Often, in stressful situations, someone with good intentions will prompt us to take a deep breath. When someone tells you to take a deep breath, what do you do? Go ahead… Take a deep breath…
Most of us, when told to take a deep breath, hastily suck in our bellies, taking a short, fast, audible breath, in through the mouth, puffing up the chest, raising your shoulders and using the muscles in the back and upper chest… In other words… the exact opposite of a relaxing breath.
In fact, this type of breathing is an exaggerated version of what the body naturally does when we are feeling stressed or anxious.
Stressed breathing:
- Fast, short breaths
- Oral
- More audible/harsh sounding
- Breathing into the upper chest using the upper back and intercostal muscles
- The breath becomes choppy and uneven
- Alternatively, the breath freezes completely, followed by gasps/sighs
When we are relaxed, our breathing shows the polar opposite behavior – we breathe slowly, using the diaphragm to draw air in through the nose and down toward the belly, in long, smooth, rhythmic breaths. This is the kind of breathing we should aim for when we are told to “take a deep breath”. It may help to think more about taking a slow breath, than a deep one.
Relaxed breathing:
- Long, slow breaths
- Nasal
- Soft, smooth sounds
- Breathing into the belly using the diaphragm
- Regular, even, rhythmic cycles
Bad breath causes injury…
When we don’t use our full breathing capacity on a regular basis, our natural breathing muscles not only become weaker, they become tighter because they are not being stretched through their full range of motion. This forces the body to rely on the smaller, more easily fatigues intercostal and shoulder muscles to breathe, causing tension, back injuries and chronic pain. All of our muscles are connected; when the diaphragm becomes tight, the psoas muscle, which connects the diaphragm to the hips and pelvis, can tighten too, leading to hip and knee problems.
Breathing health is integral to safe posture.
Breathing into the upper chest is an adaptive evolutionary response to threat. It helps the body prepare to hyperventilate for fast movement, or freeze and play dead as the fight-or-flight response kicks in. The hallmarks of stressed breathing can be positive in small doses, making us more alert and giving us a burst of energy. This is great for focusing during problem solving or for boosting our performance when we’re playing sports.
In the evolutionary environment of our ancestors, this state of breathing would have only been active for a few minutes, or, in extreme circumstances, hours, until the threat had passed and their internal physiology returned to rest-and-digest mode.
But in our chronically stressed modern world, where we can perceive abstract things like deadlines, bills and job security as subtle but ever-present threats, we are able to sustain elements of these intense or frozen breathing styles for hours, days or even years. The breathing pattern itself sends signals back up to the brain telling it that we are under threat, causing further anxiety and creating a negative cycle that we are often unaware that we are in!
It’s not just stress that causes this pattern of unhealthy breathing. Sitting for long hours at a desk, driving a car, or watching TV are all unnatural positions for the body to be in for extended periods of time. Slumping your head and shoulders forward and bending your spine pushes your belly down and reduces your body’s natural breathing space, forcing you to breathe higher up in your ribcage.
Breathwork exercises help you to become more aware of your breath in daily life, allowing you to notice bad patterns and replace them with healthy ones.
Exercise – Where do you breathe?
Place one hand on your belly and the other on your heart. Observe a few breaths in your natural breathing pattern. Which moves more? The hand on your belly, or the hand on your heart? Or do only your shoulders move? In the West, by the time most of us are adults we have developed the unhealthy habit of breathing exclusively into our chests.
For this exercise, place the tip of your pencil on a piece of paper like in the image and place it on the starting dot. Next, place the paper on your lap and position the other end of your pencil on your belly, about halfway between your sternum and your belly button. Now breathe out fully.
Now breathe in with the intention of pushing your pencil as far as you can up the page with your inflating belly, drawing a straight line with the movement. If it is moving across the paper even a little bit, you are successfully breathing into your belly.
Repeat in a different colour, this time more slowly. Instead of aiming to force your belly out, intentionally relax your abdominal muscles and pull down your diaphragm… Did the pencil move further?
This blog is a direct feature from the book ‘Draw Breath: The Art of Breathing’, written by Tom Granger. If you would like to purchase the book please follow this link. We would like to thank Tom for letting us feature this extract.
