What's Breathing Got To Do With It?

Welcome to the first installment of a new regular feature called "What's breathing got to do with it?"  Over the next few weeks I'll attempt to make some connections to help pave the way to understanding just how important breathing well is.  We will link poor breathing patterns to a number of conditions in which you may not have considered breathing to be a factor, such as jaw disorders, low back pain and anxiety.  You'll gain better awareness of your own breathing pattern and nagging symptoms and I'll give you a few tips to help improve your breathing.

I shouldn't have to think about breathing...
Despite being an automatic function, breathing is easily disrupted by illness, injury and emotions.  Breathing is not merely just about charging the blood with oxygen and clearing the body of carbon dioxide, but it is an intricate series of inputs from many areas of the body, including muscles in the limbs, stretch receptors in the chest wall and lungs as well as our own voluntary requirements (talking, blowing up a balloon, etc). 

That's a lot of input just to take a breath!

​​I like to emphasize that breathing is also a movement pattern - just as walking or lifting are movement patterns.  And just like walking or lifting, we can sometimes (often subconsciously) choose a less effective way of moving that leads to problems.   The good news is that a disrupted breathing pattern is not a disease.  It can cause troubling symptoms, but it's not life threatening.  It takes a bit of work to retrain breathing patterns, but it's not impossible to restore normal, functional breathing. 

What's Next?
Stay tuned for more installments of "What's breathing got to do with it?" to find out what breathing does indeed have to do with good health (or poor health, as it may be).  In the meantime, if you have pressing issues about your own breathing, please feel free to connect with me!