Many systems of movement and relaxation emphasize breathing as a key component of proper movement and function. In fact, breathing mechanics play a key role in posture and spine stabilization as well. I see this all time in my practice. People don’t come into my office because their breathing is off, but they come in because they’re in pain. A faulty breathing pattern often ties together multiple seemingly unrelated dysfunctions and seemingly unrelated complaints. Through a standard assessment, I often find mechanical dysfunction in the skeletal system, often due to imbalance in the muscular system. And further assessment of breathing patterns often reveals that these muscles are out of balance because of breathing dysfunction.
The primary muscles responsible for breathing are the Diaphragm, Intercostals, Scalenes, transverse Abdominus, pelvic floor muscles and the deep intrinsic spinal muscles. Each of these muscles functions both to facilitate proper breathing, and to stabilize the spine. Any imbalance to the series of movements or the breath will throw these out of balance with each other.
A lot goes into a normal breath at rest, and as you can imagine, even more to a breath while under stress, where the need to brace the abdomen also occurs. For example, the upper and lower rib cage pumps like the movement of a bucket handle during normal respiration.
The most common faulty breathing pattern is known as “chest breathing” and can impact you both physically and emotionally, having a direct effect on the autonomic nervous system (think fight or flight response). Recent studies have suggested that as many as 74% of people are chest breathers.
Normal relaxed breathing should ideally occur through the nose. Mouth breathing happens when the body needs more oxygen as with exertion. But mouth breathing while relaxed is actually pathological, although most of us breath this way (myself included, if I don’t catch myself).
When breathing is disrupted, the spine is inevitably affected as well. And dysfunction of the neck and abdominal muscles will vice versa affect breathing. Muscles commonly though of for movement such as the pecs, lats, serratus and traps become breathing muscles when the primary muscles for breathing are compromised. This results in the common chest breath, forward head and forward rolled shoulders. When breathing is severely compromised, a deep inhale will also correspond with the abdomen being drawn in. This is called “paradoxical breathing.”
Faulty breathing often results in low back dysfunction and pain. This is because faulty diaphragm and secondary muscle coordination results in inhibited spinal stabilization. This is because under stress with improper breathing mechanics, the body will choose respiration over spinal stability during an activity of exertion, leaving the spine exposed.
There are also various metabolic results of shallow breathing, affecting the pH of the body and firing up the autonomic system (fight or flight).
I will address how to correct breathing dysfunction in a follow up Blog!