Somehow I managed to find 10 minutes of “me time” in my day to wind down, so I put on a relaxing guided meditation. I settled into a comfortable seat. I was feeling calmer, quieter, more relaxed, until….the teacher’s soothing voice instructs me to “take a nice big breath into your belly, and let your belly drop back as you blow out.” It took a lot for me not to throw my phone across the room in annoyance. Sigh. Another relaxing moment ruined by belly breathing!
You see, instructing “belly breathing” is a little bit of a pet peeve of mine. Because it’s not helpful, and in many cases it is harmful. Unfortunately, most of you have been told to belly breathe at some point in your life, by a well meaning healthcare provider, yoga instructor, meditation teacher, or YouTube video. Sometimes it is taught with a correct understanding of breathing mechanics so that it is actually helpful, but 90% of the time it is not.
So why is everyone so obsessed with belly breathing?
In an attempt to prevent “tension breathing” (shoulders rising to pull air in with your neck muscles) it was decided that the solution to that is “belly breathing.” This concept has become very popular and it’s even what I was taught in physical therapy school! The idea is that while your neck and shoulders stay relaxed, you expand your abdomen/belly on the inhale, and let your belly drop back in towards you on the exhale.
Unfortunately, this cueing is problematic for many, and can cause just as many issues (if not more!) than tension breathing. Neither is good, but let’s not trade something bad for something worse!
A Little Anatomy
To understand how belly breathing can be problematic, we first need to understand the anatomy of breathing.
The Ribcage and Pelvic Floor
The rib cage and pelvis both have diaphragms at their base, the respiratory and pelvic diaphragms (a.k.a. the pelvic floor).
The respiratory diaphragm lowers and flattens slightly as it contracts, creating negative pressure that pulls fresh air in as the chest wall expands. Yay!
As the diaphragm descends, it creates creates some distension (stretching) in the abdominal cavity and pelvic floor. But more importantly, the ribcage expands in 3 dimensions (yes, in the back too, in fact that should be where most of the expansion occurs) as air flows into the negative pressure created by the descending dome of the diaphragm.
During inhalation, some distension of the abdomen is normal, but it SHOULD NOT BE MORE than your ribcage distension. If you repetitively OVER distend your abdomen, through improper breathing, postural changes, improper training, or intentionally via belly breathing you lose the elastic recoil of the tissues of abdominal muscles and pelvic floor, and therefore you lose the ability to passively push air out with your abdominals, pelvic floor, and diaphragm.
You lose the trampoline-like recoil that allows the respiratory and pelvic diaphragms to effortlessly return to a relaxed, elevated position. Quiet breathing should be effortless, and this is how that is achieved.
Think of a rubber band that gets stretched repeatedly to its limit, until it no longer bounces back like it used to. That’s essentially what happens to your breathing mechanism when you repeatedly belly breathe. Once you lose that recoil, it takes a lot of time and awareness to restore that abdominal and pelvic floor tone.
Some individuals develop belly breathing unintentionally as a way to work around a stiffening rib cage that occurs due to lifestyle and postural changes. In my world, we call this type of unconscious belly breathing pathological.
I.e. belly breathing is a problem, causing lots of other problems, so we need to treat it to allow the individual to oxygenate properly and resolve the back pain, neck tension, and other issues that arise from lack of abdominal tone and recoil. So we treat that by retraining the abdominals as breathing muscles and restoring ribcage expansion. And then you feel better and breathe better!
But why, oh why! would you ever intentionally do that to yourself?!?!
Whew, okay had to get that out. Let’s continue!
A Stuck Diaphragm
The diaphragm likes to maintain a nice dome shape, which is created and supported by the tone of the abdominals and pelvic floor muscles. If you can’t get the diaphragm to ascend into a dome (because of too much distension of the abdominal wall and pelvic floor), the diaphragm remains in a contracted, flat, stuck position. Without this dome shape, the only way to get air in and out is to extend our back and “pull” air in with our neck muscles (just what we were trying to avoid in the first place!) because the diaphragm sure can’t help you now.
The diaphragm is no longer a respiratory muscle and has become a postural muscle, stiff and toned to hold you up rather than supple and mobile to pump air in and out.
The Psoas and the Breath
The diaphragm fibers are intimately connected, and in fact continuous, with the psoas muscles.
The psoas attaches to spine and hips, and when it becomes tense it creates an excessive arch in lumbar spine and tightness in the front of your hips (so if you have been told that you have tight hip flexors, it’s probably because you can’t breathe with your diaphragm. Annd no amount of stretching or massage will fix that until you can get your diaphragm to work properly. But that’s another rabbit hole for another day).
When the diaphragm becomes tense and stuck, so must the psoas, furthering your inability to use your diaphragm as a breathing muscle and forcing both the diaphragm and psoas to act as postural stabilizers.
This results in low back pain, neck pain, and all sorts of other fun issues that arise from, essentially, an inability to breathe!
So What Should You Do?
Instead of breathing into your belly, breathe into your back! Let your abdominals WORK as breathing muscles instead of being functionally inhibited by poofing your belly out for every breath.
The short answer: No more belly poof. Please.
Most of your lung field is in the back of your ribcage, and getting air into your back allows for the ribs in the front to be pulled down by the abdominal muscles, which retrains the abs to be breathing muscles (your abs are breathing muscles first! That is their primary function).
Try these techniques to restore proper breathing, and please please PLEASE be careful with belly breathing, if you must do it at all! In my experience, belly breathing that is just poofing out your belly to inhale and letting it drop has no inherent value, other than it makes you pay attention to your breath, but you can do that in lots of other ways without creating pathology.
