Taking a look at breathing patterns
The breath
The diaphragm is a skeletal muscle. When exhalation occurs the ribs internally rotate, so the obliques and TVA are turning on to pull the ribcage down. This is known has horizontal breathing but unfortunately the majority of people are doing something called shallow vertical breathing.
Shallow vertical breathing patterns in a nutshell means we now start to use upper traps, scalenes,neck, anterior shoulder and pecs to pull the rib cage up. Now the ribs remained flared which means the diaphragm never really relaxes. That being said, we probably aren’t ever fully exhaling because we physically can’t. If we never let the diaphragm relax and bring the rib cage down than the diaphragm isn’t going to function. This will cause jacked up traps, limited neck mobility and tight pecs because of thousands of bad breaths a day. Sound familiar?
Dysfunction
Breathing happens to be one of the most dysfunctional movement patterns that every human has. Breathing should be one of our most fundamental movement patterns. So sometimes when we see dysfunctions in movement patterns this can be due to the way we are breathing. We were built to be functional and shouldn’t have built up tension. Now tension build up can be from a few different things but more often than not it’s due to a dysfunction in a movement you perform constantly.
If you’re someone who stretches all the time because you have tension but it only gives you temporary relief to keep coming back, you’ll want to check out your movement patterns. Figure out what’s overworking, what aren’t you working, what’s inhibited, what’s over active and then correct the movement pattern and see if that fixes the issue.
Is breathing apart of your autonomic nervous system?
Yes and no. It is part of your autonomic nervous system meaning you don’t have to think about it (involuntary actions occurring) but it is the only thing within the autonomic nervous system we do have control over. The fact that we have the ability to control it and reset it shows the importance of why we can have control over it. For instance you couldn’t just change your heart beat without doing something. If you wanted to change it you’d have to change the key thing which is your breathing. We also can’t control our digestion unless we use our breath to go into a parasympathetic state then we are actually initiating better digestion since that’s the rest and recovery state.
People think breathing and respiration are synonymous but breathing is the movement pattern and respiration is something that happens physiologically because of that. The movement pattern of breathing relies on the contraction and relaxation of your diaphragm. The diaphragm attaches to your ribs and to your lumbar spine. Just like any other muscle it acts on bone. In order for the diaphragm to contract, the ribs need to externally rotate. The diaphragm needs to flatten out and that’s because the ribs pull out when you inhale. When trying to relax the diaphragm it needs the space to dome which means the ribs need to internally rotate. There is no more controllable movement pattern you do than breathing on a daily basis.
Fixing the issue
So we are born breathing correctly but how do we develop bad mechanics? It could be from multiple things but most common cause is chronic stress. Our stress response elicits a short and fast breathing pattern because it’s telling us to be on high alert. People who tend to not breathe well are also high strung.
So how do we address the problem at hand?
We start by mobilizing the ribs. Generally the ribcage is lifted/pushed forward, T-spine is flat, and tension is now being put on the low back. Leaving our diaphragm semi contracted, stuck in extension and putting the hips into an anterior tilt.
So we start by truly exhaling all your air, thinking about driving your ribs in toward each other,back, and down.Then on the inhale the ribs should naturally be moving out. Once you learn how to get it to properly function, to get it to stick takes around 10-14 days. But you can immediately get it to change within 5 breaths.
If you have a breathing problem that is causing pain in your anterior shoulder, your pec,your neck it’s going to impact the mobility of your shoulder. Your shoulder is the most narrow shallow joint in your body. If there is tension there it’s because of dysfunction. You can fix this by going into a glute bridge and raise your hips no more than 3-4 inches off the ground, posterior tilting the pelvis and then focusing on exhaling the ribs in,back,and down you’ll now be lining up your diaphragm and your pelvic floor to work in sync. So when you inhale pelvic floor is off and when you exhale diaphragm relaxes and pelvic floor turns on.
