Opera singers are teaching long-term Covid-19 patients to breathe again–
“I once was lost, but now I’m found,” came from the chorus of recovering Covid-19 patients…..”
The following written content by Paul Vercammen
Covid-19 shoved Jeff Sweat into a medical coma for three weeks last winter, face down on a ventilator, on death’s trap door.
“I took care of him when he was literally near death,” said Dr. Nida Qadir, a pulmonologist and co-director of the Intensive Care Unit at UCLA Medical Center. “He has no memory of meeting me.”
But now the pair are well acquainted — the lung specialist and the 49-year-old married father with three teenagers — as he sings his way to recovery in a unique therapy program at UCLA.
Sweat and several other patients with serious medical complications caused by the virus attend weekly opera classes via video conference, conducted by members of the Los Angeles Opera and music educator Rondi Charleston.
“When you are intubated, you forget how to drink and breathe,” Sweat said. “It was like breathing was a second language. Singing helps me connect. Breathing to a purpose. It gave me reason to learn how to breathe again.”
“When you are intubated, you forget how to drink and breathe,” Sweat said. “It was like breathing was a second language. Singing helps me connect. Breathing to a purpose. It gave me reason to learn how to breathe again.”
“See if your breath can go a little deeper here,” Sinha told her students.
Sinha told CNN she knows intimately about healing and strengthening the heart and lungs. That’s because she suffered a broken back during an emergency plane landing in 2007 and has debilitating asthma.
“I’m bringing something (opera training) that relaxes the limbic system, bringing breathing therapy and music,” Sinha said, referring to the part of the brain involved in behavioral and emotional responses. “Bringing that to people who are suffering so badly — it’s just the greatest opportunity to be of service.”
Singers use diaphragmatic breathing in training, which strengthens the principal muscle used to breathe, the diaphragm.
“In turn, it helps you take a deeper breath,” Qadir said. “Singing also involves sustained, controlled exhalation. Similar to a modality we teach in pulmonary rehabilitation, called pursed lip breathing.” Read more from C.N.N.
