Breathe Well, Move Well

How functional breathing can have a profound effect on feeling and moving well.

With Jenny Ossa, Remedial and Sports Therapist at Bayside Sport & Health Clinic.

We don’t tend to pay much attention to our breathing until it becomes a struggle perhaps due to exertion, overwhelm, stress or anxiety. Any altered state affects the way we breathe.

When the heart rate is elevated, our breath becomes shorter, shallower and more rapid. We open our mouths taking in labored breaths of air, chest heaving.

Upper chest and mouth breathing becomes the norm more often and prolonged it occurs.

This leads to breathing pattern disorders. It affects our sleep, muscle tension and pain, attention span and ability to think clearly.

Now we are relying on upper body muscles to facilitate breathing while our diaphragm and core trunk muscles remain dormant.

To quote Tim Anderson (because I can’t say this any better!)

‘Strength starts with breath. Proper breathing literally strengthens the body from the centre out. …think of the body as an ‘X’ Functional breathing creates a body with a solid centre.’

Why? The diaphragm is the chief spinal stabiliser of the inner core muscles. It engages the pelvic floor and transverse abdominis and multifidi stabilising the spine and pelvis.

‘When the body has a strong centre, the forces it creates and encounters can easily and efficiently travel from one side of the body to the other, through a solid centre resulting in a body that can move with grace, ease and power.’

(ref.: Patrick McKeown,2021 The Breathing Cure - pg165, pub OxyAt; Tim Anderson, yr The becoming Bulletproof Project, pub)

How can we achieve optimal function breathing? Practice the following:

1. Nasal breathing & Tongue positioning

   Place the tongue as shown in the image: middle to back of the tongue at the roof of the mouth, the soft palate.

   
   

   Breathe through the nose. This engages the diaphragm. Practice circular breathing - avoid holding your breath. Take smaller ‘sips’ of air. Allow for a natural reflex or pause at the end of an exhale to initiate the inhale.

2. 

   

   Practice diaphragmatic breathing - Breathe from ‘the bottom up’

   Fill the lungs from the bottom - place your hands on the lower ribcage and apply a gentle pressure, as seen in the picture below. Visualise the air flowing from your nose all the way to the bottom of your lungs and filling up, expanding the lungs.

   
   

   Feel the ribs expanding out against your pressure.

   

   
   

3. Strengthen the Diaphragm

   Use a resistance band and tie it around the lower ribcage. Breathe against the pressure. Increase the resistance as your diaphragm gets stronger.

   
   

   

   
   

   NEW TO BAYSIDE!

   
   

   Bayside will now be stocking the following Therapure products:

   
   

   - my curcumin

   - my pure magnesium

   
   

   Be sure to ask your practitioner or one of our reception staff about this the next time your in!