“To breathe properly is to live properly.” – Robin Sharma
For many people in this day and age, our minds run to what we need to do NEXT and what steps are required to get there. We think of what we have to do and what we have to do after that.
This ongoing snowball of what needs to be done continues and it repeats over and over again, until we realize how much time we’ve committed to these patterns we are ingrained in. Is this a good thing? I’d like to say not so much!
Yet, what are ways we can control this chaos of life? Breathing is the most important thing. Breathing dictates all things in our life and this hardly needs to be stressed. It provides us oxygen, our requirement to live. It literally gives us life, yet if we inhibit how we breathe, everything else around us loses its importance.
Breathing is something that we tend to ignore UNTIL it becomes a problem. If we can’t breathe, then how can we truly LIVE?
Is Breathing That Complicated?
No it isn’t, but there are many ways people learn how to breathe in inefficient patterns. The way we breathe dictates many aspects of our lives, and I’m here to teach you the way we like to teach it in the Progressive Motion Physiotherapy frame of mind (PMPT), but before we do that, we need time to dive into TWO STATES.
Breathing has a direct connection to our REST-AND-DIGEST state, in other words, your parasympathetic state. During this state, it allows our body to rest, repair, lowers our heart rate and generally helps us to feel better just from the simple stance of BREATHING. It’s what helps us relax and unwind at the end of a long day. It allows us to chill and enjoy what’s around us for the moment.
On the contrary, the opposite of the rest-and-digest state is the FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT state, where we are going through a high-stress situation. Think of this system as a way to react to a specific threat. Our heart rate increases, more of our blood flow funnels to our muscles so we have the ability to make quick movements, such as running away.
Let’s think about a saber tooth tiger chasing us… we BETTER be ready to run away or else we’re toast, right? However, at this age, we don’t normally have large animals chasing after us. Instead, events that fill this state are stress such as deadlines, the impending concern of having to complete a project, the constant
strain of being nervous before you go up for a speech, the barrage of returning to your children and you have to show up 100% after a long workday.
As you can tell, these may not have the same effect as an animal running full speed after you, but for prolonged periods, they have a detrimental effect on our bodies.
There’s a reason why so many people enjoy yoga and meditation as a restorative practice; it’s because of the intentional time in this parasympathetic state and to force yourself to simply BREATHE while letting you appreciate the moment.
You’re relaxed and you take time to breathe and wonder. After all,
“Not all who wander are lost…”
– J.R.R Tolkien
How does PMPT Coach Breathing?
In the lens of how PMPT likes to coach breathing, it’s important that we take time to breathe from the huge muscles that were made to function for your breath, your diaphragm. The diaphragm is located right under your rib cage and works similarly to a piston to create and regulate pressure.
This specific intention of breathing through your belly instead of forcing air into your chest works in many ways:
- It decreases the amount of load required by our upper trapezius muscles, scalenes, and levator scapulae during breathing (which they are required to do so as secondary muscles).
- Because these muscles aren’t being used excessively with breath, they begin to relax and you should feel less tension through the upper and mid-back.
- It forces the diaphragm muscle to expand and create tension in order to properly utilize airflow within your belly.
In our line of work, we take time to help you reach this state, but also train the body to maintain the positioning of your breath in line with specific motions. Can you maintain your line of breathing when you’re running two, three, five miles?
Can you maintain this breath when you are lifting a 50 to 100 pound weight? When we begin to fatigue, our breathing patterns change and flow into the path of least resistance. However, if we create a foundation to tap into these breathing patterns, it will be better than if we didn’t know about these patterns before.
The videos in this post are dedicated to helping you in your breathing program. If you take time to work on these drills throughout your day, I promise you will see improvement with the small things in your lives. Please let us know if you have any questions or if you would like to learn more! Hit us on Instagram and don’t be strangers!
Author Bio
Progressive Motion Physiotherapy, a physical therapy motion lab, is the intersection of breathwork and movement to enable body awareness, improve mobility performance and treat the whole body through a holistic approach – breathe, sense and move. Dr. Ro’s passion has always been about getting his clients back to what they love to do. Serving as a physiotherapist is a method in which he feels the most drive to getting this accomplished.
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