Sounds

The exhale should start with an easy, soft, and short sound. That means don't emphasize or drag out the sound. The proper sound has been compared to a sigh, not a moan but just a short 'sigh' sound.

I have tried in the audio that accompanies this book to illustrate all the sounds. Since I was limited to my current Reichian therapy population and myself, some sounds are not as diverse as I would have liked.

AH

You know how the doctor says: "open your mouth and say ah." That's the sound I want you to begin with. But unlike at the doctor's office, don't drag it out! The sound starts the exhale, it does not continue.

The 'ah' sound is actually a slight mimic of the sound of a sigh. It is true that some people sigh with a 'huh' sound; but if you try both you will, hopefully, feel the difference. You want the 'ah' not the 'huh.' You can hear various versions of the 'ah' sound on the audio that accompanies this book. I also provide an example of what the proper 'ah' sound is.

One more thing. In language there are two elements called articulation and guttural. In articulation the throat is first closed and then opened to make the sound. If you try that on yourself hopefully you can both do it and hear the difference. In a guttural sound a constriction of the throat is added to the sound.

Footnote 16. Many of my patients are only in verbal therapy. Reichian therapy, like any other therapy, is not applicable to everyone.

First, take a small breath. Next close your throat (you can tell if you throat is closed because you can try to exhale but you can't since the passage for the air is closed). Then make the 'ah' sound as you open your throat. Hopefully you can hear the slight grunt like sound at the beginning of the 'ah' sound. This can be quite subtle, but it is definitely there. It is good practice to do the closed throat and the open throat exhales a bunch of times until you get good at spotting the difference.

Uh, Huh, Ha, Hu, Who, Ga, Ugh

It is impressive how many sounds we can make that are close to 'ah' but not on the money. Above is a list of the most common ones. It is a good exercise to deliberately make each of the above sounds compared to the 'ah' to be able to tell the difference. For each sound, do not accentuate the difference. Try to make each of the above sounds as close to the 'ah' sound as you can so that you can learn to hear the difference.

One little trick is to drag out the wrong sounds above on your exhale because that helps you to begin to really hear the difference. The most common, even if relatively minor, error is to use 'ha' rather than 'ah'. Think of it this way: you are not laughing, you are relaxing. So it is not 'ha' as in a laugh but 'ah' as in a sigh.

Make sure that you do not drag out the sound. I have tried to illustrate these different sounds on the accompanying sound track for this book (or CD if the book is commercially published).

The 'ah' sound is not so much started and stopped as it is just inserted into the stream of air at the beginning of the exhale. For a time as you learn to do this work it might be a good idea to get a cheap tape recorder and record your breathing and the sound. See if perhaps you start with an 'ah' but then change as you go along to some other sound. It might be that you are starting the exhale and then sometime after you start exhaling you insert the sound. That is, you are not starting the exhale with a sound but are rather stopping the exhale, then adding a sound as you continue the exhale.

So what's the big deal? Why do I make so much out of one sound or another? Well, some things are seemingly small things but they make a big difference in the effectiveness of the work while other things (really, errors) are not so important. It is not a major error if you say 'ha' instead of 'ah', but it is a major error to add an articulation or a guttural and say 'ga' or 'ugh' or to drag out the sound. It is really not hard to get the sound right and once you get used to it, it becomes automatic and you don't have to think about it any more; but it does meaningfully impact the work if you don't learn the right sound. Just take the time when you start the work to learn the right way to do it.

Pauses In Breathing

There is another common breath issue that I want to mention here. Most people when they start these exercises breathe as a two-step process. They inhale, pause, then exhale, pause, then inhale. They think of a breath as an inhale followed by an exhale. Properly it is one continuous operation. The inhale gives rise to the exhale which gives rise to the inhale. I will return to this later when I discuss rhythmic breathing, I just wanted to mention it here so that you are alerted from the start.

Learning to breathe as one continuous process rather than a two step process — (1) inhale, (2) exhale — is not that easy. Treat this as a goal not as a mandate. It takes some people many years to learn the one process breath. Just to make sure I am not misunderstood, the first issues are things like the 'ah' sound and the belly-chest sequence rather than the more advanced issue of the continuous breath.