Singing and posture–see Categories, About, Launch 4-2014

Why posture and why what I mentioned below works for singers:

 The basic idea for singers is to reduce the acid from weakening the esophagus and particularly the nasal pharynx– mostly liquid acid, not gaseous acid.   For singing, I’m not writing about the pain  and potential cancer of acid reflux, but instead its effect on muscle control and resonance.

 The acid in a sense, immobilizes these live tissue.   By sleeping at an angled plane, the acid is less able to crawl up at night– this is why sleeping angled and not bending over when awake are effective.  If acid is able to crawl up to the vocal cords and weakens these, it’s very difficult to sing on pitch, because loss of vocal cord control.

 The effect on the vocal tract (excluding the vocal cords), and the nasal pharynx are less direct.   But the most direct treatment approach is still same– get the liquid acid as far away as possible.  If one pulls up one’s posture by uplifting the rib cage and head to proper alignment, the extra 1 to 2 inches gained will be quite significant in its effects, and this may fix the upper esophagus valve (whatever its name) automatically, because the upper esophagus tract is aligned and this upper valve (which is really an airway) is then in good operational condition.

 The lower esohagus-stomach valve, and I suspect even hiatial hernia (sp?) is more challenging.   Medicine does not yet know what causes the weakening of this valve, but there is a theory that it is due to extended bad posture weakening this valve.   This theory makes sense, because essentially, it is saying– if you pull on a valve muscle long enough in the wrong way, it will weaken.

 So for the lower esophagus valve, the first step is to prevent the potential damage by ensuring one’s posture is aligned.   The second, if the damage has occurred, is to stop further damage and allow the body to heal, by, again, aligning the posture.  The third, again, is complicated.

 When all these are aligned, the muscles are in good tone, which means one’s singing tone will be far better.

 Unfortunately, getting good posture is more difficult than it may appear.

This entry was posted on June 5, 2011 at 3:59 pm and is filed under acid reflux, GERD, heartburn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.