Should we pay attention to how we are breathing? Yes, and I’m going to give you 20,000 reasons why we should. On average, we breath between 17,000 20,000 times per day. The muscles we use to accomplish this task play a critical role in neck, shoulder, and upper back tightness and pain.

Our main breathing muscle is the respiratory diaphragm (belly breathing) which is built to handle the bulk of the breathing work, day after day. The accessory muscles should only come in when we need the extra oxygen, for example, with exercise. These accessory muscles are located in the neck, shoulder, upper back and rib cage.

Belly breathing (or breathing as we should with our respiratory diaphragm) tends to shift the nervous system in to “parasympathetic tone” often referred to as “rest and digest”. Parasympathetic tone is where our body functions best, everything from digestion to muscle tone and tightness, and lower blood pressures.

However, chest breathing (with the accessory muscles) tends to shift our nervous system in to “sympathetic tone”, the famous “fight or flight”. The human body was never designed to function longterm in sympathetic tone. As many of us in our daily, always connected, stressful lives, have noticed, we have become habitual chest breathers as the “normal” breathing pattern. This tends to increase muscles tension that can lead to pain, negatively effects digestion and blood pressure, and can cause sleep cycle disturbances.

If there is one simple suggestion I can make to have global, systemic effects on your overall wellbeing, it would be to check your breathing pattern and include daily, diaphragmatic breathing. Your body will thank you!