Benefits of Diaphragmatic Breathing

The diaphragm is a large, dome-shaped muscle at the base of the lungs. Your abdominal muscles help move the diaphragm and provide more power to empty your lungs. Diaphragmatic breathing, also known as abdominal breathing or belly breathing, is meant to help you use the diaphragm correctly and more efficiently while breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing provides many benefits to your body, as we will explore below.

With diaphragmatic breathing, you learn to use your diaphragm to take deep breaths. With normal breathing, you don’t use your lungs to their full capacity, but diaphragmatic breathing allows you to use your lungs at increased capacity to improve your lungs’ efficiency.

Diaphragmatic breathing helps you use your diaphragm correctly when breathing in order to:

Strengthen your diaphragm

Decrease oxygen demand

Decrease the work of breathing by slowing your breathing rate

Use less energy and effort to breathe

Benefits of diaphragmatic breathing include:

Increasing ability to relax

Increasing the amount of oxygen in your blood

Improving muscle function during exercises and preventing excessive strain

Reducing blood pressure

Reducing heart rate

Reducing excessive use of accessory breathing muscles in your chest and neck

Reducing overall stress

Reducing anxiety

Improving awareness of core and pelvic floor muscles and better managing the pressure systems that work in these areas

So now that you know the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing, how do you do it?

Step 1: Lie on your back on a flat surface with your knees bent and head supported.

Step 2: Put one hand on your upper chest and the other hand just below your rib cage on your belly.

Step 3: Breathe in slowly through your nose so that your stomach moves out, causing your lower hand to rise. The hand on your upper chest should be as still as possible.

Step 4: As you exhale through pursed lips, tighten your stomach muscles so that your stomach moves in, causing your hand to lower.

Once you have mastered diaphragmatic breathing lying down, you can practice performing it in a seated position as well. It may feel unnatural or difficult at first, but the more you practice, the more automatic it will become.

In physical therapy, incorporating diaphragmatic breathing training is beneficial for many patients, as it allows for decreased stress, more relaxation of neck and upper chest muscles, and more awareness of core and pelvic floor muscle activation and coordination, to name a few specifics.

Diaphragmatic breathing is worth incorporating into your daily routine, and if you have difficulty with it, a physical therapist can help you and assimilate it into your rehab and exercise routines!