Did you know that you can improve your health, diminish the amount of stress in your life, increase your energy level, improve your concentration capacities and more just by doing the simplest thing on earth? Do you want to know what that is? Breathing.
It’s nice to know that you don’t have to think really hard to keep breathing and stay alive, but good posture and better breathing habits are definitely essential to improve your health. Proper posture not only helps you look more confident and slimmer but, more essentially, it helps you breathe more efficiently.
The body is built for good posture, good form, good breathing and good balance.
Efficient breathing comes from a healthy, movable and adaptable spine and chest where each and every vertebra and each rib take part of the motion.
The spine is intimately connected with the respiratory diaphragm. When you slouch you actually compress the diaphragm and the interior organs and restrict your chest expansion. It creates more tension in the mid-to-low back and eliminates the opportunity for you to fully fill your lungs with air. With time, this leads to tiredness, poor digestion and circulation, poor concentration and weakened immune system.
A lot of other physical and emotional health problems come from poor oxygenation. Anxiety is one of them, joined by sleeping difficulties, without mentioning all the spinal pain, headaches and lack of energy that are so common today.
Chiropractic care is essential to maintain fluidity in spinal and chest motion during breathing.
We have noticed an interesting reaction in a lot of patients following spinal adjustments. They have a reflex of taking a deep breath in right after getting their neck adjusted. It is as if the body was craving the oxygen and when there is an opening for satisfying, deeper breathing the body automatically lets the air in fully. The body needs this oxygen to flow in the body to heal the tissues affected and to increase proper circulation. Our patients often mention a sensation of well being or feeling lighter after their adjustments. Many of them also mentioned an improvement from allergies or relief from sinusitis.
It is also obviously important to learn to breathe properly to be healthy. If you want to be more performing and more efficient in your daily life and feel better you can do these breathing exercises.
It is best to do them outside. Breathe in through your nose deeply and slowly and breathe out through your mouth until you empty your lungs; repeat breathing through your nose and continue this cycle for two to three minutes every day. You can increase the time every day to reach doing it for 15 minutes.
It is important to keep your attention on your breathing and to try to empty your mind and not think about anything else. Keep attentive to the sensations you are feeling in your body and let your thoughts travel through your mind without grasping onto them. This is a simple exercise that will bring improvements in your daily life, more calm and serenity.
Enjoy this spring by going to the beach and do these breathing exercises. Take advantage of this Easter holiday to get you and your children to the chiropractor’s office and get your spine into shape.
By Sandra Genest-Boudreau | Christophe O. Alves
|| features@algarveresident.com
Sandra Genest-Boudreau is French-Canadian, who graduated from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1990 before coming to the Algarve in 2002. She is passionate about adjusting all her patients, particularly children. Christophe Alves graduated from the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic (AECC) UK, and has a special interest in Sport Chiropractic. Algarve Quiroprática clinic: EN125 in Pêra
282 312 853 | 969 397 375
Breathing in this spring
