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01. Breathing Restoration Principles

Learning how to appropriately breathe using your diaphragm and abdominals is imperative to your success with restoring not only your posture, flexibility, strength and movement but also influences how you think and feel. Many techniques throughout the Master Guide incorporate this therapeutic breathing method.

Just like any muscle needs to be optimally positioned to function well, the diaphragm, your breathing muscle needs the same. 

The goal of this breathing technique is to restore your resting diaphragm position to a more relaxed and domed position vs a flattened position for optimal breathing. 

If you refer to the below diagram you will see that as you take air into your lungs your diaphragm muscle descends and flattens. This also creates some distension or expansion in your abdomen and pelvic floor. During exhalation the diaphragm rises along with the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall drawing up and inwards. This is how normal breathing should occur.

Inhalation                Exhalation

Unfortunately, in today's modern society most of us are living in a relatively inhaled state, like the first picture. Think about what stress does to your breathing. It typically causes you to inhale and even hold your breath. You may even breathe faster or your breaths will be shallow. 

This breathing pattern is essentially a stress pattern where we tend to hold our breath, and breathe too rapidly and shallowly. Think about what you do when you are startled-you gasp. This is essentially how many of us are habitually breathing even at rest. 

Ultimately this suboptimal breathing pattern creates a disconnect between you and your body’s ability to sense itself and self-regulate. 

In order to be able to take a full breath in you first need to be able to take a full breath out. Therefore, the first step in learning how to breathe properly is to master your exhale. 

This will allow your diaphragm to move through its full range of motion, lowering on inhale and rising into a dome on your exhale. 

This diaphragm function is key not only to pump air but also to drive your lymphatic circulation. This is very important for your immune health as it is your lymphatic system that flushes out the waste and debris from infections and inflammatory processes as well as deliver the appropriate cells, enzymes and nutrients to areas of infection and inflammation for healing to occur.

 

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