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LIFESTYLE: Breath Again
Discover the immense power of proper breathing, through Dominique Lonchant

By S.S, Yoga

2007/04/11

BREATHING is something we do unconsciously. Unless we suffer from asthma or some other pulmonary disease or are about to draw our last breath.

But let’s not get so morbid. For a certain group, breathing is the key to how they fare in their vocation. Singers and actors, especially stage actors, need to know how to project their voices. To learn how to do this, they work with vocal coaches.?

However, have you ever heard of someone who teaches breathing? Well, meet Dominique Lonchant (pronounced “lawnshone”). Based in Kuala Lumpur, Lonchant frequently travels to Bangkok and Jakarta to teach breathing techniques. He runs programmes in all these cities.?

How did a 50-year-old Frenchman from the Loire (pronounced “Lu-ar”) Valley (200km south of Paris) end up in our region? What does it take to become a breathing-master??

“I learnt yoga, specifically Pranayama (extension and control of the breath) yoga, 28 years ago in an ashram in Pondicherry, India. But I soon got tired of teaching yoga because I found it boring. And I found that, in most Yoga classes, they ignore the breathing part. I also discovered the immense power of proper breathing and decided to concentrate my lessons on that,” explains Lonchant at his residence.?

After all, he adds, it’s the most vital function of the body. Breathing the right way draws more oxygen into the blood stream and maximises strength and increases the body’s resistance.?

“Breathing helps improve your stamina,” he says. That helps when one is into sports, among other things. One of his past students was fellow Frenchman Michel Platini.?

Platini is not the only illustrious name in Lonchant’s list of students, past and present. Among them are several French singers and actors, including the great French crooner, Charles Aznavour, who is France’s Frank Sinatra.?

This journeyman even became part of the Hollywood set (well, almost) in 2001. His friend Nathalie Delon – the ex-wife of French hearth-throb actor Alain Delon – wanted to produce a DVD of herself as a yoga instructor and needed his help. Soon, she was taking him to the Sundance Film Festival where he met people like Robert Redford and Jim Carey whom he also taught and whom he claims were very happy with his service.?

Dutch supermodel Karen Mulder was also a student and she uttered this line to him, Lonchant claims: “You’re the only man who has managed to get me on my knees.”?

Before your thoughts start running wild, let it be known that breathing exercises are taught while the student is kneeling. This posture, Lonchant explains, is when the lungs have expanded to their maximum capacity.?

Two other celebrities he has brought to their knees are Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley, back when they were still an item. He taught them in London and Thailand. Lonchant admits that Grant was a bit sceptical at first. According to Lonchant, Grant has a voice which allows him to expand his range more.?

After he tired of the Hollywood glitz and glamour, Lonchant headed back to France. Before Hollywood, he was in Brazil for 10 years. He admits to not being business-minded and so took up a two-year stint doing what he does best at a psychiatric hospital. Lonchant says the sessions he had with the patients helped to calmed them.?

He then headed to the Far East, when his nephew got posted to Hong Kong and invited him to come along. He spent four years there and one in China, where he wrote his first book, Pranayama Yoga – The Art of Breathing. His second book was a refinement of the first, and the third concentrated on specific breathing techniques.?

His fourth book, which is in progress, is the same as the previous one except that it is now printed like a deck of playing cards. Lonchant has done many stints in Bangkok (where his students are from the Philharmonic Orchestra there or have an operatic background) and in Chiengmai at a rehabilitation centre for children.?

In Thailand, too, he is involved in teaching therapists working in a spa. In Jakarta, as in KL, he conducts stress relieving sessions for hotel employees. But his big break of sorts here was working in Puteri Gunung Ledang – the Musical. That led him to work on another musical, Broken Bridges, directed by Joe Hasham and produced by Datuk Faridah Merican. That resulted in more work with Faridah and the cast of the play, Ah Steve, staged in Penang. Next he will be working with the cast of a short play by Gavin Yap that is based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. In addition, he worked in the opera, The Magic Flute, staged at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre.?

According to Faridah, Lonchant is a new discovery even for those who have undergone professional training in singing and acting. One is never too experienced to learn, she points out emphatically. “He has helped our cast, especially the newcomers, improve their voice quality through his breathing techniques. He is really good and you can recognise the change almost immediately. If the actor does not use his technique, he will lose out. I believe in it totally,” states Faridah firmly.?

Lonchant is grateful to have worked with people like Faridah, Hasham, Roslan Aziz and Zahim Al-Bakri. Incidentally, you might have caught Lonchant in the current season of Akademi Fantasia, giving the students the benefits of his teaching.?

“At first you could see the students struggling to hold a note or reach a higher range but after my lessons, the change was obvious,” he says.?

Lonchant does not look like the typical Frenchman. On his mother’s side there is Mongolian blood. Apparently, 250 years ago, the French who were at war didn’t have enough men to fight so they brought in slave labour from Africa and the Asiatic region of Europe. And perhaps it’s due to that part of his heritage that Lonchant feels more at home in this region.?

His dream is to open up a bed-andbreakfast in Myanmar that offers breathing therapy and diving.?

Diving? “Well, diving is all about breathing, too, isn’t it? So it makes sense to include it in the package.” So do you think you can, as Toni Braxton sang, Breathe Again, after reading this tale??