The Pelvic floor is a big deal for successful singers, even if we don’t know it or feel it. We want the pelvic floor to be just like the larynx: strong, awake, resilient and flexible.
It seems most of us need to increase somatic awareness and to release and/or strengthen that bowl of gumbo soup down there.
It cannot be overstated the role the pelvic floor plays in our overall health: it is fundamental for anxiety relief, essential for trauma resilience, intrinsic for core work, crucial for emotional stability, and vital for breath support.
The pelvic floor is a diaphragm similar to the thoracic diaphragm. Fascia and nerves should have these these two working in tandem, assisting with lower body awareness, stability, proprioception and singing technique.
However functionally, this is not usually what we see; because we have so much stuff going on down there, the two diaphragms often become disconnected from each other.
Our pelvic floor is directly connect to our larynx through fascial connections - there is a direct correlation from asleep pelvic floor muscles to an inactive soft palate. Learn how to activate a students' deep core and the soft palate will react much faster than attempting to “lift the soft palate” for years and years. Every wonder why some student’s just can’t find their “space” or “lift” back there? This is why - their pelvic floor is hypo or hyper active.
There are manymanymany exercises to awaken and strengthen the pelvic floor.
👉 Warrior
👉 Sumo
👉 Thoracic diaphragm weightlifting
👉 Trampoline
👉 Wobble board
👉 Inhalation strength work
👉 Bouncing
👉 TWM Breath Balls between pelvic crests
👉 Squats
👉 Jaw release
👉 Coughing (esp helps asthmatics)
👉 Sitting on TWM Breath Balls
👉 Yoga supine spinal twist series
👉 TWM Breath Ball on perineum
The rigors of life and the fact that we are over-thinking everything, pulls our energy and centre of gravity up from below. As this happens, we lose our hips and legs in space, and our pelvic floor becomes less and less active. Every single vocal student I have seen in 30 years needs work in this area. Our musculo-energetic pyramids are upside-down,
We need to feel like athletes when we perform - and that means everything has to be built on a solid foundation - literally.
