Breathing is something that most people will not give much thought to.. but why is that? Maybe this is because breathing seems like it should solely be a background process of your body. After all, you do not have to choose to take each breath. If you were to try and hold your breath right now – whether for five seconds, ten seconds, a full minute, or even longer – you will eventually involuntarily breathe.

As much as we may not have to make a conscious effort to take each breath, we can indeed improve how we breathe. Here I will show you how to do exactly that.

 

 

 

Different activities (as well as your mood) will impact how effective / efficient your breathing is. Think about how your oxygen intake changes as you are at rest (sleeping) versus performing an intense activity (like a 100-meter dash); or hyperventilating because you are upset versus when you are simply stressed out and your posture is poor.

I will get to how you can change your breathing to improve your overall health shortly, but first we need to explore why and how we breathe. If you feel like you already understand this, then you can skip down to it by clicking here.

 

Why We Breathe

It should go without saying that you need oxygen to survive. However, there are indeed other benefits that proper breathing has on your body. When breathing properly this will promote relaxation by decreasing the effects of the sympathetic nervous system. As cheesy as it may seem, this is like your own super power that you have yet to tap in to.

You can use proper breathing to get both short- and long-term benefits:

— decrease or diminish pain

— reduce muscle tension

— minimize fatigue

— alleviate stress & anxiety

— ease or manage associated physical impairments / medical conditions

→ i.e. high blood pressure, tension-type headaches, and respiratory distress

In regards to massage therapy, these benefits can be summed up as: your muscles relax with exhalation but tighten when your breath is being held. This means that a clever therapist (like myself) can use their clients conscious exhalation to reduce their perception of uncomfortable techniques, as well as increase the effectiveness of the work being done.

This is easiest to experience for yourself when getting deep work during the treatment, and a particular area is giving you pain with that deeper work. You can try to visualize that painful area as you breathe in (effectively breathing “into” those tissues), and then visualize pain dissipating from that same area as you exhale. If you think that sounds pretty unscientific, you are not wrong.. I am just simplifying what happens.

This just goes back to what I mentioned earlier about relaxing the sympathetic nervous system. Full or partial-body relaxation is the ultimate goal with proper and focused breathing.

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There are a few key indicators to look for if you are trying to tell when you or someone else is relaxed or not:

1. rhythmic and relaxed breathing & heart rate

2. even and steady blood pressure

3. smaller pupils or eyes closed with a flat or absent facial expression

4. decreased overall muscle tension with little to no body movement

5. jaw and hands relaxed (hands with palms open)

6. not easily distracted

7. cooler skin temperature (likely from a combination of 1 & 2)

 

How We Breathe

Most people breathe in a way that is quite shallow and inefficient. Ultimately this means that those same people are actually only using a portion of their lung capacity. Shallow breathing generally refers to chest-only breathing, while deep breathing (also known as diaphragmatic breathing) will expand your abdomen as well.

Please understand that just because your lungs are in your chest, this does not mean that your chest should be the only thing moving when you breathe. The reasoning for this is pretty simple: your lungs provide oxygen to your body, yes.. but lungs are not muscles and they cannot act without first recruiting help from their surroundings. Therefore your lungs function with help from other parts and processes of your upper body; this is a necessity.

Allow me to elaborate in a simple way…

Image source: http://www.healthhype.com

The above image depicts the respiratory system, however it does not show everything that helps with respiration. What it does do is highlight the diaphragm – which is what we will focus on now.

Your diaphragm serves a couple of purposes, but the most important is that it is the primary muscle used for inhalation. Again, there are many other roles but in an effort to keep things simple I will just say that it also serves to separate the upper and lower portion of your thorax / trunk.

Your diaphragm is a wide dome-shaped muscle, although from a frontal view it looks almost nonexistent. To add a bit more context to the above image, note that the diaphragm is running along with the bottom end of your ribs.

Here is a helpful animation to show that last point, as well as how the diaphragm moves and affects the rib cage:

Image source: https://giphy.com/gifs/movement-5ZTxcSvSvfQju

A pretty basic summary of how your diaphragm functions is that it creates pressure differences above and below it with each movement. As you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and the dome drops downward. When dropping, it will push the rest of your diaphragm outwards against your rib cage. The above animation is a great example of this, and shows that the dome shape turns out to be extremely helpful for this process.

When your diaphragm facilitates the above movements, it will create a suctioning force in the thoracic cavity above it. This suctioning works a little bit like a vacuum and allows your lungs to bring air in to them. Air has two options for entry points: via your nose or mouth.

Your diaphragm will also compress the abdominal cavity, which in-turn will increase the pressure within the abdominal cavity. This pressure will actually help when exhaling, because it will reverse all of what was explained above. This mechanical cycle then continues over and over again.

All of this is not to say that the lungs themselves do not have processes within that greatly aid with respiration – they definitely do. But for the purposes of this post, they are not necessary to know.

Bonus fact: your diaphragm is very active with laughter and singing as well.

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There are indeed other muscles outside of your diaphragm that impact your breathing too. Little muscles between your ribs (known as your intercostals) will help lift up each individual rib. Think about how grabbing on to a handle can lift up a bucket.

Muscles in your low back that attach onto your floating ribs (like your quadratus lumborum) help to stabilize your diaphragm and low back region as the above and below points are happening.

Muscles in your neck that attach on to your clavicle, as well as your first couple of ribs, will also help to lift your rib cage upwards and slightly outward; further expanding your thoracic cavity and easing pressure on your lungs (allowing them to take in more).

 

How to Improve Your Breathing

It may surprise you that I actually already gave you the answer to this earlier. Simply put, this is done by utilizing deep / diaphragmatic breathing as opposed to shallow / chest-only breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing is the most efficient way to bring oxygen in to your body, and expel carbon dioxide from it.

To further hammer home how important the diaphragm is and how it functions, I would like you to think about a ‘bellow’. A bellow is a bit of an old-school pump that pushes air out of a nozzle. Generally it is used to direct oxygen towards a fire.

Image source: https://dynamicbalance.com/

To apply this animation to what we established with the information found earlier:

— you can think of the handles as your rib cage;

— the bellow’s fanned compartment as your lungs;

— and if there were hands grabbing the handles, then those would be the diaphragm.

The purposes of further explaining the diaphragm’s function is to show you that your diaphragm is actually made up of skeletal muscle. That is to say that you have full control over how effectively that muscle works; as well as how much air you take in (up to a maximum capacity), and how quickly / ‘controlled’ that you exhale.

This respiration process can happen passively in the background of your body, but you can manually take over whenever you would like. As noted earlier with all the benefits of proper breathing, this is a huge positive that most people remain unaware of unless they are attempting to promote relaxation within their body towards a specific end goal or purpose (i.e. yoga, meditation, lowering heart rate after a 100-meter dash, etc).

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HOW TO CORRECT YOUR BREATHING **:

* This will be easiest to learn if you try these steps only when laying down flat on your back.

* In a slow, deliberate, and controlled manner always breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth for best results. Try for yourself right now and notice the differences when you are only breathing through your mouth, versus only your nose, and then also try various combinations of the two.

Inhaling through your nose will allow more time to warm and filter the air before it reaches your lungs. I honestly do not know (and have yet to see) any scientific reason that you should exhale through your mouth. I know that it feels better to me personally, but you can be your own judge on the matter.

 

[1] Place your hands on your abdomen. You are going to inhale in such a way as to try and move / lift your hands. Notice that you naturally engage your diaphragm more as you are consciously using your breath for the movement of your hands. This should be done with as little movement as possible from your rib cage.

If you are having difficulty with this step you can also try to visualize a balloon being within your stomach. One that is being inflated with your inhalation. Try to be patient, but if you are anxious at all feel free to move on to the next step.

[2] Place your hands on the outside of your rib cage (one hand on either side). Like before, you are going to inhale in such a way as to try and move your hands (only this time they will be pushed outwards). You can apply very minimal resistance with your hands if you find it helpful. You should notice your abdomen still engaging even though your hand is no longer there to focus on.

[3] Place something fairly light (think: chocolate bar) just below that notch between your clavicles / collar bones at the top of your rib cage. As you inhale, try to be breathing “into” the area just below your object. You will notice the object move / lift slightly.

Each of these steps is to bring awareness to the depths that your breath can go. All three areas are always engaged with every breathe, but improper and inefficient respiration will focus primarily on the third. This is actually most notable when you are sitting upright. Feel free to now sit up and breathe as normal as you can. With the awareness that you should have after those three simple steps, you will notice exactly what I am talking about.

 

Proper exhalation should be done by first relaxing your diaphragm, and then your intercostals (if you skipped down to this “how to”, those are just between your ribs); and finally your neck muscles. Regardless of if you are now seated or reading this on a phone / tablet and are still laying down. Try steps 1 – 3 again, but with each exhale do as was just noted.

I also encourage you to keep your shoulders “down”. I guarantee that the majority of you reading this were tensing your shoulders, even if only a little.
If you did skip down here to simply get to the point of this post, I strongly suggest going back and reading the rest of it now. Perhaps you will have a better appreciation for it. There is a portion within the “Why…” that relates to massage – a part that you may find particularly helpful with future treatments. There is a reason why we (therapists and practitioners) are always telling you to breathe!