A good breath doesn’t need to be a deep breath. A good breath just needs to be equal to the activity you are doing. Contrary to what we often hear, this can mean that when you are at rest, a shallower breath may be more appropriate, then a deep breath. For this blog post I’m going to outline a basic breathing practice I give my patients have a dysfunctional breathing pattern, to get them to start building up a good breathing pattern.
For this breathing exercise, the best way to start is lying on your back, with your knees bent. If you cannot lie in this position, then please try this sitting upright, comfortably supported, or in a posture where you are at rest.
Practicing breathing in a resting posture means you are not fighting gravity, and with your knees bent the abdominal muscles are off tension, allowing breathing into the belly to occur more easily.
Once you’re in a comfortable posture, place one hand on the belly over the belly button, and one on the upper chest. For about 10 or so breaths, just pay attention to how you are breathing. Does your chest or your belly rise, if so, which does moves first? How quickly are you breathing? Does it feel like a strain to breath? Are you nose breathing or mouth breathing?
If you notice that you’re mostly breathing into your upper chest, that’s ok, but for this technique we’re going to focus on retraining to breath into the belly at rest. Breathing into the belly uses the diaphragm more, the large flat muscle that separates your organs in your chest from those in your abdomen. This muscle has enormous stamina, and it’s way more efficient to use this muscle to breathe at rest. Also, using your upper chest and the muscles in your neck to breath all the time, can lead to an unnecessary increase in tension in the upper back and neck, which can contribute to chronic neck and upper back pain. For this reason, focus on gently drawing the breath in through the nose so that you feel your belly hand rising up.
Here are a few important details – breathing rate, breathing depth, and inhalation vs exhalation.
Rate – The breathing rate at rest should be slow. Again, you’re doing very little, so no need to breath quickly. The exact rate varies depending on the person, their age, and even between breaths, and you’ll find endless variations of the exact number of breathes per minutes on the internet. For this exercise though, I suggest you aim for around 6 breaths a minute. This means around 5-6 seconds in, with a pause at the top of the inhalation, and 5-6 seconds out, with a pause at the end of exhalation. We’re going for a natural breathing pattern here, and we’re not machines, so these times are a guidelines. Each breath will be slightly different – go with what feels good, rather than trying to stick to the exact count.
Depth – Again, when you are in this posture, you are not using much energy, and so in this posture a good breath is not a deep breath. Try and breath in a quiet way, through the nose, into the belly. You may notice the chest rise, and that’s ok, but try to have this happen after your belly feels full.
Inhalation vs exhalation – Inhalation is an active process; you’re using your muscles to open the chest and suck air in from the atmosphere. If possible, please try to breath in through the nose. Exhalation in this exercise is a passive process; once you reach the top of the inhalation arc, let the breath naturally pause, and then let go of that tension. You should find your rib cage will naturally spring back and push the air back out of your lungs again. Breathing out can be done through the nose or the mouth.
A couple of final notes here. If you have never paid attention to your breathing, and this is the first breathing exercise you do, it will likely feel very strange, possibly wrong to breath in this way. This is a normal response, and not dissimilar to picking up a new exercise. It will likely feel awkward and strange, until you’ve been practising it enough.
Finally, if you feel that you’ve got the hang of this practice at rest, then the progression from here is to try it standing, and then walking around. Enjoy!