Are You Breathing The Right Way?

You do it all the time without even thinking about it. In fact, you’re doing it right now.

Breathing.

It’s such a simple and automatic behavior, but did you know it’s possible to breathe wrong? In fact, many people are not breathing correctly.

In this article, I’ll share the importance of breathing the right way, and how breathing the wrong way can cause stress, muscle tension, and pain.

The Mechanics of Proper Breathing

For air to rush into your lungs, your chest cavity has to expand and create an empty space. Air will instantly be pulled in to fill the space.

The muscle that’s mostly responsible for your breathing is your diaphragm. Your intercostal muscles also help.

You’ve probably heard of the diaphragm before, it’s a thin, dome-shaped muscle that’s stretched across the bottom of your ribcage.

When you inhale and your diaphragm contracts, it flattens out and pulls your ribcage down. That creates space in your chest cavity and air rushes in.

When you exhale your diaphragm relaxes, lifting up and allowing your ribs to squeeze your chest cavity and push air out of your lungs.

Breathing The Right Way - Diaphragmatic Breathing

When you’re breathing the right way using your diaphragm, your abdomen should expand as you breathe in. When you breathe out, your abdomen should shrink as your diaphragm lifts back up into your chest.

This is sometimes called “belly breathing”, because your belly gets bigger as you breathe in and smaller as you breathe out.

If you’re doing this right, your chest shouldn’t move very much as you breathe.

How Can You Breathe “Wrong”?

Many of us have been socialized to hold our stomachs in, which makes it harder to breathe into our bellies. We don’t use our diaphragms enough, instead we take shallow breaths into our chest. Our chest expands and our neck and shoulders move with each breath.

How Does Breathing Wrong Cause Fatigue, Stress, and Pain?

Fatigue

When you don’t use your diaphragm to breathe, you tend to take shallow breaths. Air mostly reaches the upper parts of your chest and doesn’t get all the way down to your lower lungs.

That can affect how much oxygen gets into your bloodstream. If you have less oxygen getting from your blood to your muscles and brain, you’ll probably feel fatigued.

Taking deep, diaphragmatic breaths can make you feel less tired and more energized, and can help your physical performance since oxygen is used in the process that provides fuel to your muscles.  

Pain

Remember from the beginning of this article that air gets pulled into your lungs when your chest cavity expands, creating a space with low pressure in your lungs.

If your diaphragm isn’t pulling down on your ribs to create that space, something else has to do it.

The muscles that expand your ribcage when you’re not breathing with your diaphragm are the ones in your neck and shoulders.

Instead of your diaphragm pulling your ribs down, your neck and shoulder muscles pull your ribs up.

Specifically, it’s the small scalene muscles in your neck, along with your sternocleidomastoid muscles, that create the movement with each breath. In the video above, you can see the sternocleidomastoid muscles in my neck working when I breathe using my chest instead of my diaphragm.

When you're not breathing the right way, those muscles are forced to work overtime.

At rest, the average person takes 12 to 16 breaths per minute. That’s around 800 contractions an hour, which is A LOT of work for muscles that are not built for that job.

Overworking those muscles will often cause shoulder tension, back and neck pain, and headaches.

On the other hand, your diaphragm is perfectly adapted to do that work all day long. Let it do its job!

Stress

Muscle tension and quick, shallow breathing is interpreted by your brain as being in a stressful state. That activates your sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight or flight response.

You feel stressed and anxious, and a range of substances (like cortisol, the stress hormone) are released in your body. Living with your sympathetic nervous system constantly activated can cause a whole host of negative long-term effects.

Along with your sympathetic nervous system, you also have a parasympathetic nervous system, which is known as the “rest and digest” system. It’s important to be able to activate that system, because it can reduce stress and anxiety.

A great way to do that is – you guessed it! – diaphragmatic breathing.

Since the nerve that controls the diaphragm has a direct connection to the vagus nerve (which is a key part of your parasympathetic nervous system), diaphragmatic breathing can activate your relaxation response.

In fact, some studies have found that diaphragmatic breathing can decrease feelings of stress and anxiety, and even lower heart rate and blood pressure.

How To Breathe The Right Way

Diaphragmatic breathing is something I do with my personal training clients as part of their warm up. I also encourage them to practice it as often as possible throughout their day.

To practice diaphragmatic breathing, lie down and put one hand on your stomach, just below your lower ribs, and the other hand on your chest.

Take a slow, deep breath in through your nose and imagine pulling the air all the way down into your belly. You should feel the hand on your stomach rise, while the hand on your chest stays still. Then breathe all the way out, feeling the hand on your stomach fall while your chest continues to remain still.

Make sure your neck and shoulders are relaxed at all times.

Once this feels natural, you can try a more advanced version – 360 degree breathing. Sit in a chair and place your hands on either side of your waist, around your lower ribs.

Breathe deeply with your diaphragm, trying to feel your abdomen expand not just to the front, but also into your sides and back. It will be subtle, you won’t feel your back rise and fall like your belly does, but you should be able to feel your entire midsection expand a little into your hands.

Get in the habit of breathing the right way on a regular basis. I think you’ll find you feel calmer, less stressed, and your posture will even improve!

As always, if you’re interested in my services as a personal trainer, please contact me! I would be happy to help you achieve your health and fitness goals!