Why Stress is Hurting You: Breathing Changes Posture
In this modern life we find stressors on a regular basis and not so much in the ways that we thought of when we were younger. Now we find all factors giving us stressors from coworkers, the work and deadlines we have, feeding our families and if you are like me the political nature of being brown and a woman. It continues in many ways but knowing what are short term stressors versus what are long term stressors and how it will affect our bodies and life in ways we only see if we zoom out more.
How Our Breathing Changes
In many of us we are less able to breathe as deeply as we would ideally like to be at. Mainly restricting our lateral side breathing and our back breathing. This is often a sign of stress and long term overall can change your postural alignment in your spine. Thus finding our neck, shoulders and lower back becoming stiffer and lacking movement. Long term (decades) can lead to increased biomechanical issues as we start to shorten and overall reduce ability to recover in our later years.
This is one point we can address when we focus on our rehabilitation based movement exercises. Especially those feeling tension related pains when the muscles have been inactive from an injury or accident. You may notice this in your neck when you try to work your abdominals, or when you try to lift a leg off a surface when laying on your back. As a movement practitioner I see this more often that anyone would believe. In ways I see it the moment someone walks in the door now.
How can we address this? One way I prefer to work this is in different positions. One being laying on your back, with your knees resting higher than the chest to focus on your upper back more than the front ribs. If we consider how the breathing will look like, the spine lengthens and the inhale occurs and contracts as we exhale. You’ll see your front ribs stay aligned with your front hip bones while the sides of your ribs expand with the front and back. Note that the left lung is smaller than the right due to the heart and so some of us will have a harder time breathing into the left. Eventually you will be able to do this in various positions such as seated, standing and laying completely flat, when aches and pains decrease.
Let’s continue this further in our next post so we can dive deeper into the changes of your joint alignments.
How Our Studio Differs from PT and Pilates
Combining pilates, holistic health, corrective exercise and physical therapy aware procedures we create a plan and routine for you to do that helps your injury, your compensation patterns, and muscular imbalances that may be a cause of tension in other parts of your body. This combined, focused and developed work not only helps you reduce pain but allows you to reduce re-injury, prevent future set backs and plan to be healthier than you’ve ever been before!
Our MVNT Approach
A deep dive on our approach is in my previous post here. Our MVNT method in summary focuses on all your past history, your lifestyle that may increase inflammation, and your goals and movement needs day to day.
These factors in mind develop into our full MVNT practice. Involved with in person or virtual pilates based training, following client education with an at home practice to continue daily. These become the stepping stones so that once each is met in ways that pain is reduced we continue to return your body to the abilities of it’s fullest potential while preventing further pain and discomfort that may involve more corrective exercises for imbalances in your musculature. Once each step is achieved we slowly progress to the movements the spine is able to do and challenge your areas of issue so that we provide the guidance and skills so that those movements no longer become an issue!
Our goal is to get you back to moving as your best self while preventing future set backs. So if this was informative to you and may interest you in becoming a client with me. Find our studio and see us for a consultation any day.
Virtual Pilates training & consultation
Studio Pilates training & consultation