Breathing and Posture Techniques for Singers

This post may contain affiliate links. I only promote products I use and love.

There are many exercises out there for singers. Breathing exercises can come in many forms, techniques, and ways to approach them. That’s good because you don’t want to just be working the same muscles every time. Nor do you just want to learn ONE way of doing things.

Adjusting and learning different breathing exercises and techniques is going to help you to have more resources in your tool belt.

Let’s get going on learning some breathing and posture techniques.

How to Breathe And Stand as a Singer

First off, let’s learn HOW to breathe. Sounds crazy, right, since our bodies do it for us automatically thousands of times a day. For singing, however, you must learn techniques to create and control the breath all the way from your lungs to projecting the air into sound out of your mouth.

Learn how to breathe for singing with these steps:

Take a deep breath through your nose, feeling the expansion in your lungs and midsection, then exhale through your nose, too. Practice this until you notice and feel it in every part of your body.
Now, take that deep breath until your entire midsection feels full of air (I like to think of a tire being inflated or a doughnut rising)
Once you feel a point of full air capacity, let the breath slowly out of your mouth. When you add the notes and phrases of your song to this step, you will start using the deep intake of air that you used to prepare for the music.

How to Breathe While Standing

Here, we get into the posture part of singing. Since your posture must be optimal and provide the smallest path of resistance for your air to flow freely, perfecting this is vital.

Here are the steps for optimal breathing while standing:

Place your feet shoulder-width apart, one foot slightly ahead of the other. Which foot does not matter, it just needs to be the one that feels the most comfortable for you.
Take your hands into a praying position in front of your chest, separate them into a “touchdown” sign, and then let them drop next to your sides. This should help create a nice open chest.
Locate your sternum (or breast bone) and lift it to further open your chest and keep your shoulders back and down. (the video for this is later in the post)
Then repeat the breathing steps from above to practice breathing into your phrase.

This helps explain the “touchdown” pose to get into proper posture position!

How to Breathe While Sitting Down

Though singing while sitting down is not the best option, it still is something to know and be prepared for (like in a choir rehearsal).

Here are the best tips for sitting down with optimal breathing and posture:

Scoot to the edge of your chair.
Place your feet flat on the floor in front of you, in a shoulder-width stance to keep your balance (since you are sitting on the edge of your chair)
Once you have that settled, again do the “touchdown” pose and sternum raise to keep your upper half tall and straight.
Then, if you are using music, hold it up in front of you. Or, perch a music stand in front of you and place the height at eye level. This way you are forced to keep your tall posture in order to clearly see your music.
Use the same breathing steps above to start your phrase!

Breathing and Posture Techniques

Beginner Breathing and posture techniques for Singers

As someone who is starting out, I’d like you to know these tips:

Posture and breathing techniques can be some of the hardest to master, even though they are the most practical to apply and understand.
Practice makes perfect and practice as well as you can. Posture and breathing are also two things that become second nature once your body has memorized the muscle patterns and movements for each.
That being said, it is super important that you practice them well in order to not create the wrong muscle memory in your body.
Study these techniques and focus on them until you feel like you can do them without thinking about them.
Please do not lock your knees; this will increase your chances of passing out while singing. Not good!
Where to put your hands while singing? If you are not holding a piece of music or a folder, keep them relaxed at your sides.

Breathing Technique #1

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and place one hand on your stomach and the other on the small of your back. Take a few breaths in through your nose, exhaling slowly through a small opening in your mouth. Feel the expansion with your hands and in your body, memorizing the way it feels.

It should feel fully “inflated” all the way around, including some expansion in the back.

This is the first technique I recommend to start recognizing and feeling that muscle memory.

Breathing Technique #2

Stand in front of a mirror. Breathe as you did in the first exercise, except watch the way your midsection expands. You also can memorize the way it looks as well as feels.

Now watch for a couple of things in particular.

Are your shoulders raising when you breathe? If so, fix it. This should not happen.

Are you taking too shallow of a breath? You should feel expansion everywhere until you are full of air.

Below are a few examples of what not to do, and how to adjust it!

Posture Technique #1

Stretching can really help you find a sweet posture without tension and uncomfortable body movements.

Bend your knees and allow your body to swoop with your arms and sway or rock back and forth from front to back. (as shown in the video)
Let your body bend at the midsection with knees still bent and just relax down as much as you can.
Slowly roll your body up, tucked in towards your back as much as possible. Keep going until you are standing upright.
Establish your firm shoulder-width stance with one foot slightly ahead of the other.
Then open your chest and slowly roll your shoulders back several times to loosen them up. You may do this with your arms bent or at your sides.
Finally, roll your neck around each side, taking care to stretch gently and for not too long.

This stretching allows for the muscles that need to be kept loose during singing to be warmed up and ready to perform without unnecessary tension.

Posture Technique #2

This is my favorite trick for keeping the chest open and the shoulders back. It also works fantastically for stretching or popping your back into place after a lot of stress or bending inward (like we tend to do when on our phones or computers).

Take a deep breath and let your shoulders relax. Then, pretend there is a string coming from your breastbone (sternum). Pull up on the “string”, opening your chest by raising your bone there.

This will help to open up your chest and relax your shoulders immensely. Try it the next time you are having a hard time keeping your shoulders in place or just having some upper back discomfort. It really does help!

Advanced Breathing and posture techniques for Singers

Tips for advanced singers:

Just because you have learned the techniques before, don’t assume that you know it all. I am still learning cool breathing techniques and ways to hold my body after many years.
Many singers want to improve on these techniques in order to sing with an expanded range, elongated phrases, or clarity of tone. I’ll touch on these with a few techniques as well.

Breathing Technique #1

When breathing in to sing, we often do it through our mouths because they need to be in a proper position to sing. I think this works very well when you are sneaking a quick breath in the middle of a phrase or are starting the phrase on a vowel.

However, when you have the time to take a deeper nose breath, you should do so. Like at the beginning of a song or a long period of resting before entering to sing again. It helps to have a much fuller and more natural breath without adding tension to your throat.

There are a couple of reasons:

Breathing through your mouth can often make your throat and mouth feel dry, increasing your need for constant hydration.
You can also tend to breathe noisily if your throat is not open and relaxed. Watch this video for tips on how to keep your throat open. Breathing through your nose allows your throat to start in an open, relaxed position.
We naturally breathe better and deeper through our noses, and using that built-in part of our body can be an advantage to us while singing.

Breathing Technique #2

This breathing technique can double as a posture technique in a way, since you are focusing on keeping your body open enough to sing well, and creating a strong foundation so that you can feel comfortable while singing.

You will need a partner to do this though, so find a friend who is similar in height and weight to you.

Face each other, holding each other’s forearms for support.
Slowly you will both sit back in the air, using each other’s weight for support. It will be like sitting on a chair of air with your arms stretched out to help each other not fall to the floor.
Then, in that position, sing a warm-up, phrase, or part of a hymn that you have been working on. Try to keep your chest open as much as possible.
Notice how your muscles work when in that position. How much harder or easier is it to breathe? To focus on other things other than falling? Are some things coming easier? Or much harder?

This exercise will strengthen your muscles, especially your abs, for creating a more controlled and desirable sound. Try it out the next time you get the chance to sing with a friend or in a choir rehearsal.

Posture Technique #1

This one is a bit different, but it works and that’s why I like it. Do you still have a lot of tension after stretching and can’t seem to keep your whole body loose and relaxed?

Try this one:

Tense up every muscle group you can think of, starting from your toes.
Once your body is all scrunched up and seriously tense, start releasing each section of muscles.
Start from your toes and make your way up to your face.
It sounds funny, but this posture technique really does help you relax many muscles and places that you didn’t even realize were tense!

Posture Technique #2

When putting your selected foot slightly ahead of the other, try using that foot to hold the majority of your weight. It will help you feel more forward and upfront while singing. It may also allow your posture to fall into a natural singing position with more ease and comfort.

Just be sure to always have that back foot ready for shifting of your weight, and never lock your knees (but you knew that already). You should also slightly bend that front knee in order to not get so lock-kneed.

Breathing and Posture Technique Resources

For beginners:

Check out my free Breathing and Posture 5-day Course to help introduce more techniques and ways to approach the singing basics.

My Catholic Cantor Training Basics course also gives a rundown of both posture and breathing, as well as tone, vowels, vocal placement, and more!

Advanced resources:

Mike Carney from Music Ministry 101 has an excellent Advanced Vocal Techniques course. You can receive 25% off using the code GESSICA25!!

Check out my mega-list of cantor resources, too! It may help you find just the resource you are looking for!

I hope that this post was really helpful in figuring out some of the intricacies of posture and breathing! They really are the foundation for a good sandwich! (or singer)

P (posture) + B (breathing) + J (jamming cause it works!) = a great sandwich! AKA singer who knows what they are doing!

What are your favorite breathing and posture techniques?