How can you tell if you're using your diaphgram correctly?

Place your hand where the top of your rib cages meet. When you breathe you should feel this expand.

Also try laying on the floor with books on your diaphragm (while practicing), it’ll make you more aware of your diaphragm and the books should rise and fall significantly.

xox Sika

I’m a brass player (trombone) but I assume the process is the same.

Most people are instinctive chest breathers, when they take what they think is a big breath they throw their shoulders back and puff up their chest while drawing in their abdomen. Chest breathing doesn’t use all of your lungs. If your abdomen goes out with your ribs so you fill the bottom of your lungs with air as well you should be able to draw more air in. The best way to visualize this is to imagine your lungs as a baloon that expands in all directions.

There’s some weird technique where you breath through a straw and if you’re using your diaphragm right the breath feels warm and if you’re doing it wrong it feels cold. Or maybe it’s the other way around!!! Sorry I can’t help you but I learned this in a French choir and I hardly spoke French at the time, so I never worked out which way it was meant to be. But maybe you could Google ‘diaphragm breathing straw’ or something like that and find out the answer. I’d like to know myself!

sika has the best answer hers is most presice