Breathing and Internal Support for the Aging Musician

September 10, 2025, 4:43 PM · This blog is the follow-up to the one entitled Physical Fitness for the Aging Violinist, which discussed how violinists rarely activate their muscle fascia efficiently. This makes violinists not only more injury-prone than necessary, but also unable to realize their true potential. This can happen even at the highest level of player, in many cases.

The question of breathing goes hand-in-hand with this rethink of total body integration.

But before discussing breathing technique itself, I would like to respectfully note of a serious error that even some absolutely top teachers on YouTube make when they are talking about how to play injury-free. It is not unusual, in this kind of video, to hear the player advised to "pay attention to the core/keep a good posture using stomach muscles," and so on. Unfortunately, tensing the stomach muscles immediately disconnects the muscle fascia from lower and upper body, thereby significantly reducing playing efficiency.

Furthermore, there are not many people who can keep constantly checking their posture and making sure their abs are tightened while they perform - that’s just annoying. This is not to say that our abs should not be exercised along with other body parts throughout our lives. This is a necessity. How you do it is up to you.

The key to keeping "stable" and injury-free while allowing full use of muscle fascia is actually the diaphragm. Sadly, it is quite hard to find direct references to this in the technical literature on violin playing. I did stumble across one teacher who talks about relaxing the diaphragm in an article on bowing in one of those Strad books containing interviews on technique, but I am not going to reference it a) because there is no further explanation and b) because I am fundamentally lazy.

Fortunately, I found that that master teacher Bayla Keyes (no big surprise) gets this, and addresses it to some degree in her superb video: Expanding Your Midriff for Perfect Violin Posture. (See below)

The reason this master teacher is able to pass on this point is because she has invested a lot of time in the study and practice of Tai Chi Chuan, which is one of the so called "internal martial arts" of China.

When one practices Tai Chi we learn at some point to completely relax the abdomen and let the diaphragm drop down. Put another way, we throw our inhibitions to the wind and just let our sagging guts hang out over our waist bands. That’s why Ms. Keyes looks kind of sloppy but is actually in excellent health :)

Here's another video, in which violist Kim Kashkashian describes Karen Tuttle's concept of playing with a "loose belly":

I often noticed in my many years of Tai Chi classes that men have some in-built resistance to doing this, since they tend to suck in their gut in front of women. This may have some origin in a latent desire to reproduce - or not. But it often slows down the progress of male students to some degree in Tai Chi classes!

However, it is not only the ancient arts that provide us with support for the concept of using the diaphragm as our means of stability and maximum efficiency of body usage. (Just in case you were worried.). This is a quote from the book Outlive- The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr Peter Attia:

In DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization), you learn to think of the abdomen as a cylinder, surrounded by a wall of muscle, with the diaphragm on top and the pelvic floor below, when the cylinder is inflated, what you are feeling is called intro abdominal pressure, or IAP. It’s critical to core activation and foundational to DNS training. Learning to fully pressurize the cylinder, by creating IAP, is important to safe movement because the cylinder effectively stabilizes the spine.

We can begin training this by lying on our backs with feet flat on the floor and knees bent. Place your hands below your rib cage with your fingers on your belly and your thumbs behind your back so they are sort of over the kidney area. Take a firm grasp of yourself or you will not be able to feel what your body is doing. Now take a long inhale with a relaxed abdomen, so you can feel your diaphragm expanding in your lower abdomen near your pelvis. Use your hands to evaluate how much expansion you are getting around your body.

Probably everything is moving in front and nothing is happening behind, or at least behind is negligible. The goal is to feel a big and equal expansion under the thumbs. We often find that one side of the diaphragm can do it, but not the other. So you can repeat, focusing on the weak side. This is step one, but it is important to add one more ingredient: At the same time as you do this relaxed inhale, make a small clenching action below the navel, like those exercises people use to stop themselves doing involuntary urination (Kegel exercise). You will find adding this small tweak will somehow make this strong cylindrical core of air feel more "organized" and under control.

Once you can do this in a prone position, practice it a few times while you are standing, every day! Also, integrate it into your daily life. That is, every time you have to lift anything heavy, stop! Make sure your shoulders are back and relaxed down, put your hands on your waist and inflate yourself. Then do the lift.

It’s the difference between chalk and cheese. You will find over time that not only do you not need the hands as a reminder, but that you can also inflate the abdomen and carry on normal breathing at the same time. This takes a while to develop, in my experience.

If you want a simple exercise to integrate the fascia and internal breathing you can do between lessons, then I highly recommend the following: Check the alignment of your head and shoulders. Then stand up slowly on tip-toe while raising your arms overhead, palms pointing forward. As you rise up your gut sags as you expand your lower abdomen with the diaphragm and then sink down. Repeat 10 times and then go have a nice cup of coffee while you can still afford it.

Warmest regards,
Buri

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Breathing and Internal Support for the Aging Musician

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