Breathing 101- Part 2
I am so excited to share part 2 of a 3 part series on BREATHING!
Decrease stress, improve energy, and alleviate back and neck pain by IMPROVING YOUR BREATH
Part 1 is an introduction to breathing, assessing your starting point and 2 simple things to start practicing your breathing. If you missed that it is here.
Part 2 is learning to interpret the assessment and 4 simple breathing exercises to improve 3D thoracic mobility and breathing.
In part 1 the breath hold test was to determine if you may have a breathing pattern disorder, specifically chronic hyperventilation. Those of us who my chronically hyperventilate are more prone to feeling tight, having pain, being anxious or depressed, having diseases, sleep disturbances, and a low vagal tone (this is fancy way of saying our nervous system favors being in a frantic flight or fight mode).
A positive breath-hold test is if you were unable to hold your breath beyond 30sec. Most hyperventilators have a hard time holding beyond 10-12sec.
First, using a quick body scan the begin status is noted. Where there is tension or pain or lack of awareness. Then the exercises can begin, because remember if we are to make a change, we have to know where we are starting!
The focus of the first two exercises are focused on opening up the lateral (side) body. This is essential to allowing for the rib movement to occur during the inhalation and exhalation as well to decompress the spine.
The third exercise is designed to support mobility and breath into the posterior (back) of the body and restore the forward curve of the thoracic spine. Restoring this curve is important for normal rib motion.
The fourth exercise is designed to follow the breath into restoring the mid-thoracic curve and allow gravity to stretch the front of the chest and neck muscles which will allow normal movement of the upper ribs.
After this exercise end with another quick body scan to see what has changed, focusing on the positive changes in body and mind.
Practice these techniques everyday!
Part 3 will discuss how to put this information in to practice during movement and other exercise! Do you have any questions about that? Be sure to let me know so I can answer them.