Breathing Gym: A morning routine

<p>If you stumbled into room W-114 in the School of Music Building Monday through Friday mornings, you might have a hard time figuring out just what was going on.</p><separator></separator><p>Is it a yoga class? A martial arts session? A surreal music practice?</p><separator></separator><p>Actually, it’s sort of all three combined – it’s a session of The Breathing Gym for music students, led by tuba professor Sam Pilafian and visiting assistant professor of tuba Patrick Sheridan, who together developed the techniques.</p><separator></separator><p>A dozen or so tuba, euphonium, French horn and trombone players – and an occasional trumpet player – gather every morning at 7:15 a.m. to learn how to breathe more effectively – and better play their instruments.</p><separator></separator><p>The voluntary sessions include exercises to release tension, stretch, breathe quickly and use power breaths, all of which, obviously, benefit players of wind instruments.</p><separator></separator><p>The brass players sit in a large circle facing each other. Pilafian and Sheridan, both playing their tubas, give the instructions.</p><separator></separator><p>Exercises are done with and without instruments. The players practice breathing as they play scales, or “play” music with their breath.</p><separator></separator><p>During one recent class, for example, Pilafian asked the students to do a “wind-pattern” version of the “Star-spangled Banner.”</p><separator></separator><p>In some exercises, the students send breath through their horns without actually producing musical sounds.</p><separator></separator><p>“Hear the groove in your head?” asks Sheridan. “Relax. Sit balanced over your rocker bones.”</p><separator></separator><p>After nearly an hour and a half of exercising their lungs – and fingers – the musicians pack up their instruments and slip away, no doubt breathing a little easier than when they arrived.</p>