This is muscular control of the breath.
Correct breathing is health giving and strength giving; it promotes nutrition, lessens the amount of adipose tissue, and reinforces every physical requisite essential to speaking and singing.
A CURE FOR NERVOUSNESS It cannot be too widely advertised that the surest remedy for that torture of singers and speakers, nervousness, is the great tranquillizer,--quiet, deep breathing, deeply controlled.

The breath of nervousness is quick, irregular, and shallow, therefore, take a few, slow, deliberate, deep, and _rhythmic_ inhalations of pure air through the nostrils, and the panting gasp of agitation will vanish.
As a help toward deepening the breath and overcoming the spasmodic, clavicular habit, inhale quietly and slowly through the nose, or slowly sip the air through the nearly closed lips as if you were sipping the inmost breath of life itself.
NECESSITY OF BREATHING EXERCISES To acquire control of breathing, proper exercises must be intelligently and persistently followed.

In mankind, nature seems to have been diverted from her normal course so that we seldom find an individual who breathes correctly without education in the matter.
What we have said on breathing is based on the premise that respiration involves cooerdinate action of the body from collar-bone to the base of the abdomen; that is, expanding and contracting the chest and abdomen simultaneously.

This is called "lateral-abdominal" breathing; as the chest is the thoracic cavity, "abdomino-thoracic" has been suggested as brief and more strictly scientific.
Work on any other lines fails to develop the full power and quality of the voice.

Weak breathing is a prime cause of throaty tones.