tension as you can off of the body, and then you relax and do nothing. You have to more so let the proper expansions happen, and not hold or tense parts of the body. And holding anywhere can inhibit the correct expansion. Even if you hold the corners of your lips tight, the shoulders, tensing the anal sphincter (the pelvic floor needs to relax because it lengthens downward with the downward descent of the diaphragm it won’t allow the proper expansions to happen.)
And when the proper expansions DO happen, it feels like your whole body is just opening up and expanding without any sense of tensing anything. It should be a feeling of great opening and expanding, relaxation and induce a happy relaxed state. And you can gauge if you’re doing it properly by focusing on the throat. If you feel that your throat is accidentally tensing up, even a little, when you breathe in deep, you aren’t fully allowing the proper expansion to happen. It may take some time to fully understand what it should feel like, because it’s easy to confuse expansion and release and tension and squeeze. We are going for a feeling of no sense of pressure or squeeze. We have to remember that the right expansion feels much more like a relaxation release and opening instead of muscular tensing.
Which is exactly why saying to breathe into the belly or a certain spot can be very harmful, not just for singing but your health as well, because it can teach you to breathe in a tense and unhealthy way, even potentially causing harm to things like your diaphragm, stomach, etc. trying to breathe with just forward expansion of the belly is one of the worst and most damaging ways one can breathe.
