Key Points:
- Many of us are either upper chest breathing (like a kind of hyperventilating), barely breathing at all, and when they take a bigger breath all of the movement comes from the belly or just all out belly breathing.
- Anatomically, when you inhale the breath goes into the lungs which expand as does your rib cage in a 3 dimensional way: a little bit of up and down, front and back, and side to side.
- There will be a little bit of expansion into the abdominal cavity and a little bit of expansion down onto the pelvic floor.
- The rib cage can become a bit “stuck” if it’s not used to be used and we resort to putting the extra pressure through the belly onto the core and pelvic floor.
- Ideally, we want more 3d rib movement and less of the belly pushing out with no rib movement.
- Putting one hand on the sternum/chest bone and one hand on your belly, notice which moves more, which moves first.
- The third B is breath holding. Many of us regularly hold our breath. It puts our nervous system into right or flight and if we inhale and hold our breath we will feel a lot of pressure on our core and pelvic floor. Holding your breath after an exhale might not increase the pressure if your core engaged reflexively as you exhaled (like with the candles breath). If you bulged out of your abdominal wall, the pressure will have increased.
Key Points:
- Place your hands on your lower rib cage, longest fingers touching.
- Think about the bottom corners of your lungs which will be under the heel of the palm of your hands. Inhale all the way down to this area.
- Imagine your lungs inflating like balloons.
- Feel your fingers drawing apart as you inhale and coming back together as you exhale.
- We’re not looking for a forced expansion or over breathing – you’ll make yourself lightheaded! Just gentle expansion through the ribs.
Please feed back to me in the WhatsApp group how you got on. Does it make sense in your body? Any light bulb moments?