Why you need to breath better to feel better.
By Women’s Health Accredited Exercise Physiologist Georgia Ferguson
Have you ever thought about how you breathe in your daily life?
It might be interesting to know that 9/10 people have poor breathing habits. Poor breathing can cause brain fog, excessive tension throughout our whole body as well as can increase overall anxiety levels. So, drawing more awareness to our natural/subconscious breathing is really important!
Our main breathing muscle is the diaphragm, a dome shaped muscle that lives under our rib cage. We also have intercostal muscles which connect each of our individual ribs together. These muscles are very important as they assist our ribs to expand with our breath and then contract and release.
To explain the anatomy of our breathing cycle can sometimes help people visualise how to breathe more effectively.
1. Inhalation
As the body inhales air, our rib cage expands at the same time that our intercostal muscles (muscles between each rib) are stretching and contracting. When we inhale, due to the lungs filling with air our diaphragm contracts and lowers down towards the pelvis.
2. Exhalation
With an exhale breath, our rib cage returns to the original size (gets smaller) as our intercostals relax and shorten. Our diaphragm relaxes and moves upwards with our exhalation.
*Analogy*
Think about your ribs and diaphragm as being a vertical accordion. As we inhale, the accordion stretches and expands down towards your pelvis, in preparation to shorten and squeeze together for our exhale breath (when the accordion makes its beautiful loud sound).
“It might be interesting to know that 9/10 people have poor breathing habits. Poor breathing can cause brain fog, excessive tension throughout our whole body as well as can increase overall anxiety levels. So, drawing more awareness to our natural/subconscious breathing is really important!”
30 % of your breath capacity is influenced by your posture - if you experience persistent neck/upper trap tension that doesn’t seem to be helped with massage and other exercises, it might be time to think about how you’re breathing!
We want you to breath better, to feel better. Get in touch today to get started with one of our Accredited Exercise Physiologists.
This rounded posture seen on the left of this picture has unfortunately become more common in our society with overuse of devices as well as high prevalence of office/desk-based workers. This type of posture means that your lungs are actually compressed and therefore you cannot expand your lungs, rib cage and diaphragm to the same potential. This results in shorter, faster breaths which can elevate your body’s overall stress levels. When our diaphragm is compressed, the body compensates to try and get more air into our bodies by relying on our accessory breathing muscles to assist our diaphragm.
Accessory breathing muscles are our sternocleidomastoid (SCM), our pec muscles as well as our scalene muscles (in our neck). Breathing this way leads to excessive neck tension, particularly through the front of the neck. So if you experience persistent neck/upper trap tension that doesn’t seem to be helped with massage and other exercises, it might be time to think about how you’re breathing!