June 6th, 2008
IT’S EASY TO ASSUME that successful veteran actors such as Lauren Bacall, Isabella Rosellini and John Woods might not need additional help developing and evolving their craft or pushing their careers to a higher level.
But that’s precisely why they and many others seek the help of Steven Memel, a Los Angeles-based vocal and acting coach who, for nearly 20 years has counseled professional and aspiring performers with a philosophy of reinforcing the purity of art as an expression of the self, one that must come from deep within. “There is only one art,” he says. “And that is life. There are just different channels through which we express ourselves.”
Rooted in this philosophy are his techniques for awakening, or reawakening, that artist within. With acting, singing or speaking, Memel explains, we are playing the body as an instrument. “You have to have an activating energy and a vibrating mechanism,” he says in a rich and mellifluous voice. “With a cello it’s a bow and a string. With a drum, it’s the stick and the vibrating drum head. With your voice, it’s your vocal cords and your breath. The amazing thing about the breath is that through our emotions, through our desire to communicate — and that’s what singing and speaking are — our breath plays an enormous and essential role. You can’t communicate all those nuances of despair, anger, love, joy, without the breath. Every single one of these emotional states correlates with some action of breath that is common to all of us.”
The breath, he says, is the very foundation that enables us to express this art. Without ballet’s plie, he suggests, there is no leap. Without the backswing of a baseball bat in baseball, there can be no home run. Without the air — without the breath as the backswing, the preparation — there is no sound. “The role the breath plays is the essence of our life,” he says. “It is the fuel, the source that brings life to us. Without it we cease to exist.”
Voice is created via air pressure being exerted against the closed vocal cords. In the typical adult male, those cords are just under an inch long, even less than that for women. “When you think of all the pitches and all the dynamic levels you are able to make, you are talking about octaves of notes being produced on hardly any surface area whatsoever,” Memel says. “Those vocal chords have to change shapes for each pitch. The body has to regulate a different amount of air pressure for each note too. It’s a match-up between the air pressure and the vocal cord closure. When you start putting together all the variables that happen on such a tiny space — the speed and accuracy at which we are able to do that — and get to the point where you are not even consciously thinking about it, that is truly staggering.”
As with anything, mastery increases personal confidence and trust. It’s a process that takes practice. “Just discovering that there is a another possibility of how to breath is sometimes a completely revolutionary thought,” he says. “You can hardly speak to a person about letting go of the breath when, due to stressful conditioning or all sorts of other things, they don’t have a clue what that means.”
Conscious breathing brings many benefits, beginning with overall body awareness. “Being aware of my body and sensation puts me ahead of the game in everything I do,” Memel says. “I’m able to learn physical things faster. I don’t have to master the art of letting go in the midst of a learning or crisis situation.”
In his late teens and early 20s, “People used to call me Mister Intense,” he says. “Now they say ‘Steven, you are so laid back.’ I attribute an enormous amount of that to the ability to breathe the way that I do. Just like in Aikido and other martial arts, you must stay relaxed so that in your moment of necessity for movement you can move in any direction. It’s not a dead, heavy laid-back. It’s a laid-back that allows me to act and react more quickly than if I wasn’t in that particular state.”
With even rudimentary conscious breathing skills comes balance in dealing with emotions, physical pain, lovemaking, even listening. “You are a better listener when you are in a balanced state,” Memel offers. “It helps with stressful circumstances, and certainly most importantly it helps in ways spiritually to develop peace of mind and to loosen the grip in moments of tension or panic, which we all have. The breath centers you. When you hold your breath you are basically guarding yourself against pain. When you breathe, you are leaving yourself more sensitive and open.”
Performers allow people to “be voyeurs of our experience,” Memel says. “Besides the technical proficiency, it is really learning how to become someone who comes from their heart and makes you truly believe and feel what we are communicating through the music or the acting.” It is coming from a place of truth and purity.
When you are focused on your breathing, and not resisting it, you are much more alive, aware and spontaneous. But to achieve that you have to undergo an initial moment of letting go your grip, breathing, and discovering that there is safety in it. “From that place comes the greatest strength, the greatest freedom, the greatest joy,” Memel says. “That is the hardest psychological and emotional place to get to.
Memel recounts the story of jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, who, when asked what he thought about before he launches into one of his elegant and free-spirited solos, said, “What I think before I take a solo is, here goes.”
Says Memel, “It’s a matter of trust because of the fear of vulnerability, the fear that nothing will be there if we let go, rather than discovering the beautiful array of possibilities that are alive within us at every moment.”
Don Campbell and Al Lee are the authors of Perfect Breathing (Sterling Publishng/2008) and write, speak, train, and blog tirelessly on the subject. Discover more ways you can improve your health, performance, and wellbeing at http://www.perfectbreath.com Reach them at info@perfectbreath.com or http://blog.perfectbreath.com
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