Belly Breathing



Lots of excuses, no good reasons why I haven't posted in months. This one is about problems with belly breathing and has been in my brain for a while, so I'm happy to get it down now.

As I mentioned before, I have been a belly breather pretty much my whole life. This is probably because I sort of overdid or misunderstood using my diaphragm for singing. (I'm still figuring this out.) I've been singing in choirs since I was 10. When you watch me sing, you see a very active belly! That was particularly amusing when I had big pregnant bellies.

I thought my belly breathing was a good thing! I don't make weird wheezing sounds or take shallow breaths like I've heard from other people. My lungs recovered well after a life-threatening illness. So learning how belly breathing is problematic for one's core and pelvic floor has been eye-opening.

Think of it like this: when breathing with our bellies, we're inflating a balloon that then pushes outward everywhere, including down on the pelvic floor. Of course that's going to cause pain over time! This blog post describes the importance of learning how to both enjoy the benefits of belly breathing (relaxation, etc.) while also engaging the core. Doing so protects our spine, too.

Apparently, belly breathing has been having a moment. And like with any trend, people jump on without full awareness of what they're getting into. This post describes where belly breathing fits within our development and movements. Babies belly breath because they don't yet have or need their core muscle strength for sitting and walking. Keeping that in mind helps us adults, too--belly breathing has its place if we're lying down. But if we're upright, whether sitting or standing, we need to activate other core muscles, too. 

Now that I've learned how belly breathing alone isn't a good thing, I'm constantly reminding myself to use my other core muscles. I focus on expanding my ribcage outward and pulling my belly in a bit. Plus tilting my pelvis forward a little. My goal is to one day do all of this automatically. 

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