Opera singers are recovering well, world wide, from Covid and this support group is for us to share all our tricks for improved breathing. Many people with only one lung, or with damaged lungs have gone on to elite athletic levels, have sung opera and live lives with well-supported breath. Alternatively, some people with two healthy lungs can't walk one flight of stairs. Here, guided by Lady Shaula, an opera singer and teacher, she'll try to help you over the internet to learn basic operatic breathing techniques to help you maximise whatever lung capacity you're working with. Lady Shaula's Covid19 story
December 26, 2019 Something hit me like a ton of bricks! I thought at the time that it was a combination of Covid19 and the new sheet (fresh from a packet) that I'd put on the bed. I felt totally 'wrong' all through my body from the moment I lay down and hour by hour I got worse. My breathing was all wrong - the details are hazy now, but I was clearly getting sicker and sicker and it was happening astonishingly fast. I thought to get up and have a shower, to aid the breathing, but soon that was impossible. The part of my brain that keeps automated functions going stopped the lung information. My body flooded with adrenalin and I waited for my brain to tell me to breathe - it was extremely frightening and as the seconds went by I realized that my brain was not going to send information to my diaphragm. And so, instinctively as a singer, I swapped to manual breathing. We don't even have a word for this normally, it's just something that you use as an advanced singer. I tried to use my diaphragm normally and there was not the usual response. I tried my back diaphragm muscles and they responded as usual. I flipped my body onto my stomach, propped myself on my elbows and manually breathed, using my back diaphragm muscles for about an hour. (More than a month later this was found to be the best position for Covid patients in hospitals). My husband was asleep on the other side of the bed, but I couldn't talk and couldn't reach out my hand. EVERY inch of effort was going into breathing. A few times I stopped manually breathing and found there was still no automated breathing. I realised that there was no way an ambulance would transport me on my stomach and that I would die on my back. I knew which hospital I would be taken to and that they would lie me on my back and that I would drift into unconsciousness and then they would intubate me if they had time. I decided in my infamous stubborness that my chances of survival were better in my bed.
