Breathing correctly through proper use of the diaphragm is not as common as you’d think. Chronic shallow breathing, breathing with your chest and inhaling through the mouth, taking in LESS air, and holding your breath before you exhale has become common in today’s world. This is largely due to societal environmental and cultural expectations.
What are these expectations? For example, having a flat stomach. This encourages people to hold their breath while sucking in their stomach. This causes the chest and abdominal muscles around the rib cage to continue to tighten, furthering the body’s constant state of cyclical stress.
Combine this with the widespread chronic poor posture we see in today’s society, and you have a recipe for respiratory disaster. Lung capacity is reduced, circulation is impaired and numerous health issues and physiological impairments are inevitable. For this reason, many people are operating at a deficit on a daily basis and have no clue about it.
Correctly Breathing Reduces Anxiety and Stress
This never-ending state of distress can lead to panic attacks, fatigue, aggravate respiratory problems, and heart issues in years to come. Inverted breathing, by using your chest, causes chronic tension to develop in the muscles of the neck and chest. This can lead to headaches, neck and shoulder pain, reduced range of motion and increased injury risk.
On the other hand, learning to breathe by using your diaphragm properly (also known as belly breathing) and fixing your posture with a strengthened core helps to improve your health.
Breathing in this manner promotes lower blood pressure, relaxes your muscles, reduces your heart rate, decreases stress levels in your brain, and aids in boosting energy levels each day. Further, deep breathing by primarily using your diaphragm can help one feel ‘grounded,’ making them more aware of themselves and the world around them, allowing them to deal with more intense experiences and emotions in a less stressed state of mind.
Boost Your Cognitive Function with Belly Breathing
The importance of changing your lifestyle and breathing patterns continues to prove worthwhile through recent studies. Studies have shown there is a direct correlation between nasal breathing and cognitive function. Those who inhaled nasally proved to have a higher and faster memory recall compared to those that inhaled orally. When the participants were asked to breathe through their mouths instead this enhanced memory recall was no longer present.
How Negative Long-Term Effects Impact Your Actions Today
Your breathing method can impact your entire body’s wellbeing, including the ability to regulate vital functions such as your heart rate and your blood pressure. Lack of oxygen in your bloodstream can make you more susceptible to heart disease.
Chronic stress that comes hand-in-hand with your shallow breathing causes your blood to have lower levels of lymphocyte, a type of white blood cell that is responsible for defending the body against illness and infection. It also lowers the protein levels in other immune system cells, leaving you susceptible to medical conditions and longer healing times.
Changing Your Lifestyle Just Got Easier
Changing the way you breathe takes time and practice. Wolf Moon Wellness takes this into stride, offering the Posture, Core & Breathwork Course online. The course has everything you need to know to make the changes you want to have in your life. The course stresses the importance of healthy breathing, providing you with approximately 100 video-based lessons, in-depth analyses of how breathing, posture, and core strength are interconnected, and a 6- week periodization exercise program with an appropriate exercise selection.
The Corrective Exercises component of the course contains a large volume of video lessons/ corrective exercises, including specific exercises for various conditions referred to throughout the course. By being able to refer to this section, you can pinpoint your specific needs.
If you’re contemplating whether this is the right decision for your life, ask yourself: is enabling your body to reach its full capacity worth it? So, if the course does sound worthwhile to you, breathe a big sigh of relief. You've made the first step on your journey to wellness.
This Program will go over the essentials of posture, core and breath work.
About Wolf Moon Wellness
John Laznovsky is co-owner of Wolf Wellness, a successful wellness center located in Holbrook NY that offers various holistic health care modalities. John himself has multiple degrees and certifications. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Exercise Science and Kinesiology from Cortland University and is a New York State Licensed Massage Therapist. John is certified by the American College of Sports and Medicine, the CHEK Institute and Precision Nutrition.
Mary is a Licensed Acupuncturist and CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach who has been busy in private and clinical practice since graduating from New York College in April 2010. Mary values Eastern Medicine because she believes it is a truly holistic healing practice which incorporates a synchronicity between the body and the mind. She works with her patients building a postive and healthy environment for an optimal healing process. Mary's methods work to treat the body as a whole, seeking out the root of a disease in addition to alleviating the symptoms. She has studied with many experts in the fields of Acupuncture, Tui Na and Qi Gong. Mary has been voted Best of Long Island 2010 (with colleagues) and Best Acupuncturist in Queens 2013 (solo) at 3 Elements Healing Arts Center. In 2015 Mary spent a month at the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas training in their famous Teacher Training Program earning her the title of Yoga Siromani (teacher of yoga). She has since been sharing and implementing the knowledge learned there with her clients with great results.