Releasing the Breath Part One; Reflexology techniques to release the diaphragm & deepen the breath

Now watch Part Two - The techniques! In part two of this series Yvonne demonstrates the techniques to relax the breath and muscles of the thoracic area in a beautifully calming routine with breathe work to share with your client.

Releasing the Breath

It is important to notice our breathing. We all breath but actually not many of us breathe well! Generally we all need to learn to slow our breathing down as we tend to over breathe taking shallower breathes. This can be due to feeling anxious or modern day problems for example what Yvonne calls ‘email apnea’. Email apnea is where we may hold our breath whilst checking emails, writing notes, checking social media. Doing many tasks at the same time could add up to a minute of holding your breath. Another way that our breathing could have become impacted is through stress, trauma or grief. Yvonne talks of how this whole reflexology practice looking at the the breath came about because she noticed in clients who are grieving the breath was shallower and restricted, almost gasping for air. Whatever the trigger it all follows that pattern of the body reacting to stress and quickening the breath and then we are not effectively returning the breath to a state of safety with deep, steady breaths. Instead the breathing is remaining shallow and restricted.

When we feel anxious our emergency system kicks in via the chemoreceptors and makes us do quick short breaths, speeding up our rate of breathing. These are shallow quick breaths to ensure we are breathing again not suffocating.

Over time the body stays in a constant state of alert, our breathing rate increases and we don't engage our muscles that help us breathe, the muscles and fascia surrounding our lungs becomes constricted making it even harder to take a deeper breath.

Yvonne explains ‘It's common to hear in the treatment room from my clients that they feel like they can't take a proper breath.'

The first step is to extend the breath and reduce our breathing rate so we can learn to have less breaths per minute. The optimum is said to be 5.5 breaths per minute! This works out as inhaling for 5.5 seconds and then exhaling for 5.5 seconds - try it!

Something that we need to adapt is to learn to move the diaphragm up and down a bit more with longer inhales and exhales. We could all benefit from learning to practice breathing as we would our daily stretching. This will then engage the muscles of breathing, tone the diaphragm, intercostal muscles, pectoral muscles and the muscles of the upper back. Learning to breathe slowly will open up communication through the vagus nerve to the parasympathetic nervous system and in turn to the breath making us healthier.

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