The Breathe Starter Kit - Floor Wittink

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Integrated Breathing

Belly breathing or (high) chest breathing? It can be confusing what is the right way to breathe. In this Starter Kit you'll learn about the movement of the diaphragm and how to make space for integrated breathing.

Relaxation

To be able to relax and get rid of stress helps you to gain energy and sleep better. Learn how breathing can help you!

Breath Support

Breath support is used when speaking, singing or playing a wind instrument. In this kit you'll find a simple exercise to help you develop a warm sound.

Health

And: to breathe better means living a healthier life!

We breathe all day long, but unfortunately that does not mean that we are doing it the right way. Wrong habits and too much tension can cause us to develop an unhealthy breathing pattern. This leads to reduced immunity and a range of complaints such as fatigue, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, voice problems ... The list is long because the entire system reacts to the way we breathe. Fortunately, you can improve your breathing pattern. In this kit you'll find three super tools to make a good start!

NB: the way you breathe also depends on your medical condition. Do not take these tips as a medical advice, but check what applies to you.

About Floor Wittink

Floor Wittink is a Dutch professional saxophonist, teacher, breathcoach and workshopleader. Floor earned her Master’s degree in Classical Saxophone through studies with Johan van der Linden. She followed masterclasses with, amongst others, Arno Bornkamp, Claude Delangle, Christer Johnsson and Christiaan Bor.

Since that time Floor has been busy working with symphony orchestras like the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, music theatre like Holland Opera and several chamber groups; playing duo with piano, guitar, harp and with saxophone quartet.

Floor always loved to be a teacher and started teaching the saxophone already during her studies. She frequently gives workshops and clinics where she focuses on issues like sound and breathing. For the past years she has devoted a lot of time to writing about these issues on her blog and in e-book about playing from your heart (Spelen vanuit je hart). She also published a book about teaching music for teachers.

As a wind instrumentalist, Floor has a special interest in breathing and decided a few years ago to become a breathcoach next to her activities as performer and teacher. She helpt wind instrumentalists, singers and speakers with breathing technique and helps people to develop a healthy breathing pattern.

She recently developed several online courses about breathing and saxophone playing in Dutch and English.

Floors own quest to improve her breathing led her to great musicians/teachers. In 2021 she decided to broaden her perspective and become a breathcoach and she studied with Annet Weers and Kasper van der Meulen.

Experiences

The starting kit works very well for me. It is a revelation because I have had periods of hyperventilation and breathing high for years. I tried the abdominal breathing, and that did not work so well; but these exercises did!

What I like is that you explain the complete (abdomen, flanks and chest) breathing and not just the abdominal breathing. Over the years I had limited too much to belly breathing. I limited myself so much in my playing that I even got physical complaints. I play a lot of soprano saxophone in old style jazz groups and I started to focus on embouchure, tongue location, wicker, mouthpiece and the type of saxophone.
But I have found the missing link with these exercises and my sound is improving! So I thank you for having worked this out in such a detail.