Take a deep breath.
Seems simple right. I mean, you have been doing this action automatically without much thought most of your life?
Well, you might be surprised to know that it’s probable that are you aren’t breathing correctly at this very moment.
Let’s do a quick test. Lightly place one hand on your abdomen and the other hand on your chest. Take a normal breath. (I said normal-no cheating) What moves first your chest or your abdomen?
Did you know that your abdomen should move first? (I sure didn’t.) If your answer is your chest moved first, you aren’t alone.
Let’s talk about why it matters.
When we use our chest muscles as our primary muscles for breathing and become predominantly chest breathers we overuse our neck and shoulder muscles which causes:
- Neck Pain
- Shoulder Pain and Tendinitis
- Slow to resolve whiplash
- Slow to resolve frozen shoulder
- Tinnitus
- Thoracic outlet syndrome.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? In fact, (just guessing here) I bet these are some of issues I treat during your RAPID-NFR or Therapeutic massage treatments right?
As Paul Ingram said ”People mostly aren’t interested in breathing better-they are interested in fixing pain….”
Okay so now we know chest breathing can cause a cycle of pain and tension in your neck and shoulders, but did you know that it also causes some pyscho-emotional effects. Basically since chest breathing is inefficient, it activates our sympathetic nervous system and can cause:
- Confusion/Feeling Scattered
- Ill Coordinated
- Anxiety
- Overwhelmed easily
- Trouble Sleeping
- Hyperactivity/Wired but Tired Feeling
- Overuse of adrenals resulting in depression and illness.
Have I got your attention folks? The good news is that you can change your pain cycle, increase relaxation by stimulating the vagus nerve, optimize O2 and CO2 exhange in the lungs, increase distribution of blood to the extremities (no more cold feet!), reduce muscle tension(including headaches) and reduce blood pressure by learning how to breath diaphragmatically. Restoring proper breathing also helps with GERD, acid reflux and other gastrointestinal issues because the movement of the diaphragm massages the abdominal organs helping digestive and bowel function.
“You know when you are unraveling something and occasionally you unravel one knot and almost all the other knots undo? The diaphragm is like that, it is a kingpin in the body that has a huge trickle down effect across the neurological systems.” Jocelyn Oliver.
Breathing Retraining. It takes 300 bad movements to create a movement pattern-3000 to undo it so breathing retraining is important.
Exercise 1: Placing the hands.
Place one hand over your chest and one hand over your abdomen.
- Take a slow breath in. Try to bring it deep down into your abdomen, feel your abdomen moving outward. Visualize a balloon filling up in your stomach. Feel your breath then move your ribs laterally and finally your chest moves slightly up and forward.
- Exhale by relaxing your diaphragm letting your stomach muscles relax and then let your ribs drop down and finally your upper chest relax.
Exercise 2:Box Breathing
Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, out for 4 seconds and hold for 4 seconds.
Exercise 3: Practice “Hu Breath”(sounds like a monkey)
This is a chaotic breathing pattern with no breaths the same to break up fixations in the diaphragm. HU HU HAHA HEEHEE
Exercise 4: Weight breathing
Hold a weight (books or heavy pillow) on the tummy (right above the pubic bone) to feel the belly rise and fall.
Repeat steps 1& 2 from above while keeping the neck and shoulders loose and relaxed.
Happy Breathing!