By Vaughn Gray    Updated 10/28/2009

The Basics of Proper Breathing

One of the easiest things most people can do to improve their health, energy levels, and even their general mood is to learn how to breathe properly. It may come as a surprise to you that it’s possible to breathe improperly, but the fact of the matter is that just about everyone in America has less than perfect breathing technique. So what is proper breathing technique? A proper breath is taken through the nose into the stomach using the muscles of the diaphragm.  People in less developed countries don’t need to be taught to breathe this way because they do it naturally from birth. In fact, all of us should naturally breathe into our stomach using the diaphragm. So why don’t we?

Strange as it sounds, the reason that most Americans breathe into their chests and not into their stomachs is because we spend so much of our days seated. Sitting crunches down on the diaphragm (your primary breathing muscle) and turns it off.  With your diaphragm turned off, you start to breathe through your mouth into your chest using the muscles of your neck and shoulders, which really aren’t meant to be used for breathing regularly.

We’re able to breathe with the muscles of our chest and neck because they’re designed for “accessory breathing”.  By accessory breathing we mean that chest breathing (raising the shoulders and chest to get air into the lungs) is only meant to assist diaphragmatic breathing when you’re out of breath.  During a sprint, for instance, when you’re gasping for breath, a proper breath will start with the diaphragm contracting to fill the lower lungs. Once the lower lungs are full, the muscles of the neck and shoulders will contract, causing the chest to rise up and fill the upper lungs.

Look in a mirror and take a deep breath.  Focus on your shoulders.  Do they rise up when you inhale?  If so, you’re like most people – a chest breather.  If your shoulders did rise there’s a good chance that your shoulders are chronically tight and you frequently develop knots in your shoulders and neck.  This tension in your shoulders is being caused partially by the way you breathe. Better breathing, along with an exercise that we’ll cover at the end of this tutorial, will help alleviate shoulder and neck knots and tightness. Most people attribute tight shoulders to psychological stress, and they’re not wrong. But stress is only part of the picture. And further, poor breathing habits actually create increased stress. 

Poor Breathing Equals More Stress

Poor breathing technique results in increased stress primarily because it limits the amount of oxygen that can be taken up by the lungs.  Your body gets oxygen out of your lungs through capillaries - the thin blood vessels throughout the lungs that allow gases to flow into and out of your blood.  These capillaries are about ten times as dense in the lower lungs as they are in the upper lungs. A chest breath only fills the upper lungs with air. As a result, the oxygen you breathe in during a chest breath doesn’t get to the area of the lungs where it can be efficiently absorbed.

Take a full breath concentrating on filling your stomach and chest with air. Let it out slowly. It’s relaxing, right?  Oxygen exerts a calming effect on the body.  When people are highly stressed oxygen can be administered to help them relax. This is one of the main reasons that EMT’s give oxygen to people when they arrive on the scene of an emergency – to calm them down. Higher oxygen levels in the blood create shifts in brain chemistry that leave you feeling relaxed and at peace. The reverse is also true.  Low levels of oxygen in the blood increases the levels of stress chemicals in the brain. Even mild oxygen deprivation can, over time, leave you feeling tense, anxious and fatigued. If you are a chronic chest breather, the odds are you’re walking around every day mildly starved for oxygen.
 
In addition to increasing stress levels, lower blood oxygen makes pretty much everything in your body work more poorly– from your immune system, to detoxification processes in your liver, to mental functions. Chronic oxygen deprivation due to poor breathing habits is also associated with dramatically increased incidences of migraine and tension headaches.

The stress caused by chronic oxygen deprivation isn’t limited to the mental sphere. This stress also results in the physical manifestations of tension, as muscles are held tighter, contributing to painful knots in the back and shoulders.  Stress from poor breathing can even promote weight gain, since the body chemicals associated with stress, such as cortisol, tend to promote fat storage.