We all do it, most people probably even know that they “should breathe deeper”, but thinking you should do something and doing it are two very different things. There are entire books and courses dedicated to the breath, so here I just want to break down some of the basics in the hopes that I can inspire you to breathe better.
Experts suggest that healthy breathing is slow, spacious, nasal breathing. Spacious meaning that belly, chest & ribs expand as you inhale. Slow - ideally 5 breaths per minute at rest, which works out at about 5.5 second inhales and exhales. & through your nose if possible.
Breathing slowly because both slower inhaling and exhaling develops CO2 tolerance and increases blood flow to the brain, while also helping the lungs absorb more oxygen from the air we suck in. We also know that the heart beats faster on an inhale, and slower on an exhale, so extending the exhale tends to help bring us into a more relaxed state
So breathe through the nose if you can, even while exercising, the efficiiency that you lose in the short term while breathing through your nose as you run, you will gain back in the long term.
Organise your body for the breath.
There's an easy experiment to do here - set yourself up by slouching in a chair, shoulders rounded forward, and neck rounded. Now try to take a deep breath.
You probably found it pretty uncomfortable right? Now re-organise yourself into whatever shape you think you’ll be able to take a deeper breath, and try taking a deep breath again. How does it feel? Chances are that was a whole lot easier and felt better? The great upside of this exercise is that by re-organising yourself for better breath you actually just naturally fix your posture to be stronger and healthier, but it’s a much easier cue than “pelvis neutral, spine long, chest broad, shoulders back etc.”.
Just think “how could I re-organise for breath here?” & you can apply that to any position you’re in, whether it’s at a desk, walking, cycling, chores, lifting. Then you can use poor posture or any of this actions as triggers to re-organise & breathe better.
Notice when your holding your breath
You have probably noticed that you hold your breath to do difficult tasks sometimes right? We don’t even think about it, it happens automatically, because a great amount of strength and stability comes from a breath hold, which helps especially with lifting, holding or exerting forces on things. But it doesn’t really help when breath holding becomes a pattern to think through something difficult, or when you have to hold things for longer than you can hold your breath. If your nervous system has to choose between breathing to survive, and holding your baby (human, furry, or otherwise), it’s going to choose the breath!
So if you’ve held your breath, then it will down-regulate your strength to get you to breathe. However if you are able to own the position from the start and continue breathing normally and deeply then you probably have the strength required anyway.
So if you can just try your best to notice when you hold your breath and use that as a trigger to re-organise your body for breath, then I believe you will feel much stronger.
P.s. This breath holding sometimes happens at the silliest of times, like just now when I was slipping into my sandals, or when anything involves balance.
It can be quite hard to access full deep breaths throughout the day, if you haven't done anything yet that forces you to spend some time doing some strong breathing. However if you've already done some strong breathing early on in the day, then deep strong breathing throughout the day will become much more natural for you.
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