Do you ever feel this way: you haven't really done much throughout the day, but you're exhausted?
Experiencing sore shoulders, a stiff neck, frequent dizziness, and constant sleepiness...🥱 Despite trying various remedies like massages, stretching, and heat therapy, there seems to be no lasting relief, and the discomfort quickly returns to its original state.
Today, K offers you a new perspective: this discomfort might be due to an improper breathing pattern!
Don't believe it? Keep reading!
"Breathing Isn't Just Through the Nose and Mouth, but Also Involves Various Muscles Throughout the Body."
You might be wondering: I breathe through my nose and mouth, not my shoulders and neck, so how could issues like shoulder and neck tension and fatigue be related to my breathing?
Contrary to popular belief, "breathing" is not an active movement initiated by the lungs; it is achieved through the contraction of muscles. Moreover, it's not just a single muscle that contracts and relaxes, but rather a coordinated effort involving many deep muscles.
To delve deeper, the muscles involved in breathing can be categorized into three groups:
🙋 Exhaling muscles: Inner intercostal muscles, abdominal muscles
🙋 Inhaling muscles: Diaphragm, outer intercostal muscles
🙋 Assisting muscles: Scalene muscles, sternocleidomastoid muscles, pectoral muscles, etc.
On average, each person breathes over 17,000 times a day.
Even if you go to the gym every day and work out diligently, that's only a few dozen minutes. In contrast, "breathing" is a muscle movement that occurs constantly throughout the day, whether you're walking, standing, sitting, or lying down.
With so many muscles involved and the action repeated so frequently, even a slight "error" in the act of breathing can, over time, lead to significant "damage."
If your breathing pattern has not been properly established, or if stress or a bad mood inhibits the function of the core "respiratory muscles," it can lead to compensation by other muscle groups, resulting in inefficient breathing and causing various postural and pain issues.
Thus, "learning to breathe" is genuinely crucial!
"Incorrect Breathing Can Truly Make a Person Increasingly Uncomfortable."
You might be thinking: I know breathing is important, but I'm an adult, and I certainly know how to breathe, right?
Not quite. In fact, many people have breathing issues, but they're just unaware of it:
Statistics show that about 6 to 12% of the population experiences breathing dysfunction issues [1]. Common symptoms include mouth breathing, tension in the neck and shoulders, neck and shoulder pain, difficulty breathing, lower back pain, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, and fatigue [2].
For example, a long-term inefficient breathing pattern can lead to a decrease in thoracic cavity mobility, reduced lung capacity, and limited flexibility in the thoracic spine. This, in turn, can cause poor posture issues such as winged scapula, a posterior tilt of the body, and a protruding belly.
Moreover, poor posture and breathing patterns can influence each other: unconsciously hunching over, slouching, and anterior pelvic tilt in daily life can all inhibit the function of the respiratory muscles, affect the breathing pattern, and create a vicious cycle.
Having read this far, you might be starting to question your own breathing habits. Don't worry! Here are two simple methods to help you self-assess your breathing pattern:
✅ Assessing breathing rate:
Sit still for a moment, and count your breaths for one minute when you're feeling calm.
Under resting conditions, a normal person breathes 12 to 18 times per minute. If it's more than 18 times, it could be due to low breathing efficiency.
✅ Assessing breathing pattern:
🙋 Stand or lie naturally, place one hand on your abdomen and the other on your clavicle, and feel whether your abdomen or chest moves more during breathing. Under normal circumstances, the chest and abdomen should contract and expand at a ratio close to 1:1 during breathing.
If the abdomen moves more than the chest, it indicates primarily diaphragmatic (abdominal) breathing; if the chest moves more than the abdomen, it's primarily costal (chest) breathing.
🙋 Mirror test: Stand in front of a mirror and breathe, observing whether your neck and shoulders are relaxed or if you unconsciously shrug your shoulders.
When the diaphragm is weak, the shoulders will move upward, and muscle compensation will result in a shrugging breathing pattern.
"Consciously Training Your Breathing Has Numerous Benefits."
You might still be wondering: What is the correct way to breathe?
Everyone knows about "costal breathing" and "diaphragmatic breathing." K guesses many people might think that "diaphragmatic breathing" is better, but in fact, during the correct breathing process, it's usually a combination of both costal and diaphragmatic breathing.
Moreover, there is no one-size-fits-all correct breathing standard for everyone. Instead, one should consciously adjust their breathing according to their physical condition.
For example, if you often find yourself shrugging your shoulders excessively during daily breathing, this could indicate that costal breathing is dominant, characterized by the shoulders lifting, the chest rising, and chest movement exceeding abdominal movement during inhalation.
This is due to insufficient activation and inhibition of the diaphragm, with overcompensation by the scalene muscles and upper trapezius muscles. In such cases, try to focus more on diaphragmatic breathing and avoid shoulder compensation.
If you want to train your breathing pattern, it's not at all complicated. Integrate it flexibly into your daily exercise routine, focusing on practicing in coordination with your breath.
If you want to practice breathing better, K highly recommends trying yoga!
Many yoga philosophies believe that the most crucial part of yoga is not whether the posture is absolutely standard, but the rhythm of the breath. If you want to make your breathing smoother, yoga and yoga-related training are also excellent choices.
Of course, there are also targeted training methods for respiratory muscle groups, but due to space limitations, K will not elaborate on them here.
References
[1] University Hospital Southampton, 2023. Breathing pattern disorders - Information for patients. Available at: https://www.uhs.nhs.uk/Media/UHS-website-2019/Patientinformation/Respiratory/Breathing-pattern-disorders-patient-information.pdf.
[2] Kent Community Health (2022). Dysfunctional breathing pattern. [online] Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust. Available at: https://www.kentcht.nhs.uk/leaflet/dysfunctional-breathing-pattern
