I’ve gone through the importance of abdominal breathing in Optimal Breathing: The Case for Diaphragmatic Breathing. In this post, I’ll talk about how to train for it, and then a basic method for training for using your diaphragm and abdomen breathing to generate intra-abdominal pressure (IAP), the optimal way for stabilizing your torso for movements.
First, how do you know if you are already breathing with your abdomen or not? It’s easy. Right now, without thinking much, take a deep breath, then let it out. How did you take in your breath? Was it via your upper chest, or maybe your shoulders? Or did neither of those move and only your abdomen?
If you didn’t move your chest or shoulders – congratulations you already breathe with your abdomen! Likely, this was not the case. You probably expanded your chest to take air in, or even lifted up on your shoulders to do it.
The real test to know if you are breathing with your abdomen fully is to spontaneously perform this test without thinking and see what happens. A higher level test is to see what happens during a yawn or cough; those are really subconscious actions and if you take in air during either of those two events, you know you have burned in abdominal breathing.
In the following videos, I show some simple exercises that I learned to encourage and imprint abdominal breathing. First, practice the first 3 videos whenever you can during the day, and every day if possible:



These exercises are designed primarily to teach you to turn off use of the chest and clavicular muscles to breathe, while encouraging use of your lower abdomen muscles instead. However, you should know that this is not the endgame. Abdominal breathing is merely the first step.
Proper posture and alignment is critical to gain the full benefits of abdominal breathing. You can breathe with your belly and still have poor alignment. Here is an example – below is a “before” picture of me at a Gokhale Method seminar. I was told to stand up straight. It was right during the time I was working on abdominal breathing:

This was my natural “stand up straight” stance at this time. Notice that my hips are pushed forward into what is called “sway back” or overextended lower back. I also have my chin tilted up, resulting in my neck/cervical spine also being overextended. But also notice the protruding belly as evidence that i was working on belly breathing.
Often, people reject using their belly to breathe because they are afraid of looking like they have a beer belly – a cultural nod to vanity. So they contract their belly muscles to hold it all in. This causes people to use the wrong muscles to brace their torso – they contract muscles that are needed for breathing and realize that when they need to stabilize they have to hold their breath to do so, and then when they let air back out, their stabilization disappears!
It wasn’t until I took Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) that I could understand what was really going on in the torso during stabilization. Once you learn how to use the diaphragm correctly to create IAP, it turns out that your “beer belly” will disappear.
After the seminar, I looked like this:

Note that good posture is defined as the lining up vertically of your earhole, the center of your shoulder, the center of your elbow, the center of your hips, the center of your knee, and last the ankle bone. I’m much better in the second picture, right? However, I was using Gokhale Method’s cues on activating the “inner corset” – it worked better than what I was doing, but they did not work on abdominal breathing nor IAP generation.
At DNS, I learned this simple technique of taking your abdominal breathing to the next level, which is the use of the diaphragm to create IAP:

Once I learned and imprinted this, I realized that it was an incorrect assumption that abdominal breathing leads always to a beer belly. When breathing this way, it caused activation of my transverse abdominis, this hidden sheet of muscle in the lower torso that is critical to stabilization of the entire body. I could thus remain stable AND breathe at the same time. Amazing! And…my beer belly disappeared because the transverse abdominals were activated all day long, holding my beer belly in check.
When you learn these basics, you have thus laid the foundation for bringing proper breathing methodology and IAP generation to athletics.

What is optimal breathing? It is much more than just standing around and sucking air in and pushing it out. In my research regarding breathing, western medicine has little to offer about breathing as a solution to health problems. However, it seems that all the knowledge and research comes out of Europe and through the yogis of India.
Leon Chaitow, an osteopath/naturopath based in London, is one of my favorite authors on the subject of breathing. In his book Recognizing and Treating Breathing Disorders, on Pg 26 is a description of optimal breathing:

Optimal breathing involves:

• Since the objective of breathing is to meet the metabolic demands of the body, oxygen (O 2 ) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) need to be efficiently moved into and out of the lungs ( Abernethy et al 1996 ).
• During quiet breathing, respiratory efficiency is achieved as the diaphragm descends into the abdominal cavity during inhalation, increasing the vertical dimensions of the thorax as the ribs rise and move laterally, to expand the transverse dimensions of the thorax.
• The diaphragm relaxing, and returning to its domed position on exhalation follows this sequence, as the abdomen and chest wall return to their starting positions.
• In good health, meeting the metabolic demands of the body optimally requires a steady, rhythmical pattern with a respiratory rate of 10-14 breaths per minute; involving a ratio of inspiration to expiration of 1 : 1.5-2.
• Ideally the least amount of mechanical effort from the respiratory musculature should be involved ( Jones et al 2003 ).
• If such an optimal pattern is disrupted, abnormal and potentially inefficient respiratory mechanics may become the new norm – with the emergence of a breathing pattern disorder.

There are actually four ways to breathe according to the yogis of India. In Light on Pranayama by B. K. S. Iyengar, on pg. 21:

Respiration may be classified into four types:
(a) High or clavicular breathing, where the relevant muscles in the neck mainly activate the top parts of the lungs.
(b) Intercostal or midbreathing, where only the central parts of lungs are activated.
(c) Low or diaphragmatic breathing, where the lower portions of the lungs are activated chiefly, while the top and central portions remain less active.
(d) In total or pranayamic breathing, the entire lungs are used to their fullest capacity.

You’d think that we all knew how to breathe correctly since we do it all day long. However, it seems that over time, we have developed a ton of faulty breathing patterns. In Karl Lewit’s Manipulative Therapy, pg. 31:

The most important faulty respiratory stereotype, seen from the point of view of the locomotor system, is that in which the thorax is lifted during inhalation ( Parow 1954 ). In this pattern the thorax is lifted in the cranial direction by the scalene and sternocleidomastoid muscles and the superior fixator muscles of the shoulder girdle, but without expansion of the chest.
Termed ‘clavicular breathing,’ it involves a reversal of the normal respiratory mechanism, since the scalene muscles, which normally only fix the thorax, raise the lung; resistance is offered by the diaphragm. This is inefficient, not only from the respiratory point of view, in that the volume of the chest increases very little, but also for the locomotor system, because of the chronic overload that this causes to the cervical spine.
A further effect is that fixation of the thorax to the pelvis no longer occurs, causing instability of the lumbar spine. The pattern of lifting the thorax during inhalation, or clavicular breathing, can be asymmetric, if one shoulder is raised more than the other. The stress on the cervical spine is then greater on this side. Clavicular breathing is the disturbance that typically occurs when sitting but not maintaining a straight posture, because this makes expansion of the thorax difficult.

and then on pg. 156, what can happen if you exhibit faulty breathing patterns:

Lifting the thorax during inhalation (clavicular breathing)

Tension	Superior parts of abdominal muscles, pectoralis, scalene, diaphragm, sternocleidomastoid muscles, short craniocervical extensors, levator scapulae, superior part of trapezius
Painful points of attachment	Posterior arch and transverse processes of atlas, spinous process of C2, nuchal line, sternal end of clavicle, superior border of scapula, sternocostal joints and upper ribs
Joint dysfunction (restrictions)	Atlanto- occipital and atlanto- axial joints, cervicothoracic junction, upper ribs, thoracic spine

Many things can cause these poor breathing patterns to establish themselves: physical (ie. injury) and emotional (ie. fear, stress) – even intellectual (ie. watching others breathe as models for their own breathing). Over the decades of life, all of these add up to developing poor patterns, certainly poor for performance much less quality of life. So it is important to get back to activating the diaphragm for breathing, where we can get to optimal breathing (as described previously).
Activating the diaphragm has function beyond just that of breathing. For performance, the diaphragm is critical in proper stabilization of the torso. As stated in Manipulative Therapy pg. 30, “The diaphragm is a respiratory muscle with a postural function, and the abdominal muscles are postural muscles with a respiratory function.” Maintaining proper posture and retaining that shape during movement is VERY HARD without the diaphragm helping.
From Recognizing and Treating Breathing Disorders, pg. 17:

A number of studies document coordinated synergy of the diaphragm, transverse abdominis, pelvic floor and the multifidus muscles during postural activity ( Hodges & Gandevia 2000b ). However, this synergy is not under full volitional control and modifiable. Therefore, the diaphragm, controlled by the CNS, assists in ensuring postural body control. The activity of motor neurons of the phrenic nerve is organized in such a way that the diaphragm simultaneously contributes to respiration as well as body stabilization and other nonventilatory behaviours ( Mantilla & Sieck 2008 ).

How does this stabilization work? From Manipulative Therapy pg. 30-31:

The way this is understood today is as follows: the diaphragm attaches dorsally to the spinal column and laterally to the inferior costal arch, while ventrally the fixed point is provided by the abdominal wall. Here, the co- contraction of the deep layer of the abdominal muscles has a key role. Kolar (2006) showed radiographically that the diaphragm was angled downward in the ventral to dorsal direction if the abdominal muscles were weak. If the abdominal muscles are functioning normally, contraction of the diaphragm during inhalation is accompanied by eccentric contraction of the deep abdominal muscles. This can be clearly palpated laterally above the iliac crest. The effect is not only to enable the diaphragm to function in the most efficient way and, as shown by Kapandji (1974) , to expand the thorax, but also to fix the thorax to the pelvis and so stabilize the lumbar spine. The activation of the abdominal muscles during inhalation was also described by Campbell (1978) and Basmajian (1978) .

Beyond the postural and stabilization function of the diaphragm, it also has other important functions relating to digestion (Recognizing and Treating Breathing Disorders, pg. 20):

During a breathing cycle, a rhythmic compression of the abdominal cavity occurs and leads to a cyclical movement of the internal organs. During inspiration, almost all internal organs of the abdominal and retroperitoneal areas shift several centimetres in a caudal direction ( Xi et al 2009 ). This organ movement and the pressure activity of the diaphragm partially contribute to the transport of food and digestive juices. In this way, the diaphragm assists in digestive processes and significantly contributes to peristalsis and food propulsion.

Removing faulty breathing patterns and re-activating diaphragmatic breathing, thus, has many benefits beyond just getting more air into your body.

I’ve finally decided to write about what I’ve learned about proper breathing. Starting here with nasal breathing, I’ve dug into the importance and ramifications of breathing via the nose:
Today I plowed through some books I had on breathing mechanics and have some references. The best book i found so far is “Recognizing and Treating Breathing Disorders” by Leon Chaitow. It is a clinician’s guide, but I read this stuff to gain clues into helping my swimmers. Some quotes and references:
“Finally there is a common association of mouth breathing with chest breathing.” pp. 83
Cites Barelli, Nasapulmonary Physiology, in Behaviorial psychological approaches to breathing disorders. 1994.
This quote basically says that you see mouth breathing as a symptom of chest breathing, which is not a desirable breathing pattern. When you breathe correctly via the diaphragm, you should not need to use your mouth to breathe. But chest breathing results in less air taken in, and therefore you reflexively open your mouth to get more air in.
“Nasal breathing is involuntary. Mouth or voluntary breathing occurs when there is difficulty breathing through the nose, such as in exertion, under stress, and in particular when cardiac, pulmonary, or other illness hampers supply of oxygen to the tissues.”
Again from Barelli above.
These next two quotes are most interesting:
“The nasal route adds at least 50% more resistance to air flow, so one might think that lowered resistance by bypassing the nostrils is a good thing. But pressure rise in the lungs during exhalation makes the air denser, simulating a lower attitude where the air is richer in oxygen per unit volume, and this improves perfusion into the alveoli. Also the increased resistance introduced into the system by nasal inhibition increases the vacuum in the lungs, resulting in a 10-20% increase in oxygen transported.”
“…slowing down the expiratory phase of respiration and ventilation, and the interposing of resistance to both inspiration and expiration which in turn helps to maintain the normal elasticity of the lungs, thus assuring optimal conditions for providing oxygen and good heart function.”
Citing Cottle, The work, ways, positions and patterns of nasal breathing (relevance in heart and lung illness), 1987.
so good things come from nasal breathing both inhalation and exhalation!