Just Breathe
Barring a choking incident, allergic reaction or lung condition, thankfully our body usually takes care of the breathing department all on its own. We don’t have to consciously think about it, as the control centre for resting breathing is located in our brainstem and not up at the level of our awareness. Although this “background breathing” rhythm happens automatically, we can also consciously take control and alter it. We can decide to breathe deeply or more shallow, hold our breath, increase the frequency or the force, etc. We can also do these things without even realizing it! For example, during high power exertion we sometimes hold our breath. During times of stress we may have a slower or faster breathing rate or breathe more shallow. So you see, this simple task is actually a bit more complex than it may appear on the surface.
To draw the air into our lungs, we want to use our primary breathing muscles -the diaphragm (the big flat muscle arcing the bottom of the rib cage), the intercostals (small little muscles between the ribs), and perhaps some abdominal muscles. Ideally we want to fill our lungs with each breath. This means when we breathe in, the thoracic cage area expands in all directions (front, back, sideways, down and maybe a little touch upwards). When we have tight muscles, are stressed, in pain, or have developed poor breathing patterns, we don’t see much expansion at all. In these cases, often people just use muscles in their neck and top couple ribs to pull up a little bit on the rib cage - leading to pretty shallow breathing (not to mention some tight neck muscles). These muscles are secondary breathing muscles and should really only be working hard during high intensity aerobic exercise - to help get that last little bit of expansion out of the top of the lungs. Problems happen when we rely on this strategy for our regular all day breathing pattern - those little muscles just are not designed to be hauling the rib cage up and down all day! To help train yourself out of this pattern, focus on breathing deeply. Lying on your back, place your arms overhead and take some slow deep breaths- in this position we have made those little accessory breathing muscles ineffective - forcing you to get some lower expansion instead.
Sometimes, people have completely reversed their breathing pattern and rather than expanding on the breath in, they expand on the breath out. We call this paradoxical breathing and it most commonly occurs when we are relying on the shallow breathing pattern rather than the deep expansive one. A couple little exercises to train the correct breathing pattern:
To focus on getting deep/lower expansion: Lie on your back, place a small object (like a stuffed animal for more fun), on the lower part of your chest and upper abdomen. As you breathe in, the object should rise, when you breathe out, it should lower.
Getting side expansion: Lie on your side and place your top hand on your lower ribs, take a breath in and try expand the lower ribs into your hand - pushing it up towards the ceiling.
Getting back expansion: Especially when you have a tight spot between your shoulder blades (like most humans who sit at a desk all day do), you may not be getting much expansion in that tight area. Bring your focus to this area and try to get some movement backwards here. You may have someone place their hand on the tight spot to help give you feedback as the weight of their hand gives you something to “push” against.
One of the reasons we tend to hold our breath when lifting something heavy is that we are using the intra-abdominal pressure of the air to help stabilize our core and spine. This is a faulty strategy unfortunately, as if we rely on this air pressure inside us to do our stabilizing, we can overstrain and leave ourselves vulnerable to injury - especially if we need to take another breath during the task! Ideally, we maintain our core stability while breathing in and out. Better oxygen supply and less of our strength tied to just… air! A good rule of thumb to ensure we are not cheating by using air pressure for our stability is to exhale on the more difficult part of the exercise. We also know that if we are talking fairly loudly, we are using our diaphragm and not just shallow breathing. We can leverage this by counting loudly while performing exercises that we tend to hold our breath on. For example during a squat, as we lower down, perhaps count 10-9-8-7… This ensures that you are breathing in and out and not holding your breath on the lowering phase - a common issue. This technique of talking loudly can be applied to pretty well any type of exercise if you need a training tool to help you break the habit of holding your breath.
It might feel funny “training” yourself to breathe properly, but at the end of the day, it is a movement pattern. And just like other movement patterns, it can become dysfunctional for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we just need a little focused practice and retraining to get it functioning top notch again!