How To Sing From Your Stomach?

You may have heard the phrase “Sing from your stomach!” during a practice session or in choir practice. However, you might be wondering how to sing from your stomach? You would think it would be from your lungs since that’s where all the air comes from, but that’s not the case.

In this, we will go over how you do this by going step by step help to make sure you do it properly.

Step 1: Finding Your Diaphragm

If you have ever studied human anatomy, then you will know that the muscle we use to push air out of our lungs is our diaphragm.

This is the muscle that is referred to when people say, “Sing from your stomach!”.

The first step to doing this is to find your diaphragm. By locating this muscle, you will be able to get a feel for how the muscle should expand and contract.

You can find it by placing your hands under your rib cage and breathing slowly. Take note of the muscles you feel moving during that time.

–         Other Helpful Tips

One way you can help find your diaphragm and feel the muscle do its thing while you sing is to lie down flat.

Place a little weight on your stomach. It could be anything that weighs about 2 to 4 pounds. Then push up on that weight using the muscles in your stomach.

Once you have done that, all that’s left is to sing. You should be able to feel your diaphragm contracting and expanding as you sing and breathe.

It will help give you a feel for where your diaphragm is located and what it feels like to sing using that muscle.

Step 2: Practice Breathing

If you are reading this, then you are most definitely breathing. It’s something we do every day, and when learning to sing, you are going to have to pay attention to it.

You don’t usually have to think about breathing in and out, but as you learn to sing using your diaphragm, you will want to pay attention to your breathing patterns.

–         Staying Relaxed

You want to stay as relaxed as possible in your shoulders as you practice this. The more you tense up, the more energy you use, and you can also risk sore muscles.

Paying attention to where you tense up is essential, and after learning to loosen up in those areas, it will start becoming second nature to you.

Step 3: Work Out Your Diaphragm

Your diaphragm is a muscle. Similar to any muscle in your body, you want to exercise and work it out. The stronger your diaphragm is, then the stronger your voice will become.

You won’t have to do any strenuous exercise like lifting weights, though. These are simple exercises, such as practicing sucking a milkshake through a straw, for example.

You will want to research exercises that are right for you. That way, you can help keep your diaphragm happy and healthy through exercising it regularly.

Step 4: Practice Using Lip Trills

Have you ever seen videos of singers making silly noises and doing weird things to warm up before they have to sing? It is one of those exercises.

A lip trill is an act of blowing air through your lips so that they “flap” together. It’s also known as blowing a raspberry.

This type of warm-up is done by “trilling” your lips while singing. It is not only a great way to warm up your voice, but you will also be exercising your diaphragm in the process.

If you are more of a visual learner, then you can find plenty of videos online detailing how to do this and how it can benefit you.

Research is necessary with any activity, and when you are doing something like working out a muscle, making sure you are doing it correctly is important.

It helps you to grow and learn while also preventing a sore muscle.

Step 5: The Perfect Posture

You may be groaning at the sound of the word “posture” if your parents ever harped on you when you were a kid about it.

The truth is that posture is very important. It is especially true when it comes to singing.

When you sing from your diaphragm, you are using more air than usual. If you watch how you stand and relax on your body, it can help increase the amount of air that you expel.

–         Good Advice for Good Posture

If you aren’t practicing good posture while you sing, then you probably will have a much harder time with it.

One great way to practice and find out what kind of posture you have is to stand with your back against a wall.

You can stand just the right way and use the wall to help you get a feel for how you should be standing and when you relax or tense up.

If you find yourself standing a little too tense while maintaining the right posture, then remember to relax before continuing.

After a while, you will start to notice where you tense up, and it will eventually become easier to maintain the right posture.

Step 6: Singing the Right Way

Once you have completed the other steps, it’s time to fine-tune your voice so you can sing your best.

–         Sing by Having Your Throat Open

Your air needs to be able to move around from the diaphragm freely. It will help the voice come out more naturally as you begin to sing.

A great way to practice this is by looking at yourself in a mirror. You then want to force a yawn causing your throat to open up. By seeing and feeling this happen, you will get a good idea about how it all works.

Once you can do this, you should try singing different notes through your throat. It will help train your voice to become stronger with each note you try.

–         Different Types of Notes

The next thing you want to work on is the note styles. The two different types are the high notes and the low notes. The low notes come from your chest while low notes are in the head voice.

When practicing your notes, you want to do them both in different ways and not at the same time. This is just for when you first start to get you used to each style.

To get the notes sound correct and held out, they need to be sung from the diaphragm. It will ensure that your notes are sounding the way they should be.

An excellent way to help you change from a high to a low note would by practicing your breathing. This will get you used to the way it feels to use the different types of notes. It will make transitioning a lot easier once you get the hang of it.

–         Pronouncing

To be sure you can correctly handle the words, you want to try pronouncing different types of words.

However, it is best to start pronouncing with consonants, as they can sometimes be hard to hear. Find a phrase that you can practice singing that has lots of consonants in it.

Once you have picked a phrase, sing it repeatedly on one note until you can do it clearly with all the support coming from the diaphragm.

If you need some help with this, I would consider maybe try working with a vocal coach or maybe an online singing course like the 30 Day Singer.

30 Day Singer has some excellent training videos that you will no doubt find useful. They have given us a free trial offer for our client which you can claim below.

Conclusion: How To Sing From Your Stomach

I hope you enjoyed my post and you now have a better understanding of how to sing from your stomach.

These are all the necessary steps you need to be able to sing through your stomach. It may take a while to get it down. But with time and practice, you will be able to do it.

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