15 Aug Why Deep Breathing is Good for Your Posture and Your Health
Your breathing is something you probably don’t give much thought to. It’s just there, an automatic function keeping you alive.
In fact, the way you breathe makes a difference. At Eastern Oklahoma Chiropractic, we recognize that proper breathing techniques can actually improve your posture, mobility, and many aspects of your overall health.
The Relationship Between Breathing and Posture
In a nutshell, your posture affects your breathing quality, and your breathing in turn affects your posture.
Good posture is vital to taking in deep, healthy breaths. The movements of your diaphragm, the primary breathing muscle, alter the position of your spine and rib cage, impacting your posture.
Poor posture can lead not only to more shallow breathing but to discomfort in your neck, shoulders and back, and throw off mobility throughout your entire body. Tension headaches, insomnia and digestive troubles are some symptoms that can also result from poor breathing.
Resolving Problems Caused by Poor Breathing
Improving your breathing helps your body regulate vital functions. Deep breathing from your abdomen–versus shallower breaths from your chest—improves oxygen intake and strengthens respiratory muscles. It also optimizes your nervous system for better communication between the brain and body.
What can cause your breathing quality to decline?
Common culprits are pain and stress. They put your nervous system into a fight-or-flight mode, causing you to take shallower breaths. Another cause is too much sitting, which can impair breathing by worsening your posture.
Deep Breathing Practice
Although respiration is part of your autonomic nervous system and happens automatically, you can still control and improve the act of breathing.
Taking a few minutes each day to practice proper breathing will help strengthen your breathing muscles and help good breathing become a habit. Ask your chiropractor for advice on the best breathing exercises.
Deep breathing practice can help you:
- Improve your posture and mobility
- Relieve pain and muscle tension in your back, shoulders and neck
- Strengthen back, neck and core muscles
- Improve heart rate and cardiovascular health
- Reduce stress and increase mental alertness
- Strengthen lungs
In fact, deep breathing techniques have even helped many pro athletes to improve their sports performance.
Here’s a simple deep breathing exercise you can try right now: breathe slowly and deeply through your nose, from your abdomen (not your chest), for a count of four. Then exhale for another four counts. Repeat.
How Chiropractic Care Complements Good Breathing Techniques
Deep breathing works along with your chiropractic care. When you breathe fully, your lungs expand to their full capacity and your respiratory muscles achieve their proper position, reinforcing your spine’s natural curvature.
When your spine and posture are out of alignment, your head may be pitched forward, while your upper back hunches over. Then your ribs can’t expand enough to give your lungs all the space they need to allow full, deep breaths. You may not even be aware that this is happening.
Chiropractic treatments, exercises, and breathing improvements will restore your spine’s proper alignment, relieve pain, and lead you toward a healthier quality of life.
To Schedule Your Free Consultation, Contact our Broken Arrow Office Today
Start living–and breathing–better by calling Eastern Oklahoma Chiropractic at 918-940-4630.