The Skillful Exhale I A Free Dive into the Art of Breathing

This week I spent a few blissful days by the side of this lake in New Hampshire, watching a group of artists – among them opera singers, a dancer, a deaf actor and an aerialist -- create a new work.

They had gathered to make a movie that speaks to issues of self, transformation, and fluidity in nature. But one conversation that stayed with me was about a subject I study every day in meditation: the breath.

Accompanying one of the sign language interpreters on the set was Olli, a psychologist who runs a free-diving school in Indonesia. Free divers train their minds and bodies to go for longer than seems humanly possible without drawing breath. One day, I listened as Olli and Karim, a Grammy-winning operatic tenor, geeked out about the mechanics of breathing.

It occurred to me that in both free diving and music, mastery over the breath leads to an altered relationship to nature. It opens the door to wonder: a closer encounter with sea turtles. A storyteller who acts out every role, and the scenery, too. 

It turned out that Olli and Karim shared more than an intimate knowledge of their diaphragms. In their work, both fought a misperception of how far effort will get you in lengthening your breath. 

What Olli teaches is first of all mindfulness and relaxation. He calls free diving “meditation with feedback.” 

Karim talked about the importance of emptying the lungs fully before drawing a new breath, to avoid something singers call “stacking,” where tension rises up the torso. He said most singing makes do with the amount of air you take in with a natural – even involuntary – breath. As I understood him, the art of singing lies not in a big effortful slurp of air but in the skillful release of a normal one. 

Now there’s a concept to ponder.

It reminded me of a very different breathing skill that some wind players cultivate. Circular breathing allows them to suck in and store small gulps of air through the nose without interrupting the exhalation that produces sound. A great trumpeter such as Wynton Marsalis can then play a sustained whirlwind of virtuosity like Paganini’s Moto Perpetuo without ever pausing to breathe. It’s a stunning piece of showmanship that tests the line between man and machine. (Listen to it and see what happens to your own breathing…)

When I asked Olli about circular breathing, he told me that competition free divers use something similar called carp breathing (or stacking) that can expand lung volume to a stunning 12 liters or more. 

But musicians don’t just train their breathing to stun and wow. When composers write music about the natural world – like the stillness of that trout lake in the picture – musicians need to find ways to evoke its supernatural patience. Sometimes that means hiding the breath. More often it’s about transforming it.

Listen to the marvelous flutist Claire Chase play this bass flute solo by Dai Fujikura. The piece is called “Glacier” and the composer likens it to “a plume of cold air which is floating silently between the peaks of a very icy cold landscape, slowly but cutting like a knife.”

Claire’s performance perfectly renders a landscape that dwarfs human ambitions. And yet her own body is very much part of it, audible in the magnificent deep inhalations she draws in between phrases.

Karim’s latest album is a collection of Schubert songs called “Where Only Stars Can Hear Us.” The title is taken from “Des Fischers Liebesglück” (The Fisher’s Joy in Love), about a nighttime tryst in a boat on a lake. As the song progresses (here’s the full text), the narrator takes us up into the starry sky, deep into the lake, and back into the rocking boat. By the end, he dissolves all distinction between what’s up and what’s down, between this moment and eternity.

The genius of Schubert’s writing is that the music takes in every perspective. As the singer, spinning air through vocal folds, Karim gets to embody everything: undulating water, erotic ecstasy, and the judgment-free gaze of the stars.

You can float along on Fujikura’s arctic breeze and Schubert’s metaphysical lake right here and observe your own breath as you listen.

Or, as a Rosh Hashana bonus, listen to Karim singing this Sephardic love song, and note how the solo violin that trails his voice moves as if, it too, had to obey and play with the laws of breathing.