The Power Of Breath: My Personal Story
To put it simply, breathing changed my life. I know that sounds silly but the one thing all humans are inherently made to do, I was doing wrong for the last 20 plus years. Issues I’ve dealt with including chronic knee pain, shortness of breath, weight issues, and poor posture, I can now trace back to years of breathing incorrectly. And come to find out I’m not alone, 90% of the human population are also poor breathers and don’t even know it.
Just over one year ago, I started my breathing journey. At that point I did not know the multiple benefits it would have on my body and my future. Since 8 years old, I have suffered from bilateral knee pain that caused discomfort throughout my long and robust athletic career. My knees hurt during runs, they hurt climbing stairs, they even hurt when I was doing absolutely nothing such as sitting in the car. I tried multiple avenues to address this pain but eventually I decided it was something I had to live with.
As a physical therapist who recently started their own business, it wasn’t a good look that I couldn’t even fix my own knee pain. So after hearing about the use of breathing to fix bodily pains from a friend and fellow physical therapist, I was intrigued and confused. Why had we never learned about this in PT school if it actually worked? Either way my curiosity won, and I figured if I could help my knee pain and learn a new treatment technique it was a win win. I started the breathing exercises and did about 6 sessions spaced out over a 4-5 month span. My knee was not touched in any of those sessions, no manual treatments, no specific exercises targeting the knee, the only thing we worked on was breathing. And let me preface by saying it was HARD! As someone who rarely sweats when I work out, I would leave these sessions glistening and in disbelief that breathing was a workout.
At these sessions I learned how to stack my rib cage over my pelvis so that my main breathing muscle, the diaphragm, was in an optimal position to work. This included activating my glutes and hamstrings to control my pelvis, and engaging the correct abdominal muscles to control my rib cage. Within those 5 months I realized that my knee pain had nothing to do with my knees as I was told by all the other healthcare practitioners. My chronic pain was just the symptom of poor breathing patterns that lead to compensation strategies throughout my body. Since completing these sessions, I can go for runs pain free (with a pep in my step I never had), I can do lunges (with weight!) and not even think twice about it, something I previously avoided like the plague. I can sit for long periods of time without suffering in pain, but more importantly, I learned I was not broken and my body could heal. Oddly, I felt stronger than I ever had before without spending hours a week exercising.
I quickly realized that along with fixing my knee pain, these exercises had many more positive effects. For one, I was able to get a full deep breath for the first time in my entire life, something that was previously “diagnosed” as sports induced asthma, and I would later find out was anxiety. It was the biggest relief to breathe fully and not be searching for a few more ounces of breath with every inhale.
A bonus I never would have expected was a change in my body’s shape, weight, and posture. Being a female, I have been self conscious of how I looked since a young age. I was always searching for a way to shed those extra pounds, but like most diets I would lose the weight and put it right back on. I felt like I had a different body shape than most with a wide rib cage and zero hour glass shape of my abdomen which I chalked up to genetics and having an athletic build. Lastly, I started to notice my head and shoulders falling forward in pictures regardless of trying to hold good posture.
It’s crazy to say but all 3 of these things have changed since I started these breathing exercises. Did it happen right away? Of course not. Have I done other things as well? Yes. But these exercises have been the one major change I have made over the last year. Because I can activate my oblique muscles in a new way I now have a mini hourglass shape that I never knew was possible. I have quit the fad dieting and have found that my base weight slowly dropped by 10-15 pounds without changing my eating habits or depriving myself of calories and my favorite foods. And lastly, my posture has improved greatly without consciously trying making me look more symmetrical side to side.
As you are reading this, I'm sure these changes seem too good to be true. I would have been just as skeptical. But this is my breathing story and since learning the benefits I have used these same techniques with multiple clients to help shoulder, neck, back, hip, knee, and foot pain. Over the next few months, I hope to continue sharing the benefits proper breathing can have on the human body, in many more ways than explained today. The power of breath is real and I believe it is the key to healing the human body from the many pains and diseases our population is faced with today.