What I hope to do with this short post is to look at the implications of breathing and movement and hopefully encourage you to put a little more effort and thought into HOW and WHY you breathe while you move.
Breath is one of our most basic biological processes. It's one of the fundamental signs of life and functions unconsciously. It's also one of those processes that we can consciously control (unlike circulation or digestion, for example.) Our breath responds to emotional and physical stimuli, both. And respiratory muscles are also both movers and stabilizers.
I want to look at some of the applications of these generalities without making any kind of value statements or absolute statements. Breathing, like movement, is highly individual and the individual will, of course, have different reactions to and interpretations of different modes of breathing. My caveat is that: no breathing exercise (or any exercise, for that matter) has a discreet and distinct function psychologically. No breathing exercise is a replacement for therapy. So when I take the discussion into mindfulness and the breath, I am not indicating that breathwork can be a replacement for psychotherapy or related cognitive therapies.
But back to breathing and movement! The basic mechanism of breathing is a change in pressure values in the lungs to either encourage movement of gasses into or out of the upper respiratory tract. to this effect, there are a large complex of muscles whose function is to expand or contract the volume of the trunk. The diaphragm is also one of the few muscles perpendicular to gravity, and one of the few muscles that connects all sides of the trunk. In this capacity, the diaphragm can function as a stabilizer.
Now, muscle action doesn't really equate directly to physical function in movement. So: "activate your diaphragm" as a movement cue is kind of silly. But there are a number of breathing functions we CAN control. The four basic components of respiration are: inhalation, suspension, exhalation, and retention. All of these effect the internal pressure of your trunk and involve different musculature. Playing with these four actions gives you a lot of material for changing how you move. Exploring the effect in different positions, different transitions, and different ratios can have a profound effect on your knowledge of your body and strength, mobility, and control.
For instance, if you are stretching, adding an exhale as you reach into a stretch can allow you to sink deeper into your end-range position. In resistance training, too, conventional knowledge is to exhale on the exertion. In this way, you can combine the contraction of the respiratory muscles with the contraction of the prime mover muscles (like if you're doing a bicep curl, you would exhale as you are lifting the weight away from the floor and exhale as it descends.)
All this gets trickier when you take breath into more complex movement like sports performance or skill work. At higher levels, you can use general rules to exhale as you exert or stretch and inhale as you return toward a resting position. The most important factor is to be aware of extensive breath holding, as this can be a risky technique under tension or exertion.
Holding the breath at the end of an inhale is called "retention" and holding the breath at the end of an exhale is call "suspension." These are a whole can of worms that can have extremely useful or rather tricky applications, depending on what result you are looking for.
Breathwork is also often described as the "doorway to the present moment." Typically, our breathing patterns follow emotional states. You will breathe with certain patterns at rest, and other patterns in stressful situations. A good exercise can be to simply observe the quality of your breathing in different situations and during different movement patterns to see what is happening. Just like with food journaling for weight loss, a breath quality analysis can give you a lot of insight into how you are breathing and what, physically, is tense in your body at any given time.
Another helpful exercise is to try to "breathe" into different parts of the body. Doing this with stretching at first is probably the most approachable option. For instance, if you are doing a hamstring stretch (pick your own variation), try breathing into your lower back, or if you are twisting, try to direct your breath to the part of your trunk that you feel the twist. Playing with the breath and awareness of the breath go hand in hand.
Breathing is an immediately accessible movement that gives you real-time access to your physiology at any point in time. You can practice exhaling and squeezing your abs ALL DAY LONG if you wanted to. You can breathe and try to expand your rib-cage 3 dimensionally, or stretch to the side and breathe into that stretch. Being mindful of your breath is gaining access to a movement and stabilization pattern that globally and directly impacts your system at a fundamental level.
So play with your breath, explore your breath, and appreciate your breath! See how breathing differently has different impacts on different movements. Make your breath part of the poetry and self-expression of your own body. Treat it as an art. Learn yourself better through breath. This isn't anything mystical or spiritual! Again, it's becoming intimate with your physiology and physics. There is no technique here, and nothing to "learn", just building a greater sensitivity and finesse to be at ease ibn your body as it moves.
Move well. Move often. Breathe well. Breathe intentionally.
