Breathing Retraining – An Osteopathic Approach

Many people may not realise something as simple as breathing can have a huge impact on their daily health. Long term dysfunctional breathing habits can affect facial muscles, posture, sleep, digestion, respiratory function and much more.

Dysfunctional breathing often goes undetected, sometimes leading to a lifetime of poor breathing habits. Read on to find out more about the signs and symptoms of dysfunctional breathing and how Osteopathic treatment can help with breathing retraining.

10 Signs And Symptoms Of Dysfunctional Breathing

Is your health being affected by incorrect breathing technique? Here are some common signs and symptoms relating to dysfunctional breathing.

1. Breathlessness without an obvious cause
2. Frequent sighing
3. Neck Pain and Chronic Headaches
4. Irregular breathing patterns
5. Inability to take a deep breath in
6. Mouth breathing
7. Anxiety or panic attack type symptoms
8. Over-tiredness and lack of energy
9. Dizziness
10. Unexplained digestion issues

Causes Of Dysfunctional Breathing

What causes a person to develop abnormal breathing techniques? There are many factors that can contribute to developing poor breathing habits, these can be from as early as when you were a newborn, a toddler, young child or even as an adult following an usual period of illness or stress-related anxiety. Some of the more common causes of dysfunctional breathing are:

• Stress, emotional trauma, shock
• Upper back, lower back, neck and rib dysfunction
• Dysfunctional and tight diaphragm
• Anxiety disorders
• Asthma
• Sleep apnoea
• Breathing difficulties as an infant
• Allergies and sinus related issues

Osteopathy And Breathing Retraining

Are you breathing correctly? Training yourself to breathe properly can have lifelong implications for improving your overall health as well as aiding in the management of conditions such as stress and anxiety, neck pain, headaches, asthma, and sleep apnoea.

As part of their holistic approach to helping the body heal, Osteopaths are able to assist in identifying breathing issues and will work with you to correct your breathing technique. An Osteopath will assess your current breathing technique, take a complete medical history and use this information to evaluate symptoms and identify the underlying causes of breathing issues.

How To Tell If You Are Breathing Correctly

The aim of this exercise is to bring awareness to your breathing habits, during this exercise your chest should remain relatively still with the abdomen noticeably rising and falling.

• Lying flat on your back on the floor with your knees bent, place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen just below your belly button.
• Start to breathe in slowly using only your nose, aim for the feeling the inhaled air pushing deep into your pelvis and raising your stomach before feeling movement (if any) in your chest.
• When you breathing out, simply relax your abdomen, the natural contraction will push air back out of your lungs.

6 Benefits Of Good Breathing Techniques From An Osteopathic Perspective

1. Better response to neck, back, shoulder pain.
2. Helps ease headaches.
3. Improvement of overall posture
4. Relaxes the nervous system and helps ease stress and anxiety
5. Helps promote better sleeping
6. Management of chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma
7. Beter management of stressful situations through diaphragmatic breathing

If you think you may be breathing abnormally or maybe having difficulties taking a deep breath – please do not hesitate to contact Lorraine Herity at Better Health Osteopathy Christchurch today. Call 027 755 5700 or Book Online.

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