If you’ve been practising breathing exercises but still feel anxious, tired or like you can never catch your breath, the problem might not be the exercises themselves. It could be your everyday breathing pattern.
Think of it like building a house. You wouldn’t start with the roof you’d build strong foundations first. Breathing is no different. Before trying techniques to calm your nervous system, improve sleep or reduce stress, it’s important to make sure your everyday breathing is supporting you rather than working against you.
Healthy breathing foundations are the basis for every breathing technique. Once they’re in place, breathwork often feels easier, more natural and much more effective.
What Are Healthy Breathing Foundations?
This is where your breathing at rest is optimal for oxygen delivery, carbon dioxide balance and a fluid nervous system. Don’t get me wrong, likely you’re not breathing wrong (because you’re alive) but your body has simply adapted to the demands you’ve placed on it. Stress, anxiety, poor sleep, illness and modern lifestyles can all influence how we breathe without us even noticing.
How should you breathe?
Nasal – your nose has MANY different ways it supports your body to run optimally by filtering and warming the air, producing nitric oxide, engaging your diaphragm and helping regulate your nervous system. Nose breathing is one of the simplest ways to improve your breathing pattern.
Gentle – You don’t want to be grabbing in huge amounts of air with big breaths. It’s not about quantity, bigger isn’t better. It’s about efficiency. When we breathe more optimally we’re able to deliver more oxygen to the body from smaller amounts of air coming in… cool right?
Slow – When we train the body to slow the breath down, as well as helping with the above, we bring the body into a more gentle, rested state and away from fight or flight. We give the body a moment to rest and switch down gears (and let’s be honest, we need that more and more in the modern world we live in.
Expansive – Use that diaphragm more and more efficiently. The first principle I used with a client was expansive breathing, 5 minutes for 5 days and she came back the next week saying she felt like she had more mental clarity. We’re delivering oxygen to the body – THATS A WIN.
Signs Your Breathing Pattern May Need Support.
- You breathe through your mouth regularly.
- Your shoulders lift when you breathe.
- You often hold your breath without realising.
- You snore.
- You wake feeling tired despite enough sleep.
- You sigh or yawn frequently.
- You often feel like you can’t get a satisfying breath.
Why Breathing Exercises Don’t Always Work.
Box breathing is the one exercise everyone talks about, it’s the go to when you ask AI or google… and it’s great if you have foundations in place. For some people, especially those living with high levels of anxiety, box breathing can initially feel uncomfortable or increase awareness of uncomfortable sensations. That doesn’t mean the exercise is bad, it may simply mean your body would benefit from building healthier breathing foundations first.
Physiologically it’s a technique that makes a lot of changes in the body, slowing your breath down, increasing CO2, using different muscles for breathing… It’s not bad, but to your body it’s different, it creates a change to what your body is used to and your body sees that as a threat. So, it’s going to send sensations to you to make you change away from that technique…
One of the biggest misconceptions I see with clients is people believing they’ve failed at breathwork or breathwork is bad because an exercise didn’t help. In reality, it’s often because they’ve skipped the foundations. Once we improve their everyday breathing pattern, the techniques become much easier and more effective.
What’s Next?
If you’d like to improve your breathing foundations, reduce stress and anxiety, sleep better or simply feel more like yourself again, I’d love to help.
I work with clients on a one-to-one basis, creating personalised breathing programmes based on your goals, lifestyle and health.
You can also join my 4-Week Breathwork Journey, where we build strong breathing foundations before exploring rest, somatics and somatic release techniques.
If you’re ready to learn how to breathe properly and experience the difference it can make, get in touch.