Moving Into Harmony

MOVEMENT & BREATHING: HEALTH / PERFORMANCE PROGRAMS

Oxygen Advantage

The Breath: Your Best Companion in Healing, Health & Performance

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In every moment of your life, your breath exists. From your first cry to this very moment, your breath has been your constant companion, and there to do for you what you do. Yet how often do you pause to consider this remarkable process that bridges your conscious and unconscious being? your physical activity and your physiology? your health and your performance?

How frequently do you recognize that within your breath lies perhaps the most powerful tool for health, transformation and performing well with all activities you do?

The One Thing You Can Control – Your Breath

In a world that feels more and more overwhelming, your breath offers something unique – it’s the one aspect you can consciously influence to change the state you are in. While your heart beats and your digestive system functions without your direct input, the breath stands at the crossroads of automatic and voluntary control. This unique position makes it a powerful gateway to influence your physical, mental and emotional well-being, and the state of your physiological health.

Beyond Just Breathing

Many, I work with initially, think of breathing as a simple in-and-out process, but it’s far more integrated. Your breathing pattern is both a mirror and a modifier of your internal state. When you’re stressed, your breath reflects this through rapid, shallow patterns. When you’re at ease, your breath flows with natural rhythm and depth. And there is a pause as your breathing becomes more healthy and functional to the activities you do. But here’s the fascinating part – this relationship works both ways. By consciously working with your breath, you can actually shift your internal state, and your breathing signals to your brain what is needed in the moment – run or relax.

Three BIG Benefits of the Breath Practice

Understanding breath’s potential begins with recognizing its three core capacities:

Self-Regulation: Your breath is an always-available tool for managing your internal state. Like a skilled sailor adjusting their sails, you can learn to use your breath to navigate life’s challenges, finding your center even in challenging and turbulent times.

Self-Healing: Your body holds innate capacities for recovery, renewal and regeneration. Breathing practices can activate these natural healing mechanisms, supporting everything from better performance, to better sleep, to enhanced immune function.

Resilience: Through awareness and attention to your breathing and the outcomes of your practices, you develop not just momentary calm but lasting adaptability. Adaptability in a broader range. This isn’t about achieving a permanent state of ease – it’s about building the flexibility to move through life’s challenges with greater capacities and confidence.

The Intelligence of Your Body

Your body’s intelligence of integrated systems are intricately connected through breathing. From the core-base stability that grounds you to the intricate dance of your nervous system, from what comes in to what is released, your breath influences it all. The simple act of nasal breathing, for instance, triggers the release of nitric oxide, supporting healthy blood flow and immune function. Your lower belly breathing center (known traditionally as the Lower Dantien) serves as both a physical anchor and an energetic foundation for stable, sustainable breath patterns.

Starting Your Journey

The beauty of training the breath lies in its accessibility. You don’t need special equipment or a particular setting – your breath is always with you. All you need is your attention and a developed felt sense. Begin by simply noticing: Where is your breath moving? What’s its quality? How does it feel is key to knowing if it’s healthy or not. Then feeling how it changes throughout your day with the different demands you face is such an incredible learning tool? This awareness itself is transformative.

As you develop this relationship with your breath, you’ll discover it becomes a reliable companion in:

  • Managing stress responses – turning them from negative to positive stressors
  • Supporting quality sleep – best recovery bests the previous demands
  • Enhancing mental clarity – relaxed focus produces learning and meaningfulness to what you learn to use in your life
  • Building physical stamina – to endure life’s known and unknown challenges
  • Creating emotional balance – for better relatedness to those that are important in your life, and how to not allow the breath to give you away.

An Invitation

Whether you’re navigating demands that produce stress, recovering from the conditioning of the trauma(s) you’ve faced, or simply seeking greater health capacities, your breath offers a path forward. It’s not about achieving perfect breathing – it’s about developing a relationship with this fundamental life force activity that supports your journey of growth, healing and performing well in your life.

Start simply. Take moments through your day to feel your breath. Notice where it moves in your body. Observe its rhythm and behavior without trying to change anything – this is a HUGE skill. This simple act of attention begins a profound journey of discovery.

Upper Chest Middle Chest Lower Belly Natural Breath Wave Inhale Exhale Head floating Shoulders relaxed Sit bones grounded

Remember, every breath offers a new beginning. Every exhale is an opportunity to let go, and every inhale brings fresh possibility. Your journey with your breath is uniquely yours, but you don’t have to walk it alone. Consider joining me for a deeper exploration of these practices in an upcoming course I am teaching through OLLI@SOU, where I will be guiding curious people like yourself through practical tools for harnessing your breath’s potential through trauma, stress to enhance your resilience and immunity.

Author’s note: Interested in exploring these concepts further? I have a few six-week self study courses coming in 2026. Contact me to learn more

The truth about your breathing – the diaphragm Part 2

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Breathing is based on the ability to exchange gases. This exchange is accomplished by pressure and fluid dynamics.

The vital exchange of what is in the outside air, and the process of those essential ingredients for you to survive, AND to live efficiently in all activities you do. Health doesn’t happen. Health is a uncovering to continuously reveal the powers and capacities behind how you roll in life with your body and mind. And this requires Oxygen.

Oxygen is a gas.
Carbon Dioxide is a gas.
And so is Nitric Oxide.
These are very important for life to be energized and supported. One is essential for all biological processes in life, and one is produced inside the lining of your nose, from the interaction with Oxygen. The other gas of importance in the exchange for life is Carbon Dioxide – a byproduct of your energy production.

So why you ask is the diaphragm important in this process called Respiratory Physiology?

Because gas moves to and from by pressure, availability and permeability.

And when the diaphragm contracts before you engage with your inhalation. I hope you picked this up! Your diaphragm begins to contract BEFORE you ride the incoming breath, or consciously engage with the incoming air. This contraction sets up a cascade of actions by other muscles, tissues, joints and vessels based on a pressure gradient.

The diaphragm creates a larger space in the rib cage where your lungs are. As the diaphragm contracts:

  • it moves down,
  • muscles in between the ribs assist in up-lifting (a bucket handle analogy is often used for the ribs).
  • neck muscles assist in anchoring/stabilizing the head on the neck, and mobilizing the neck and upper ribs.
  • the spine “elongates” or flattens its curves - the upper spine, or thoracic spine, lessens it’s backward curvature = kyphosis, and the low back, or lumbar spine lessens it’s forward curvature = lordosis.
  • the glottis contracts to generate a pressure gradient so air doesn’t escape (or go into the lungs). My friend Mary Massery’s studies into the “pop can dynamic of postural control” is brilliant in another awe of the diaphragm’s potential in human development, mobility and movement.
  • the dilator muscle of the throat, in the pharynx and laryngeal region, contract to open up the airway.
  • membranes of the small air sacs, alveoli – “grapes”, and lower smaller airways dilate (with the help of Nitric Oxide) for greater profusion across a barrier – the endothelial layer – for gas exchange.
  • the pelvic floor moves downward to accommodate for the building internal pressure of the abdomen and pelvic cavities.
  • certain parts of the blood circulation gain pressure, while other parts decrease pressure to accommodate for the powerful force of the blood; and this is influenced by the diaphragm, the connective tissues around all organs and other tissues for proper fluid dynamics.

And all of these coordinated activities like a symphony, create a maximal function for the outside air to move into all the spaces of the lungs with the greatest ease and least amount of energy required. Yes breathing is one of the energy consumers of your body.

The most important factor is the diaphragm’s contraction creates greater space. With greater space the pressure inside your lungs – which is already sub-atmospheric pressure, meaning it is less than the pressure outside. With an increase in pressure gradient, air moves easier along the gradient from higher to lower. This allows for the greatest efficiency of breathing to occur. And this is true in the opposite way to easily and efficiently release what is not needed in the system as eliminating from the lungs.

I hope you can begin to appreciate what all happens in the act of each breath you are given. All the above mentioned drive all activities in coordinated functions. And the health of each cell, and each tissue function, is dependent on this very important cascade of actions.

Did you know that they way you breathe can be affecting the health of your spine – neck, upper back and low back – too?

Contact me for a full-system approach to how your breathing impacts your health and well-being.

Why the diaphragm is the most important muscle – Part 1

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The diaphragm is the most important muscle in our body. We can’t live without it or mechanical means are necessary to keep you alive. And the diaphragm can perform the important respiratory, or breathing, function with our volitional, or conscious, control and non-volitional, unconscious function (especially during sleep). How your diaphragm functions in the day determines it’s efficiency when you are sleeping.

The diaphragm is so vital to your health and well-being. Here are some facts to contemplate what it does for you:

  • is the hardest and most enduring muscle in the human body.
  • it acts whether you are paying attention to your breathing or not. In my personal and clinical experience when attention is elsewhere, the breathing habits take over unless they’ve been practiced and cultivated. This article explains the qualities of a healthy breath to support your physical and mental health.
  • contracting and relaxing at least 21,500 times per day (calculated at 15 breaths per minute – bpm’s, not rpm….haaahaaa, so if you breath more, then its more, and more, and more. If you exercise or are under stress, it’s probably 20-30 breaths per minute…yes can be doubled!
  • 5.5 million breaths per year – at least
  • living to be 85…..then you have taken almost half a trillion breaths to support your long life.
  • during it’s action it makes breathing easier from the ease of how the outside air can enter all of your lungs. And during the relaxation phase, returning to it’s resting length, it assists in moving air out of the lungs via pressure dynamics. This article explains breathing from a pressure dynamic, and the symphony of actions that occur, to help you to understand the harder you work at breathing the more exhausted you will be.
  • it helps support your posture, and is also affected by your posture. It also aides in stabilizing the spine and transferring forces to/from the limbs during all upright activity.
  • it pumps all the major fluids – lymph and venous blood – back to the heart against gravity and when we are sleeping.
  • it generates a motion and pressure, intra-abdominal pressure, that massages the abdominal organs, and contributes greatly to the fluid exchange for the brain, pelvis and legs. It also mobilizes the spine while you sleep.
  • it contributes to force translation of lower limbs to upper limbs for power efficiency in movement.
  • and more (this article lays out all the functions that I have learned over the 30 years of study, personal practice and clinical experiences.

Article by Shawn M Flot, MPT – Masters in Physical Therapy (1994). He is an experienced Certified Oxygen Advantage® Instructor, and Functional Movement Systems specialist. Combined with his 35 years of experience in Exercise Physiology, Physical Therapist for health and performance, and a dedicated Hatha Yoga practitioner, is making for a power-house to help many people succeed in re-discovering their own health and healing, being fit and living well for their adventures.