How are you breathing?

Did you know that we breathe 25,000 times each day? Every inhale is a contraction of muscles, followed by the relaxation for the exhale.  Imagine doing 25,000 pushups or squats every day. That’s a lot of repetitions! The main muscle we use to breathe is the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a large muscle, when it contracts along with other smaller muscles in between our ribs they open up our entire abdominal and chest cavity so our lungs can fill up with air. It’s very similar to a chimney bellow. When this is working properly we get a full deep breath.

Benefits of Proper Breathing
Simply put, breathing provides us our primary nutrient; oxygen.  Yes that's right, oxygen is our most important nutrient; before fats, carbohydrates, proteins and even water.   Proper breathing effectively brings fresh oxygen to our blood and helps remove unwanted toxins out of our body. Breathing is also one of the best tools we have to manage stress. A few minutes of deep breathing can bring us out of a stressed state into relaxation.  Breathing is also used as tool in many meditation practices, yoga and  for effective exercise.

But when we're not breathing using our diaphragm, our breath tends to be shallow using smaller muscles in the neck and shoulders.  This makes every one of the 25,000 breaths we take each day less efficient, resulting in less oxygen, more toxins,  increased stress and less effective exercise.    

So how are you breathing?
 

Use this simple technique below to help train yourself to breathe using the diaphragm.  

1. The first 2/3rds of your breath should be into your belly
2. The second 1/3rd of your breath should be into your chest (without engaging the neck and shoulder muscles)
3. The exhale is a relaxation of all the muscles

Watch the video below to see what it looks like when breathing with your diaphragm.