Ila Siliga- Warming Up

"No matter how easy the day is, start your practice session by stretching out. You want to get your entire body ready to sing, not just your singing muscles. For your breath to really move in your body, you need to be connected to your lower body" (Phillips 119). 

I found this quote in the book Singing for Dummies, I knew before that you need to relax your body to sing but I feel that I need to pay more attention to it in order to improve my sound. As said before by many other people, "your body is your instrument," when referring to singing. So because of this I feel like I should make it my daily routine to warm up, not just my voice  but my body as well.


The new daily routine that I have developed with the help of Singing for Dummies is to shake out tension of my body, release my head forward, move my head, gently stretch my neck, move all the muscles in my face, move my tongue around, work my shoulders, swing my arms in circles. stretch my sides, swing hips to loosen tension even more, warm up legs (stretching, bending etc.), ad take a deep breath to wrap things up. Now some of these warm-up techniques I have used before, while others I have not heard of before. The ones that I have not heard of are the ones that at first I thought had nothing to do with singing and were completely irrelevant. However, when I read the description of the exercises I see what each could contribute.




I practiced each of the techniques before knowing exactly what each was and decided to only take a picture of a few. The first and second picture demonstrate gently stretching your neck which is described as, "gently drop your left ear toward your left shoulder and pause. Inhale and, as you exhale, drop your head a little farther toward your shoulder," and as you can see I did not do it as directed (Phillips 120). This shows me that maybe gently stretching is more effective for singing purposes than just forcefully yanking my head in each direction. In the third and fourth picture demonstrates stretching your side which entails, "lift your left arm over your head and lean to the right. As you lean, feel the muscles between your ribs opening on your left side," and in the picture I am doing it correctly. By this time I had realized that each of the exercises all release tension in your body and this exercise really helped me. In the fourth I am doing the exercise a different way but it still had the same effect. For all of you out there who decide to try these exercises I hope they help release the tension in your bodies and prepare you for singing. If you do try the exercises, are they helpful for your singing, do they make a difference?