Posture
A good, natural posture can benefit digestive health. Proper posture allows for the needed flow of oxygen and blood to the brain. It allows for others to see you in a good light also, as improper posture is quickly recognized and automatically taken in as information about you. For instance, if you have rounded shoulders, others will unconsciously see you as lacking confidence. And if you have too-straight posture, you could appear overconfident. We want to flow into society with a natural confidence: strong, yet approachable. We need our shoulders to be above our hips, having a natural curve in the lower back and a slight, natural curve in the neck. Our shoulders should be back but relaxed, allowing us to breathe easily from our diaphragm.
Working on you posture is best done slowly. Compare your posture to a chart online. If you have a chiropractor or holistic health care provider, get their advice so you can know what needs to be corrected. Strengthen the muscles with targeted exercises for your particular issue. There are many exercises online to target weakened areas of the body. Make sure you find the ones best suited for you and do them throughout the day, a little at a time. Working on your posture takes time and does not need to be rushed.
Once you have worked on your posture for a significant amount of time and feel comfortable in a proper posture, begin to look into orthotropics and a technique called mewing1. This will perfect your posture, allow stem cells to assist in rebuilding bone in your face and will implement chewing to increase your jaw size. Mewing will also assist in correct breathing. It is not easy to do when your body needs a lot of healing so go slow and be consistent.
Breath
Our bodies were designed for us to breathe in a certain way, so it is important to conform our breathing to that design. Every cell in our body needs oxygen to create energy, and carbon dioxide is not merely a waste product. Carbon dioxide is involved in regulation of blood pH, respiratory drive and affinity of haemoglobin for oxygen.2 It has an important job, which includes supporting the movement and availability of oxygen.
A therapy used by neurodevelopmentalists is masking, where the patient “re-breathes” air from lungs into a mask. The body gets a dose of carbon dioxide which aids in the next phase: the deep, cleansing breath of oxygen. This can be especially helpful in patients with brain injuries or neurodevelopmental disorders.
By using breathing techniques to train yourself to breathe naturally throughout the day and by spending time doing deep breathing exercises, you can ensure that your oxygen and carbon dioxide are at adequate levels. Slow breaths are healthy breaths, and the perfect breath is a 5.5 second inhale followed by a 5.5 second exhale.3
We always want to breathe from our diaphragm using deep, slow breaths, and we must breathe from our nose. If you are a mouth breather, please begin mouth taping at night and train yourself to breath in through your nose during the day. The nose filters and humidifies, giving us the cleanest oxygen possible. An inhalation through the mouth is a toxic breath, so while we sometimes need a sip of air through the mouth, we should mostly be inhaling through the nose.
Deep breathing exercises in the morning, middle of the day, and before bed will aid in keeping you in a parasympathetic nervous system state. When we lock in our diaphragm and breathe short and shallow breaths, our sympathetic nervous system is activated and no healing takes place. Screen time can also activate this state, so it is important to properly regulate the time spent with our devices in order to be able to switch back into parasympathetic mode.
Learning to breathe properly is a vital aspect of any healing journey. Those with PTSD, anxiety, or panic attacks can greatly benefit from learning breathing techniques. Benefits have also been seen in people with scoliosis, emphysema, and COPD.
Resources for Learning More
- Mouth Taping
- Diaphragmatic Breathing
- The Perfect Breath
- Beginner Breathing Exercises
- Wim Hof
- The Butyeko Method
- The Jesus Prayer (Oratio Iesu) - Use chant silently while breathing 4 seconds in nasally, hold for 4 seconds, out through mouth for 6 and hold for two.
- Ave Maria - Same as above or can be said silently 5.5 seconds nasal inhale, 5.5 seconds mouth exhale
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Mewing is an orthotropic technique developed by Drs John and Michael Mew, primarily aimed at developing proper jaw structure. ↩︎
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NIH: Physiology, Oxygen Transport and Carbon Dioxide Dissociation Curve ↩︎
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Nestor, James. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. New York, New York, United States: Riverhead Books, 2020. ↩︎