kevin,
if you really had forgotten how to breath, well, you know what would happen...
instead of distracting yourself, which is like taking your hands off the steering wheel as you head for the edge of the cliff, you need to decide what you are going to do with your breathing and do it.
if you haven't found the 'shangri-la' of breathing yet, in the meantime, why not try that which you do best and most easily while you waiting for that 'pot of gold' to magically appear?
what i'm suggesting is to use the breathing you use when you talk (ala carlo bergonzi and piero cappuccilli). as jerome hines describes it in 'the four voices of man', breathing as you do when you speak means starting phonation on residual air. when the phrase is over, the inhalation is executed by a relaxation response. this is the approach to breathing used in Qi Gong which is practiced in many techniques of martial arts, particularly the more passive ones (like tai chi and probably aikido). relaxed muscles move faster than tense muscles and what feels like a small motion will probably draw in more air than you get when you inhale 'on purpose'.
as you have been 'trying too hard', try the above as an experiment, just to see what happens. you might want to try being lazy, for a change (it's got me this far). something else you can try is to take a vocalize, like a five note scale pattern, and repeat it over and over counting how many you can do. repeat the same but, breath out first just to see how much you can do with little air. of course, you won't be able to do as many breathing out first but, you'll probably find that you can sing longer than you expected with little air. you'll probably find that you can sing longer, with little air, than most phrases you would ever sing. if you find this to be true, you'll then have to ask yourself 'why do i need to make such a production out of breathing?'
mike
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