Diaphragm Biomechanics Series (1 of 3): "The Problem with Belly Breathing" with Dr. Sarah Petrich

Dr. Sarah Petrich takes us through airflow and diaphragm mechanics of belly breathing, and why it is not the best way to breathe for posture or spine alignment.  She explains the best way to breathe utilizes your core and diaphragm simultaneously for proper posture and spine decompression.

About Sarah Petrich, PT, DPT, PRC, NCPT: 

As a specialist in Postural Restoration, Pilates, & Dance Medicine, Dr. Sarah Petrich provides physical therapy and Pilates training focusing on re-balancing posture, alignment and breathing for patients and wellness clients. When not in the clinic or on zoom, she's often traveling around the nation teaching educational courses to healthcare professionals, Pilates instructors and other movement specialists. You can find her and her courses on her website www.sarahpetrich.com or on Instagram at @drsarahpetrich.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Just be happy with the air

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I breathe .

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Joseph Pilates said, above all, learn to breathe
correctly. And I couldn't agreemore. Uh, I am Dr. Sarah
Petrich . I'm a physicaltherapist and a Pilates
instructor that is a littleobsessed with breathing. Um,
and if you happen to go, ah , Iknow all about breathing. I've
Googled diaphragmaticbreathing. Well, we're gonna

(00:36):
talk a little bit more in depth. So if you google
diaphragmatic breathing, whatyou're gonna come up with is
belly breathing. And it is themost common type of breathing
style that there is. Uh , it'sused by yoga instructors and
voice teachers and also themajority of healthcare workers,
if I'm gonna be honest. Uh ,and in fact part of it is

(00:59):
because it's well researched.
There's a lot of research thatlooks at belly breathing and
it's true. It does help yourelax de-stress. It improves
anxiety and depression andimproves your sleep. There's so
many benefits to , uh, gettingbetter breath mechanics. It's
innumerous. Now , uh, it isusually instructed this way. So

(01:26):
when you breathe in, a bellybreather will focus on really
expanding their belly andreally only their belly. And a
lot of times they um , peoplewill instruct them , instruct
people to not expand their rim,cage or their chest in any way,
which is always a littleshocking to me because if you

(01:48):
think about it, your lungs arein your chest and that's what
should be expanding with air.
What's happening down here whenyou belly breathe and expand
down here is you're not gettingair in your belly. What you're
doing is you're pushing andyou're using your diaphragm to
push down, bearing down on yourinternal organs and you're

(02:11):
pushing your internal organsout of your body. And guess
what? Your abs definitely can'tbe on when you're doing that.
And for some people you're evenpushing down on your pelvic
floor, which is not a goodthing to be bearing down on
your pelvic floor all the time.
Can we say urinaryincontinence, prolapse,

(02:33):
hemorrhoids, hernias? Whew .
You don't wanna deal with anyof that, so you might as well
not , uh, not promote that kindof belly breathing. Now,
restful belly breathing, ifyou're just at rest and your
belly expands a little bitwithout trying to push it out,
okay, but remember our lungsare up here so we do wanna have

(02:59):
air expansion that goes intoyour chest and it can go and
expand front and back and itcan go side to side and you can
even get air way up in the topof your chest. In fact, if you
are ever really concerned aboutyour posture, which is a
subject near and dear to myheart, and you happen to be one
of these people that look likethey're sunken in, in the top

(03:21):
of their chest, if you getbetter at figuring out a
different way to breathe thatpromotes air expansion to your
upper chest without using yourneck to get it there, we can
actually improve your posturewithout having to do a bunch of
shoulder blades, squeezes, anda lot of strengthening. We can

(03:42):
just make your breath do allthe work. So if you're getting
excited about that, hold yourhorses. So we'll get to that
and some breath mechanics andimproving air flow for posture,
but also for just betteroverall health in another
video. Now why is bellybreathing so popular though?

(04:04):
Well, research does stillsupport it. 'cause if you're
thinking about breathing, it'sgonna help calm your nervous
self system down anyway, it'sculturally passed down from um,
really for decades and decades.
People have talked about valleybreathing 'cause it does help
you relax. However, if youwould like to have better

(04:27):
performance , um, and feel alittle bit more relaxed, we can
have both. And why I bring thatup is because you can uh,
breathe with your diaphragmwell and get good lung
expansion and relax yournervous system, but also have
the benefit of having corestability. Now if you're

(04:50):
thinking, oh yes, corestability is important and if I
belly breathe all the time, I'mnot using my abs. I have to let
'em relax so it expands. I'mwith you. You have not seen an
athlete, an elite athleteperform and perform well while
belly breathing and there's areally good reason for that
'cause they need their corestability to help them perform

(05:12):
well. But if you can have goodrespiration and core stability
at the same time, you're gonnahave the best of both worlds.
Now there's more dysfunctionalbreathing other than just belly
breathing and that bellybreathing, not , not super
terrible but not the best. Butthere's a lot of people walking

(05:33):
around trying to breathe a fewdifferent ways because they're
trying to either have reallygood core stability all the
time without respecting gooddiaphragmatic breathing at the
same time. Remember we gottatry to have both, not one or
the other. And some people liketo walk around, I call 'em gut

(05:53):
suckers and they're inhalingand sucking their gut in at
that same time 'cause they'retrying to look nice and thin.
And what they do is they pushtheir ribs forward and they're
flattening their diaphragm sothat it really , uh, it's
contracted but it's notcontracted in a good way. When
a muscle contracts, you wantthe fibers to actually get

(06:16):
closer together for that musclecontraction. If you push your
ribs out and I've got thislovely rim cage model, if you
push these ribs out here oroutward that way you can ,
you're really flattening thediaphragms. So it does what I
like to call splatting. Sothose fibers in here aren't

(06:40):
getting closer together, butthey're actually spreading
apart, still contracting butspreading apart and it's not as
efficient of a contraction,believe it or not. So you
definitely don't want a splayedout diaphragm. So don't be a
gut sucker. Plus it also starts, uh, putting you in the

(07:02):
category potentially ofparadoxical breathing. That is
like the reverse mechanics ofwhat you want your diaphragm to
do. So if you're sucking yourgut on inhalation and then when
you exhale your belly goes out,we call that paradoxical
breathing. That's a big no-nonot good for your body. But
then you also have one othertype of breather and those are

(07:25):
the people. And I used to beone of these so I can
definitely make fun of them'cause I am definitely, I used
to be in this category as aformer dancer. I used to think
I need to have my core workingsuper hard all the time, even
when I'm just walking around inthe hallways at school. So I
would grip my abdominals andknit my ribs together. And

(07:48):
guess what, I have treated alot of Pilates instructors that
do that just because we talkabout core all the time and
Pilates. So they're likeworking way too hard to try to
overachieve. And what they'redoing is they're really doing a
disservice to their diaphragmand their breath. So they're

(08:09):
actually starting to misuseyour abdominals. Yes, you can
miss your misuse, yourabdominals. You can misuse them
just to brace and createtension, which you know,
tension, okay ? Um , and notuse them for good breathing.
And the first thing that youreally want your abdominals to
do for you is actually helppromote better breathing, not

(08:32):
just tension through your body.
So way too , for our nextvideo, we're gonna talk about
good breathing mechanics, whatthey look like, and then we're
gonna start to figure out howto actually attain this zone of
opposition type of breathingthat gives you both your core
and good diaphragmaticrespiration. Thanks everybody

(08:56):
for watching and I wanna do anextra special thanks to Oxygen
Plus I hope you learnsomething. And if you'd like to
find me, you can [e-mail].
S-A-R-A-H-P-E-T-R-I-C h.com .
Or if you wanna learn moreabout Oxygen Plus you can find
[e-mail].