Bill Daniels argues that correct breathing is the single most important exercise for health. About 90% of his clients have breathing dysfunction, causing chronic pain, inflammation, and poor vitamin absorption. He teaches three-step diaphragmatic breathing: belly movement, rib expansion, and three-dimensional breathing with back engagement.
Today, we're going to talk about the number one exercise I recommend to every client that I work with. Hi, I'm Bill Daniels, owner of beyondfitnessonline.com, and if you like these videos, please go ahead and subscribe below. You'll get all my updates every single Friday. So the number one exercise I recommend to absolutely everybody is to learn how to breathe properly. Now oftentimes, That seems a little bit weird because we're like, hey, I've been breathing all my life. How could I possibly be doing that wrong? The truth is that about 90% of people that I work with have some sort of breathing dysfunction with the mechanics of their breathing. There's a certain way our body is supposed to breathe, and when we don't do it properly, then we end up with all kinds of other problems. Some of those symptoms include chronic pain, inflammation, or swelling in your joints. If you see any of that, there's a good chance there's a breathing problem. If you can't lose weight, if you're doing everything right, your nutrition's on track, you're exercising, but you've hit that plateau and you just can't get over the hump, odds are there's a breathing problem. If you have osteoporosis or osteopenia, there's a good chance there's a breathing problem. Another telltale sign that there could be a breathing problem is if you have a hard time absorbing your fat-soluble vitamins. So if you're low in your vitamin D, which is very common, there could be a problem with your breathing mechanics. Other fat-soluble vitamins are A, E, and K. So if you're low in any of those, that could also be an indication of a breathing issue. So let's talk a little bit about the anatomy of breathing. So basically right underneath your ribs here, you have a muscle called your diaphragm. Now the diaphragm's main job is to pump the lungs, to open them up for air to come in and to push them closed to push everything out. This is how we circulate air into the blood and through the body. So it's really important that we're breathing through here when we're at rest. What we often see are people breathing up in the chest. Now, this is a technique of breathing that we use when we are under stress. It's a good technique for those situations, but we can't get into the habit of breathing that way all the time. Now, with today's lifestyle in America, we often get into these stressful situations. We overwork ourselves, we don't sleep enough, so on and so forth. We start to chronically breathe up here, and when we are at rest, we continue to breathe up here, not using the diaphragm. Now the diaphragm has a tissue around it called myofascial tissue, and that's kind of like this sticky webbing in a sense that surrounds all of our muscles. It also surrounds all of our organs. Now the tissue on your diaphragm attaches to the tissues surrounding your organs. It also attaches to the tissues on your transverse abdominis, which is your deepest abdominal muscle. Now, what happens is, as you breathe through the diaphragm, it gently moves your organs. That's important because your organs actually need movement to stay healthy and to function properly. If you're not breathing through the diaphragm, then you're not moving those organs, and that can lead to other issues. A lot of these issues can be pain that we feel. Now, in a future post, we'll go deeper into Visceral pain, but visceral pain is basically pain that we get because we have an organ problem. It can be very minor, it can be very serious depending on what the actual problem is. But what we want to do is be able to move those organs so that any minor problem with the organs can be solved. So if the diaphragm attaches to those organs and it moves it, that's great. The diaphragm also attaches to the transverse abdominis. So the organs that don't attach— To the diaphragm. to the diaphragm attached to the transverse abdominis, and that gets moved by diaphragmatic breathing. So it's important to make sure we start breathing through there to eliminate pain. And then in addition to that, breathing through here will actually lower your stress hormone levels. And that will in turn— Relieve a bunch of other problems. If you can't lower your stress hormones and balance your hormonal profile, You're gonna end up having a difficult time losing weight. So you wanna make sure that you're able to settle your hormones and be able to relax. So diaphragmatic breathing can help with that. Also, if we are breathing properly, it will pump our lymphatic system. Again, I'll have another post in the future about the lymphatic system, but pumping the lymphatic system has a whole other host of jobs. Which is reducing inflammation and swelling in the body, and it also helps you to absorb your fat-soluble vitamins. So just right there, by breathing properly through the diaphragm, you're solving so many problems just like that. Finally, the last piece I want to touch upon with breathing properly is when you want to detoxify your body. There's pollutants all around us, and our body has a system in which it takes those things out of our body and gets rid of it. Now, if we are breathing properly, you are— and you exhale properly, you will actually be exhaling a lot of those toxins and getting rid of them. That's in addition to sweating and your elimination in the bathroom. That's how you'll get rid of those toxins. But breathing, you do more than any of those other things. So breathing is vital to your health. So to improve your breathing, Here's where to start. You can do this standing, seated, or lying on your back. But what you're going to do is you're going to put your hand here on your belly, and you're going to put one hand up here on your chest. When you take a deep breath in, the hand on your belly should be the one moving. If the hand on your chest goes up and down, then you are chronically chest breathing. Okay, so we want to focus on trying to breathe through here. If you're having a difficult time doing it, Lay on your back, put a little bit of pressure on your belly either with your hands or with an external weight, and just try to breathe into that. That's step 1. Step 2, put your hands on the sides of your ribs. Try to breathe in, and when you do, your hands should expand out. Okay? That's going to get a lot of expansion. You're using the lungs and the diaphragm in every direction. The last piece would be to put your hands on your back. I'll show you quickly. Okay. Right here, so they're just on the outsides of my spine, and as you breathe in, you should feel some movement through your thumbs. If you're doing that, you're doing what's called 3-dimensional breathing, and you're getting a lot of diaphragmatic action in there, and you're really making big steps forward to improve your breathing. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button below, and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already. I post every Friday, and please leave comments with any questions. I answer them all personally. Until next time, live healthy.
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