The breath is a majestic phenomenon. Breathing helps fill our lungs with oxygen for our energy breakdown system, and then expels carbon dioxide, the waste product of this system. Breathing communicates closely with our vascular system, which transports the oxygen to our cells, and then the blood transports the carbon dioxide back to the lungs to be expelled. Might I add that this is happening 15-30,000 times a day!
The respiratory system (breathing) also communicates intimately with the nervous system. The nervous system is responsible for many things, including getting you into a hypersensitive awareness state, or flight-or fight mode. When you are constantly in a flight-or-fight mode, we release chemical and hormones that inhibits your ability to down-regulate (or calm down!). If we are in this state of fight-or-flight for extended periods of time, we become tense, unable to relax and we are hypersensitive to stressors impacting on our body. Due to its relationship with this system, breathing could be your window to tackle this phenomenon!
When we breathe a certain way, we can trigger the body to be in the fight-or-flight mode. The breathing I am talking about here is chest breathing or shallow neck breathing that comes usually as a result of poor posture or breathing mechanics. This type of breathing is fine when we are chasing down prey, or in intense situations where we need an influx of information to make the right decision, but while we are sitting at our desk or drinking coffee, it isn’t necessary to be in this state!
We need to use our diaphragm, a big balloon shaped muscle at the bottom of our ribs that helps inflate the lungs downwards. This muscle helps regulate our parasympathetic nervous system, which calms down our flight-or-fight mode! This muscle can get ‘inhibited’ with poor postures and poor breathing mechanics, therefore learning to use this muscle could be key for you to relax your body, your mood, and your pain!
Try this one out:
Lie down with your feet on the floor, knees up and heels up as close as you can to your bottom
Put both your hands on your belly
Breathe into your hands, focussing on your hands going up on inhale, and down on the exhale.
Your chest can rise, but only after your belly has risen
Practice this for 2 minutes and see how you feel afterwards. Not only will you feel more relaxed and calm, but those lingering pains that may have been bothering you may have drifted away!
It is normal to feels tingling in your fingers and toes, as you are re-oxygenating parts of your bodies that haven’t had been touched this way before!
For a more intense, pain killing effect, or to help you in a state of anxiousness or panic, try this technique taught by Mark Devine (founder of SEALIFT). Mark teaches this to Navy Seals when needing to calm down in certain situations:
Take 2 minutes
Breathe in through your nose into your belly taking in as much air as you can. Should be about a 4-6 second inhale
Hold the air in your lungs for 2 seconds
Exhale slowly taking 6 seconds to expel all the air out of your lungs
With lungs empty, hold for 2 seconds
Repeat this for 2 minutes.
I hope that you can use these techniques to help you out in any situations, whether it be a highly stressful moment at work, that catching pain, or just to help you relax before heading off to sleep at night.
If aches and pains persist after this, and you feel it could be related to your muscles, tendons or bones, feel welcome to book in a free initial assessment with a Physiotherapist at your local Back In Motion.
Book online at https://www.backinmotion.com.au/prospect or call 08 8269 3800.