The Chromatic Bansuri

15

Breathing

Breath is life. You can live for a month without food and a week without water, but
without air, you will be dead in a matter of minutes. Your sound is your breath, and your
breath is your life. For flute players, this is obviously a subject that requires great
attention. Proper breathing is essential to playing with a good sound.
Breathing has two parts: breathe in and breathe out. To play flute well, you must be
able to both fill your lungs fully and maintain a fine degree of control over the release of
your air. If you ask the average person to take a deep breath, they will usually do so by
lifting their chest. Because your lungs are narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, this is
not the way to get maximum air into your lungs. It also is faulty because controlling your
exhalation when breathing this way requires that you tense up your throat to meter out the
air. This has negative effects on your sound, because an open throat interacts with your
flute acoustically as a resonating chamber. Chest breathing therefore leads to shorter
breaths and a poor tone.
The correct way to breathe is to use your abdominal muscles to expand your
diaphragm. This creates a vacuum that quickly rushes air into the bottom of your lungs.
You can then bring additional air into the middle and upper portions. You will feel your back
expanding when this is done correctly. When breathing out, keep your throat free of
tension and meter the air by using your abdominal muscles to push the air out of your
lungs at the appropriate rate.

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