The importance of proper breathing for overall health

Have you ever asked yourself if you're breathing properly?

I know. It sounds like a strange question. We breathe in, we breathe out. There isn't much to it, right?

Well, sadly most of us adults don't get as much oxygen as we could because we've forgotten how to breathe properly. We have moved from the beneficial "belly breathing", which we did naturally as babies, to the less satisfying "chest breathing". As a result, we're only using a small part of our lungs.

How did we move away from belly breathing?

For most of us, as we turned into teenagers and young adults, we got into the habit of "sucking in" our stomachs to appear slimmer and we started wearing constrictive clothing (especially women who often wear tight pants and, even worse, Spanx). In addition, stressful situations caused our breathing to speed up, become very shallow, and move it into the chest area only.

The shallower chest breathing provides our bodies with enough oxygen to survive. But belly breathing might allow our bodies to not just survive but thrive (including our brains, which use 20% of our bodies' oxygen supplies). Higher oxygen levels are shown to improve our mental clarity, boost our immune system, and increase our energy levels.

The easiest way to get more oxygen into our lungs (and thereby into our blood) is to develop a daily 5-10 minute practice of diaphragmatic breathing ("belly breathing"). This is great practice for everyone. It is especially important if you suffer from any lung-related health issues, such as asthma, COPD, or long-term effects of Covid.

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Breathing 101: How do we breathe?

Breathing involves primarily your lungs and the diaphragm, which is a large dome-shaped muscle at the base of your lungs. The diaphragm helps move air in and out of your lungs. When you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and moves downward. This downward movement creates more space in the chest, allowing your lungs to expand. When you exhale, your diaphragm relaxes and moves back up.

To fully engage the diaphragm and allow it to move down as far as it can, we need to re-learn to activate the diaphragm more, which is referred to as diaphragmatic breathing (or "belly breathing"). By fully engaging the diaphragm, we increase the efficiency of our lungs and therefore the beneficial exchange of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon monoxide.

How does "belly breathing" work?

Belly breathing starts with the belly filling up with air first and then the chest. This allows you to use your full lung capacity. It takes some practice, but it's well worth the effort.

Here is how belly breathing is done:

Try incorporating 5-10 minutes of belly breathing into your daily routine and see if it makes a difference in how you feel.

It will not only provide your lungs with more oxygen, but it will also down-shift your sympathetic nervous system, which controls your breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. Pretty cool, right?

You could do it in between work sessions, while you are waiting for a meeting to start, or at the end of the day when you're slipping into bed.

If you attend my virtual Sunday morning yoga classes, you might have noticed that I start every class with a round of belly breathing while lying on our backs.​ I invite you to join me for Sunday yoga to give it a try. Here is the link to sign up. I'd love to have you.

Best,
Christine

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Wellness & Yoga with Christine

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