The harder you work at breathing the more exhausted you will be.
Discover what you can do to make the breath work easier for you and be energized with healthy breathing for daily activities, exercise, recovery and sleep.
The truth about your breathing muscle – diaphragm Part 2
The truth about your breathing muscle – diaphragm Part 1
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 (during sleep especially).
The diaphragm is so vital to our 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, and during it’s relaxation phase it assists in moving air out of the lungs via pressure dynamics. This article explains breathing from a pressure dynamic 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.
- 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. He is an experienced Certified Oxygen Advantage® Instructor. Combined with his 30 years of experience in Exercise Physiology, Physical Therapist for health and performance, and a dedicated Yoga practitioner is making for a power-house to help many people succeed in re-discovering their own health and healing, being optimally fit for their adventures and living well.
Medicine of Movement – It’s vitally important to go down to find your flexibility
If the well is distant, its water does not quench the thirst of the pilgrim – Chinese Proverb
Your health is being flexible, and your flexibility is not about how your stretch……it’s about how you descend to harness fluidity in your tissues and your mind. Just like in the desert, or in the mountains, the well-spring of nourishment is always found in the hollows of the earth – the canyon, the mountain, the well.
How do you harness your fluidity? You learn to descend within the body. My teacher, Shandor Remete, from the beginning, guided us to cultivate the ability to descend our energy by the proper use of how you move your body. So much of life triggers us to ascend upward – for example:
- The overuse of the eyes and the brain.
- A surprising and often frightening sensation of pain
- Being “ready” for what’s expected or ahead of you
- Holding yourself upright to maintain a “good” posture
- elevate your mind for clear thoughts.
This is in contrast to the actual nourishing element of water that keeps us flexible, mobile, and agile. The higher you live, the more distant the access to the balancing mechanism that promotes dynamic fluidity. Water travels down the mountain, down the canyon, and eventually to the ocean. The physiological processes are related to natural phenomena – as in the natural wild world, so inside the wilderness of your body.
Dripping water can eat through a stone – Chinese Proverb
The “region” of the body that relates to the downward force to access the elemental nature of water, consists of approximately 70% of your total body. It represents – the back body – from the tuft of the skull to the heels; and the front body – from the navel to the front of the ankle. The gross body part, anatomical, that relates to the water element is the feet. The ankles are referred to as “the regulators of all fluids in the body” (wisdom given to me by both my Hatha Yoga teacher, Shandor Remete; and my Manual Therapy teacher, Frank Lowen).
What practices can you “exercise” to harness your fluidity? Good question.
Avoid Stretching what you think is tight.
Shocked? Consider how long you have been stretching to feel flexible? Now consider how much strain and stress you are putting on those pinpoint focused areas you feel are tight, without the aide of harnessing your fluidity. Your:
- bottoms of your feet (plantar fascia)
- calves (gastrocs, soleus)
- thighs – front (quadriceps); back (hamstrings)
- low back (quadratus lumborum, back extensors, spine)
- hips – front (iliopsoas); back (glutes, piriformis)
- shoulders (rotator cuff)
- chest (pectoralis group)
- neck and skull (trapezius, suboccipitals)
Some of you even contract one muscle group to stretch the apposing. Or you contract the muscle group you want to stretch, then relax to stretch it (cuz you think it fatigues that you can pull it apart more). Well, I am here to say…….
That is a lot of energy consumed to get a short term result. Doesn’t last. In fact the moment you return to your life that engages your up-ness. POOF! gone….you are back to being tight and probably feel more stiff than before you stretched.
Stretching, in my clinical experience is unnecessary stress and strain without the essential ingredient of dynamic fluidity. It is like a rubber band that snaps back. Consider the material – a rubber band, a piece of taffy – what happens when it is dry, frayed, or cold? It usually doesn’t have the same pliability, and if you are using a rubber band, I am certain you ignored that one or threw it away; or if it was the only one you had to use (you don’t have another hamstring) you were cautious to not overstretch because it break, and snap. Ouch, that end that snapped to my finger was painful. Ouch, I just “tore” my hamstring stretching in yoga class. And more subtly, your body is sensing undo stress and strain with it’s signals of ouch, protects by tightening (kinda like how your protecting brace when you know something potentially harmful is coming, or experienced) and tries to brunt the brute force attack by trying to stretch.
Learn how to use your feet and your ankles. And learn how to descend through squatting.
Yes squatting. It’s not what you think. Did you mind go to the power lifter in the gym squatting 300 lbs.? Admit it, you hesitated if you have read this far. You squat every day, many times a day. How many times do you sit down, and get up from a chair? How many times do you sit down to toilet? How many times do you lower yourself to get something? My suggestion is to use your every day activities to give yourself the opportunity to feel, discover, learn and integrate what you feel, or how you are guided to descend, that delivers a life benefit of the skill of descending to find your flexibility.
I will be discussing more details on this important topic in the weeks and months to come. Stay tuned.
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Medicine of Movement – Surprising ways to Create Balance & Coordination
YES!!! Our feet and our hands have vital importance for integrative vital movement.
From a neuroscience perspective, the homunculus of the somatosensory cortex, the map of the motor and sensory fields in our brains, illustrate this occupancy of high functional capacities for the feet and hands. The only other areas that get this much “attention” are the lips, tongue, eyes, ears. With this representation, you can see the capacity we have to use our feet for sensation and developing attributes for the full-body movement that the body understands – the integration of the limbs. Most important is the capacity to feel, to sense your internal and external environments.
The tantric yogis, from which hatha yoga is a part of, state consciousness comes through or senses, and the “central nerve channel” derives the sensory system. Thus the importance for everyone to find their feet and develop a connection to the most important part of our foundation. And to sense and understand how the utilization of the hands is intimately connected to the spine and the legs.
What is not seen or measured is the ability to sense the bones, their alignment, and an integral part in our “core” stability. There is no need to bind the belly for stabilization. One only needs to feel how the spine responds to the balancing arrangement and integrative use of the limbs (including the head) for static and dynamic activity. It is this sensibility with the bones, all the way to the tips of the fingers and toes, that allows all the other tissues including tendons and muscle to respond together. The body knows how to respond with an integrative balance in the limbs. It is inherent. And to override the body’s intelligence and nature of functional core engagement is acting violently to the nature of the body’s resources. Developing a sensitivity to the bones requires advanced attention because the bones whisper and often their message gets drowned out by the message from the muscle.
I often associate the muscle with the mini-me, and the bones with the deep inner wisdom, or sage, that carries the innate intelligence of harmony in the body.