In learning to breathe it is well to think of the lungs as empty sacks…

In learning to breathe it is well to think of the lungs as empty sacks, into which the air is dropping like a weight, so that you think first of filling the bottom of your lungs, then the middle part, and so on until no more air can be inhaled…”

Luisa Tetrazzini, one of the great coloratura sopranos of the late 19th and early 20th century