Poor posture can affect your breathing

Many of us are quite inefficient when it comes to how we breathe. It may come as no surprise that our increasingly sedentary lifestyle and slouched spinal postures would impact our ability to breathe well, but to what extent?
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The average Australian spends nearly 10 hours a day sitting. A sedentary lifestyle has been defined in research by less than 5,000 steps a day or sitting for more than 6 hours a day. Now if you factor in a daily commute, sitting down for meals, watching TV, we can easily hit 6 hours of sitting before even adding on the number of hours we have to sit at work, school or university. Our bodies are designed to be in motion and when we don’t move, we function inefficiently. We now live in a world that promotes this type of sedentary, dysfunctional lifestyle, and it comes with consequences.

So how are we designed to breathe?

To inhale, the abdominal muscles should relax for the diaphragm to contract downwards and push our organs out of the way. The intercostal (between the ribs) muscles should then contract to expand the rib cage and decrease pressure in the lungs to create a vacuum, drawing air into the lungs. To exhale, the diaphragm and intercostals need to relax to allow the abdominals to contract and push air out of the lungs.

If we sit in a slouched posture with our abdomen compressed, there is no room for our organs to move out of the way, limiting the ability of the diaphragm and intercostals to expand the lungs. This reduced expansion means a significantly reduced lung capacity (taking in less oxygen). Up to a 30% reduction in lung capacity has been observed in studies, which puts more stress on the heart and lungs, increasing the risk of an overall stress response in our bodies and our cortisol levels skyrocket. Elevated cortisol levels are linked with a wide range of medical conditions such as anxiety, weight gain, slower healing, high blood pressure, fatigue and headaches.

Movement is an acquired skill and if you’ve ever attended a yoga or Pilates class, you were likely  reminded to breathe by the instructor, regularly. At times you probably caught yourself holding your breath to help stabilise yourself in positions because the muscles meant to stabilise have lost their ability to do it themselves. If you’ve lost a skill it will take time to relearn and redevelop the correct technique. Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. If we continue to down the path of inactivity, we are training ourselves to be less efficient and therefore placing more stress on our bodies in an already stressful environment.

Breathing Exercise

Keep it simple and start with the breath. Place one hand on the abdomen and one on your chest. Take a slow breath in, allowing the abdomen to press up into your bottom hand while the top hand stays relatively still. Breath out smoothly and feel the abdominals drawing the ribs down while imagining you are trying to make a candle flicker but not go out. Try this first lying down on your back and gradually progress to supported sitting, unsupported sitting, and standing. Add in more challenging functional movement patterns as your breath improves. You'll find that this abdominal breathing exercises is always easier in an upright posture.