8 Healthy Breathing Habits

How to Improve Your Breathing: Day by Day, Habit by Habit

Awareness

Be aware of how you breathe and how it compares to normal, healthy breathing which is nasal, smooth, satisfying, silent, small, slow, low and low. The first step to undoing your breathing faults is to notice them. Tune in to the rate, rhythm, sound, route and location of your breathing. Common faults include: mouth, audible, fast, irregular and upper chest breathing, sighing, yawning, coughing, sneezing, large/full breaths, throat clearing, puffing/panting and gasping when talking.

Nose Breathing

Work towards becoming a full-time nose breather, day and night and during exercise. For many people mouth breathing is just a habit. Just by being aware and giving it a go nasal breathing can become your norm. For those with nasal congestion this can be difficult and I have various strategies we can use to get you on the path to fulltime nose breathing.

Upright Posture

The diaphragm is the main breathing muscle and its action is compromised by slumping. When you are slumped your lower chest and abdomen are compressed and your breathing rate and level of tension increase and you are more likely to upper-chest breathe, mouth breath and over breathe. Using your chest muscles rather than your diaphragm to breathe means your breathing volume increases by up to as much as 50-80%. You also switch on your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which leads to an increased breathing volume and a viscous cycle of over-breathing is created.

Regular Breathing

How you breathe during the day determines how you breathe at night. Uneven, irregular day time breathing habits may include fast or heavy breathing, sniffing, throat clearing, coughing, sighing, yawning and breath holding (day apnoea). Coughing and throat clearing can become well-practised habits. This kind of breathing sets you up for dysfunctional breathing during sleep – varying breath sizes, heavy breathing, snoring, speeding up or slowing down of breathing, stopping, starting and snorting.

Diaphragm Breathing

This is the most efficient, restful way to breathe. Many breathing related conditions involve chest-breathing. People have a lot of misconceptions about diaphragm breathing which when done correctly is inaudible as well as invisible, light, small and passive. The smaller the better.

8-12 Breaths per Minute

This element of normalising the breathing pattern does not require specific practice because it will follow naturally from developing the previous habits. Your breathing automatically slows down as you change from mouth to nose breathing and as you change from chest to diaphragm breathing.

Breathing Control During Speech and Singing

For many people poor speech habits mean that every time they talk they hyperventilate. Addressing this issue will help you to reduce breathing-related symptoms much faster. Again, poor breathing habits while talking are just a habit and often due to lack of awareness. Common faults include gasping inhalations through the mouth and using more air than is necessary.

Breathing Well During Exercise

Exercise is vital to good health, however, for many people today their baseline breathing pattern is dysfunctional and when they exercise this is exacerbated. Most people automatically mouth breathe when they exercise which leads to over breathing. Again awareness is the key to maintaining nasal breathing while exercising. If you cannot then slow down to a pace that enables you to nose breathe – be led by the breath.

Written by Nicky McLeod BA, MBIBH, Breathing Educator/Buteyko Practitioner. Nicky runs The Breathing Clinic in Nelson. She will be giving public talks in Wellington and offering breathing assessments 20-26 November 2024. For more details visit the Clinic events page.