Breathwork & Stress Tolerance

We may breathe up to 30,000 times/day depending on various factors. How you perform those breaths, what you breathe with (nose vs. mouth) and the frequency of those breaths all matter more than you think! By breathing inefficiently, we start to use secondary muscles of respiration (neck, shoulder and back musculature) to assist in getting more air in and out. That creates undo tension on said musculature and can facilitate problems up and down the chain. Chronic poor breathing patterns have a massive influence on your posture and movement. This can all create poor patterning of how you stand, walk, run, shoot, squat, sit, sleep, work and play.

Stress is at the heart of why we breathe. When we say ‘stress’ we don’t just mean the stress that we incur with our jobs, careers, childrearing, family, relationships, etc. Stress is ANYTHING that increases OVERALL STRAIN on your body, mind or our physiology. How we respond to that stressor dictates our behavior & habits. We also know that any stress will immediately have an impact on your breathing.

Your nervous system’s job is simple – survive! It will do anything in it’s power to keep you safe – including ramping up your breath rate (hyperventilation,) increasing your blood pressure, facilitating vasoconstriction of blood vessels (increase in blood pressure) and much more all in the hopes that you survive > live. Our nervous system’s activity and response is intimately linked to our breath and as your nervous system responds to anything internal or external to our bodies, so does our breathing. Problem is that most often we are not in mortal danger, but our bodies and minds think we are.

Integrating breathwork into our rehabilitation protocols and programs has radically shifted how we treat the human condition. We have seen how much faster muscles and joints ‘loosen’ and how movement restrictions improve as well as significant increases in our ability to recruit muscle activity that was previously lacking all by modifying and working with one’s own breath.