Health ~ Is At Your Finger Tips ~ Breathing
Health Is At Your FingerTips is a phrase I came up with in the 1990’s as part of my self care programs. I have decided to bring this back as a blog post and post self care health tips. I am a professional kinesiology practitioner, Touch for Health Instructor, based in Holistic Health and Naturopathy. I have decided to teach through my blog simple everyday techniques that you can add to your fitness and wellness program. A new Tip will come once a week.
Health Tip #1 The Breath of Life ~ Are You Breathing Correctly?
For 14 years I work as a respiratory therapist in several hospitals in California. I gained quite an education and experience from observing and attending those that had difficulty breathing. When I left the profession and changed to holistic health and sports massage, the first thing I noticed was most of the clients I had did not breathe correctly. Why? We all breathe. You are breathing reading this. But are you breathing the way you were born to breathe?
Numerous factors can cause a person not to breathe. Here are a few:
- Stress!
- Disease
- Fashion
Stress tends to change the way we breathe. We go into a Fight/Flight and we breathe only from the upper part of the chest, using our upper back, neck, chest and intercostal muscles. Always in a rush to do, go and get something done. Working long hours, training hard for a race and … did you ever get a stitch in your side while running?
A Disease such as emphysema, asthma or any other disease that restricts breathing can also cause a change in the muscles used to help you breathe.
Fashion is an interesting one because when you hold in your abdominal muscles for a smaller tummy or use a restricting corset to make you look like you have an hour glass figure, you are restricting your natural breath and the muscle that was designed to help you breathe like you were born.
Breathing correctly will give you more energy, stamina, more oxygen to you muscles and can help prevent a stitch in your side and that nauseous feeling of throwing up after a race.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Breathing involves using the diaphragm muscle. It is the muscle you were born with that accomplishes this amazing feat. Watch a baby breathe…. it is all belly breathing. As you inhale, It flattens expanding the chest cavity and increasing lung volume. As you exhale, the chest cavity shrinks like letting go of a balloon full of air, as the diaphragm muscle becomes a parachute like dome enlarging the abdominal cavity. It acts as a pump for cerebral spinal fluid to pulse up the spine with each breath. Feel your spine elongate as you take this deep expanding breath. Breathing diaphragmatically is a gentle massage to the heart and other organs. There are so many benefits to breathing this way. So relaxing! A stress buster to help lower blood pressure and calming you nerves when walking up on stage! A great way to reset yourself after a long day at the office!
Here is how you can learn to diagphramatically breathe:
Find a quiet and comfortable place to sit or lie down. When relaxed, place your hands on your abdomen. Focus on the abdomen.
Inhale through the nose and feel the abdomen push outward as the air rises upward into the chest, rising further up to the shoulder area and rising further as your neck muscles extend. This is a long slow deep breath that is fluid and relaxed.
Exhale passively through your mouth or nose. Then begin again.
Breathing is an exercise that sometimes has to be relearned. It may feel awkward at first, but with practice and concentration, you can retrain your body to remember this muscle and breathe the way Nature intended you to.
This information is from my new updated 26 anniversary edition of SPORTS TOUCH. I have included self care techniques from all three of my other books. Coming Soon!