1. Ability to fill the lungs to their capacity either quickly or slowly. 2. Ability to breathe out as quickly or slowly as the occasion demands. 3. Ability to suspend inspiration, with the throat open, whether the lungs are full or not, and to resume the process at will without having lost any of the already inspired air. 4. Ability to exhale under the same restrictions. The above four points are common to speaking and singing, but singing involves further: 5. Ability to sing and sustain the voice on an _ordinary_ breath. 6. Ability to _quietly_ breathe as often as text and phrase permit. 7. Ability to breathe so that the fullest inspiration _brings no fatigue_. 8. Ability to so economize the breath that the _reserve is never exhausted_. 9. The ability to breathe so naturally, so unobtrusively, that _neither breath nor lack of breath is ever suggested to the listener_--this is the very perfection of the art. CHAPTER IV BREATHING EXERCISES Enough has been said in the preceding chapter to make clear the necessity of breath control, and to show what constitutes this control for the singer--the professional breather. If the singer's breathing is nothing but an amplification of normal, healthy breathing, why dwell upon it, why not let it develop of itself? Unfortunately, many teachers have taken this attitude, overlooking the fact that, although life is dependent on normal, healthy breathing, such breathing is, in civilized communities, not the rule but the exception, simply because normal living is rare; the artificiality of modern life forbids it. The high pressure under which most people live induces mental tension together with the consequent nervous and muscular tension. We are, without being conscious of it, so habituated to unnatural tension that automatic breathing is shallow and irregular instead of being deep and rhythmic. The task, therefore, is to reclaim a neglected birthright--natural breathing--to make it habitual and amplify it. PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS 1. Breathing exercises to be invigorating and purifying demand plenty of fresh air. 2. At first do not practise longer than ten minutes at a time, three times a day. 3. Gradually lengthen the time without overdoing. When tired stop. 4. The best time is before dressing in the morning, with the window open. The worst time is directly after a meal. 5. Maintain throughout an easy, flexible poise. 6. Breathe as _deeply_ as possible without abdominal distention. The greatest expansion should be felt at the lower end of the breast-bone. 7. Breathe as _broadly_ as possible, expanding the sides without tension. 8. Breathe as _high_ as possible without shoulder movement or stiffness. 9. Use not the high breath alone, or the mid-breath, or the low breath, but use the _complete_ breath. 10. Breathe _rhythmically_ by counting mentally. 11. Breathe _thoughtfully_ rather than mechanically.