What is MDH Breathing Coordination?

MDH Breathing Coordination is a global mindbody approach to breathing and the voice.

It is entirely based on functional anatomy and because of this, its working principles lead to greater respect for our human breathing design (and for our design in general). This, in turn, promotes maximum respiratory efficiency with minimum effort.

What does “MDH” stand for?

M stands for Martin, DH for De Haas.

From 1975 up to her teacher’s death in 2000, Lynn Martin of NYC was an avid student of Carl Stough, an American choral conductor who recognized breathing “coordination” as being a natural human potential. Through the Stough Method, he helped hundreds of students with their breathing, their voices and other performance and health issues. Starting in 1976—parallel to her private sessions with Stough and her close observation of his work—Martin also pursued serious studies in Ideokinesis and functional anatomy that have continued till today. (Ideo means idea, and kinesis movement. So ideokinesis refers to an idea for, or of, movement.)

When Stough passed away, Lynn dared to base her own teaching on the two methods combined: Breathing Coordination as she’d learned it from Stough, together with enrichment from Ideokinesis with its principles based on functional anatomy, imagery for neuromuscular re-education, and its essential and effective insistence on student autonomy.

Robin De Haas—a young Swiss singer, voice teacher and vocal coach—became Martin’s student in 2006. After she trained him according to her understanding and experience, together they created something that Carl Stough had never managed to do: a reproducible training program for practitioners.

While what we teach is based on what Stough taught, our work has gained in depth thanks to the personal contributions of both Martin and De Haas. For this reason, the method needed a new and identifying name: it became Breathing Coordination according to the principles of Martin and De Haas or simply, MDH Breathing Coordination.

karen-sadek.com, 2023

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