What is Diaphragmatic breathing?

In my last blog I wrote about box breathing and guided you through a box breathing exercise. If you don't know what that is, or if you're looking for a breathing exercise to do alongside me, go ahead and check out post HERE.

In this blog post I’ll go over breathing technique and how it can help reduce pain. A lot of times when people walk into my studio it’s because they were referred to Pilates to help reduce their pain. Sometimes it’s a sports induced injury, often times the pain flared up on it’s own. An achey shoulder or neck that bothers them while typing on the computer or a nagging lower back pain when sitting for long periods of time. You get the idea.

When they start their introductory session and I watch them move I notice that 9/10 times their breathing technique could be improved. The lungs are able to not only expand downwards into the diaphragm and belly but also sideways into the ribs and backwards. This is why commonly known as diaphragmatic breathing or 3D breathing. 

When we can take more air into our lungs it also means that we are getting more oxygen to your blood and more oxygenated blood to our body, muscles and brain. All great things for you, even if you're not a big exerciser. 

How Can Breathing Reduce Pain?

So let's dive a little bit deeper into this breathing technique and how it can help reduce pain and tension in the body. Some things I like to think about are how the ribs, chest, belly, and diaphragm should be working to help us breathe more efficiently. If we are breathing through just our chest or just our belly what this is doing is limiting some of the movement our body is capable of. Think, if you don’t use it you lose it, and less movement means the body’s range of motion is going to get shorter over time and not allow our body to move in a pain prevention or an injury prevention level.

I’ve noticed in clients that have shoulder tightness that since they’re typically not maximizing the way that their back and sides work when breathing they tend to be “sticky” or less mobile in those areas. The lungs don’t get to stretch out into those spaces to change the shape through the thoracic spine/trunk. This could then affect the muscle, tissue and fascia that lives around that area. It doesn’t get to stretch with each inhale and over time it can become tight, restricted and limit movement for other day to day activities. So think of big muscles like your lats and even small muscles that surround the shoulder blades are muscles that lay over the ribs in this trunk region that could get “sticky” which leads to an altered movement pattern. An altered movement pattern over time that is in opposition of how our body was meant to move an function leads to pain.

Over time when you focus on lateral breathing it’s going to help to move your fascia, move your tissue and create more mobility into the wide and back edges of our ribs. That mobility is going to transfer up the kinetic chain of the body helping to increase shoulder mobility and down the kinetic chain to help your hips and pelvis.

Participation Time

The first thing I want you to do is notice how you are breathing. Take one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly to take big inhale.

What happened?  Did you notice that your chest rose? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. What about your belly? Did your chest and your belly rise together? Was it equal or did one rise more than the other? Ideally, we want both to rise together somewhat equally. Both should move, not just one. 

Most of the clients that I work with that have shoulder pain are chest breathers. This means that their ribs will pop forward as their lungs are trying to expand. There isn't much change of shape happening in their belly. The clients that I work with that have hip or back pain are belly breathers and I see their belly only go forward when they take air in. 

Now I said diaphragmatic breathing was 3D breathing. So what about the other planes? Take your hands on your ribs on the side of your body and take a big inhale and then exhale.

Did anything move? Hopefully, your hands moved outwards into the cups of your hands as you took a breath in and then came back towards one another as you took an exhale. If you found that there was barely any movement through the side ribcage here are a couple ways to practice taking air into your sides.

Lay down on your back to use the floor as a little bit of tactile reinforcement. When you are on the floor, you could have your knees bent or you can prop your legs on something so they could be resting at an elevated position. You’ll want to relax through the pelvis and allow your lower back to have it’s natural curvature.

There will be a little bit of space underneath the lumbar spine. I want you to notice how much space is there and also what's going on with your ribs here. For most people that are chest breathers, when you inhale there's a little bit of a tilting through this middle back area where the lowest rib cage is and you'll see this area flare up towards towards the sky, creating more of what I like to call a mouse house underneath this lower back. See if you can feel that the tailbone is resting into the ground, your chest bone is resting into the ground and if you can allow the bottom most rib to also settle into the ground. 

Here we’ll take the two hand positions we did earlier. One hand to your chest & one hand to your belly-take a big inhale and then exhale.

Notice what happened. Do it again.

Then I want you to take your hands onto your ribs. Take a couple deep breaths here as well. You should feel like your ribs expand into the cup of your hands as well as into the heels of your hands. 

My Experience

I am someone that has experienced shoulder and neck pain from my rugby playing days and using the floor is one of my favorite places to practice 3D breathing. I can feel that the floor is giving me feedback about my breathing. I can feel my lower ribs heavier into the ground and it's almost like I feel a widening of pressure through my middle and lower back as well, which is the backwards direction of the 3D breathing. As I exhale, I feel like my ribs connect in towards one another. After just a handful of breaths I feel longer in my middle and lower back and that my tailbone/sacrum feels more open. 

Take a moment right now and try it out for yourself. Tell me in the comments below whether you can feel yourself grow longer, because I'm 99% sure that you will. Try it out everyday for a full week and see if you feel some of the tightness in your chest, in your back or even tightness in your hips improve. It's wild. 

Check the video below for an audio & real time visual of the concepts in this article. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking the red play button in the corner so you can continue to learn more.