I cannot help much, just clarify that the reason of feeling dizzy after playing is usually hyperventilation and not "running out of air".

Hyperventilation is a condition where there is too little C02 in blood, not too little oxygen.

You hyper ventilate if you take more than, say, three deep breaths quickly. This is a well known trick used my divers diving on apnea (voluntary suspension off breathing). It is highly recommendable that the diver does not take more than 3 deep breaths, as this suppresses the drive to breath, causing an excessive reduction of oxygen in blood and possibly fainting under water --> a certain death if not detected and helped by other fellow divers.

Wiki:
In medicine, hyperventilation (or hyperpnea) is the state of breathing faster or deeper (hyper) than necessary, and thereby reducing the carbon dioxide concentration of the blood below normal. This causes various symptoms such as numbness or tingling in the hands, feet and lips, lightheadedness, dizziness, headache, chest pain, slurred speech and sometimes fainting

For wind players and particularly for flutist, I suppose it could happen because the player is not managing the air flow correctly (using too much air to get the sound), the instrument is faulty or even some medical condition of the player. For a 14 year player, I would doubt there could be a medical problem involved.

Those more experienced sure could add more details.

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I think it could be interesting to post a few possible medical causes (also from wiki). I suppose only Anemia could eventually be the case for a teenager, but this could easily be discarded with simple and quick blood test:

Causes (medical):
Stress or anxiety ... excessive deep breaths. Hyperventilation also occurs as a consequence of various lung diseases, head injury or stroke (central neurogenic hyperventilation, apneustic respirations, ataxic respiration, Cheyne-Stokes respirations or Biot's respiration), or when the body lacks oxygen (hypoxia), for instance in high altitude or as a result of anaemia. It may also occur as a result of sepsis, and is usually a sign of the beginning of refractory sepsis. Lastly, in the case of metabolic acidosis, the body uses hyperventilation to counter the increased acidity of the blood; this is known as Kussmaul breathing.

wow thank you i will try to manage my breathing more . do you know of anything that would help me do this?

jose you and kippsix both sound very professional lol

Not me, unfortunately, I am at the beginner level and never had the problem.

But I think that managing the air correctly can be learnt from exercises and from experienced teachers.

Probably some members of this Forum could help.

I used to have something like this problem. I have aenemia (sp?) and, no matter how much I increase my iron intake, I have and will probably be aenemic. When I was under a lot of stress a few years ago, I was marching and I collapsed. My director ended up having to pick me up off the street and carry me back to the school. I realized I had collapsed when I woke up in the nurses office and they were about to call the hospital!

Eat something! Check to see what you are eating before you practice. If you skip lunch (like I had) or if you are not eating enough of the proper vegetables or fruits or meats, you could have a dietary problem that leads to your dizzyness. Make sure you are taking the proper vitamins (if you are on any vitamins) and, if you take medicine, prescription or OTC, check the labels. There might be something in there that is leading to this problem, too!
I am just posting based off of what my problem was: lack of nutrition and the vitamins/medicine I was taking. Maybe this helps!

There was a professor who taught me a breathing exercise: (I have to admit I don't really use it, though, so I can't claim this helps very much!) Right before you go to bed at night, when you are laying there, take a "woow" breath. Breath in as deep as you can, trying to keep the air in your "stomach." Don't let your chest expand very much. Keep this air in for a few seconds and then let it out slowly. Do this a few times a night a few times a week and my professor said it would help with air capacity.

What my community band does to warm up sometimes is that all the members of the band start playing a B flat or an A natural when the director starts the stopwatch. The trick is that you can only take one breath at the beginning of the note and you have to drop out when you are out of air. The winner gets a small prize. This is an incentive (sp?) for other members of the band to work on their breathing so they can hold out the longest for the prize. It actually helps my band! I was surprised when, after a few weeks, there were people who held the note out at least 10 seconds longer than before (and there was no cheating!).

Oohh, that game is hard. i did that in begining band..although i think a lot of ppl cheated...anyWAYs! i stink at that game! HAHAHA!..we did something like that in drama, and i thought i'll be able to hold it out the longest since i play flute. i was pretty confident..but there was this girl and she's an amazing athlete. WOW! she held it out Loooong!

I do a similar activity in speech therapy, except we practice on the /s/ sound. Hold it out as long as you can, while still making a good production. It works great for those competitive kids.

First, I would suggest that you do tell your parents you are having a problem. I would recommend a physical just to make sure there is nothing wrong. You should not take any types of medications or vitamins until you have had a check up because you can overdose on vitamins. If something is out of balance and you take the wrong medicines, you can make yourself worse!

There are usually a few things from a playing perspective that can make you dizzy while you are playing. I would recommend you work on your breathing. Here are a few things you can do to help.

Try to inhale a large breath without making a noise, or making as little of a whisper sound as possible. If you hear a shallow sounding eeeee or iiiii sound, you are not taking deep breaths. If you hear any noise at all, it should be more of an oooo sound. Do not lift your shoulders and work to pull in so much air it actually hurts! You should actually feel your abdoman expanding horizontally. Then form your normal embouchure and let the air naturally flow out of your lungs. Continue to push the air out from your diaphram until you actually almost wheeze and your body forces you to draw another breath in. If you are not sure you are using your diaphram you can sing the notes HO HO HO like Santa Clause and you will feel your diaphram bouncing. Make sure you can feel yourself pushing air out from the same place. Try to hold the air as long as you can. Do this about 5 times a day for the first week, then bump it up over several weeks.

I would also recommend working on thinking about your throat while you are playing. It should be open and free. If you pinch the back of your throat off while playing it can make you very dizzy very quickly. I think the best visual reference I can give is for you to think about a golf ball or maybe a jawbreaker candy sitting on your tongue. This should help you keep your throat open and allow the air to flow out.

Lastly, after you have worked on all of those, put what you have learned together with your flute. Try holding those notes out for a long time, and set a goal for yourself to increase the note. Pick a note you are comfortable playing, and not something that is going to make you pass out.

I hope that does help you. If you try it out, please let me know how it worked for you.

THanks i will try to remember these when i practice so i will tyr them out

it is wiers everyone has really good ideas but most of them are complet oppisites how do i tell what ones right ?

Flute girl, your last question is very important. You will meet the dilemma of telling right from wrong, truth from false and similar decisions every moment of your life.

My approach on the way to proceed is:

Think and consider the known options,
Decide and act,
Test for results
-And start all over if it did not work.

You started the thread asking for the reason of feeling dizzy while playing. This triggered a lot of ideas and opinions, I believe all of them were useful, but for you the question probably remains unanswered.

Your problem has an unknown cause and everybody has made their best in trying to help. And I do not see much contradiction in the posts. More than contradiction there a several different roads to explore.

I suggest you read all them again and make a summary of the ideas for yourself. Then see which one could be contradictory with others and see if you can find a way to resolve.

For example, (this is a guide but it is not exhaustive):

1. Be sure you have your parents involved, explain the problem if you have not done it yet and hear what they have say.

2. Have a thorough health check (you will need your parents for medical insurance issues). Check that you have no anaemia, low blood pressure low Glicemia (sugar in blood) or any other problem. Have your heart and lugs checked (that is normal medical routine and nothing to be frightened of).

3. Quit smoking (all kind of it), just in case you do, at least until you know clearly what is going on. (please don't take it badly, it's just a blind but very friendly suggestion).

4. If your health is 100% OK,as it should be at your age, the cause is most probably hyperventilation. But the real question is why you could be hyper ventilating!

It could be your playing technique or perhaps a faulty instrument, or both together.

Your Flute teacher could be able to detect a problem with the flute (that forces you to use too much air). Otherwise, if you can, have it checked by a good technician in your area.

If the flute is proven to be good,

5. Check your playing technique with the various recommendations you have received from the very experienced members of this Forum (I do not include myself in that group).

If you reached this point, going through the previous points in order, you must improve on your technique. There were many possible exercises suggested in this thread; choose those you feel could help more with your problem. You do not know, but nobody better than you to make an educated guess on the best one for your particular case.

7. Be methodic with the exercises you choose. Nothing can be accomplished in a couple of days. Be prepared to practise for weeks if not months to get a substantial improvement.

8. Try to find a method of evaluation of your improvement. For example, play those long notes until you start to feel the symptom. Measure how long it took to reach that point (measure preferably in minutes). Note the value on a personal notebook.

9. Continue exercising for a few weeks (2, 3?) and each week compare the minutes on your book to see if you can now play longer before you feel dizzy.

10. If you do not see any improvement, try another type of exercise and repeat the process of evaluation.

I am sure you will find the solution. It would be nice if you could post here the results or new data on the problem.

I hope this helps to get you out of the understandable confusion we may have caused with too much information...
Sorry for such a long post!

I wish the best of lucks!

Okay, I should have known this by now, considering I am aenemic and have had slight heart murmurs (sp?)... Is it okay for someone like me to be doing breathing excersises? I hate to take anything away from flute_girl's question; I am just asking this in passing...

Celebrian, I cannot answer that, I'm no doctor.

I have just tried to put in order, according to my approach to the eternal question "what should I do if I have these options".

I used most of the opinions given in thread, including my quote from Wikipedia concerning hyperventilation and its relationship with anaemia and other possible physical causes.

Information on Wiki is user provided, that is, it could be wrong and should be taken only as a guide and as a basis for researching further in better sources.

In my opinion, If you have not the symptom (dizziness), you should not worry about the anaemia, as far as flute playing is concerned.

As for heart murmurs, you must consult and follow the indications of your cardiologist. There are many references to this problem in the web, for example this from the American Heart Organization
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4571

Flute playing does not seem particularly strenuous IMO; the flute is one of the lightest instruments (except for the wallet when you buy it) and blowing on it requires a lot of technique but not a big effort.

There is an interesting test you can request your doctor, a 24 hours continuous recording of your heart functioning.

You will wear electrodes on the chest and a small recorder day and night, while you spend one normal day. If you do, try to make it coincide with a performance, the most stressing the better and with your normal practise. Note the time of each activity, as it must be related later to the recorded data

After the 24 hours have elapsed, the specialist evaluates the data gathered and normally the conclusions obtained are sound.

I had it some years ago (I feared night arrhythmia) but I cannot recall the name of this test right now. If I remember I will post its name.

Thanks, but I was just asking the question in general, not directly at you! I would hate to think you were a real doctor and being bombarded with questions from flute players! I have been playing for over 7 years now, so I should know by now what will and won't hurt me on my flute.... Thanks, though. Wikipedia is such a great site. I think I read once that it has less errors than the Encyclopedia Britannica (sp?)...

No problem. The eidea I try to transmit is that medical issues should always be treated by the specialists. We can give our opinions and personal experiences, but that's all.

It would be nice if we had here a real doctor willing to answer our doubts!. I have a few questions awaiting the opportunity.


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