This article explains correct East-West breathing and incorrect North-South breathing patterns and how posture and breathing are interrelated and affect each other. Included are Egoscue posture exercises to help correct posture imbalances and restore natural diaphragmatic breathing. 

To have your breathing and posture evaluated for free contact us today! We can design personalized posture exercise routines to restore postural alignment and function allowing East-West Breathing to occur naturally. 

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You will break a sweat doing these posture exercises that will challenge your core strength, function, flexibility, and cardiovascular system. This Pete Egoscue designed workout will increase your postural stability and decrease your muscular imbalances and bring a smile your face. Building deep postural strength and re-establishing balance and vertical loading of your body will decrease injuries and improve performance. 

Give this workout a try and if you need an easier or harder challenge, contact us for a workout personalized to your fitness level and goals. 

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Have you ever been told to pull your belly button in and hold it there during exercise? 

Do you try to keep your stomach tight while lifting weights, working out, or while sitting at work?

Why? Where did this idea come from? The photoshopped images of anorexic models we see in fashion magazines or the heavily touched up photos of six pack abs in fitness magazines?

Should these images really be our role models for health and fitness? Probably not. (Just look at how terrible their posture is because of holding their abs in and tight - rounded shoulders, forward head, thoracic flexion, lumbar flexion, posterior pelvic tilt...a recipe for pain, injury, depression, and acid reflux among other things)

Those fashion and fitness models are often very unhealthy, do not possess functional strength that matters in real life, and their habits of stomach tightening and pulling in can cause many negative health problems.

I think the perfect models for natural, healthy movement and breathing are children. If you have ever been in my clinic, I'm sure you've heard me use children as examples of perfect health. Children instinctively breathe and move efficiently and naturally. They have wonderful upright posture, beautiful S-curved spines, feet that point straight ahead, and soft belly's that move in and out as they breathe deeply. Children enjoy unrestricted graceful movement of every joint and the best strength to weight ratio of all humans. Children are injury free and do not suffer muscle and joint pain except for the occasional bump or bruise. 

As an Egoscue certified Postural Alignment Specialist and Advanced Exercise Therapist for over 13 years, I have always stressed the importance of keeping the abdominal muscles relaxed while performing posture exercises (e-cises), while lifting weights, working out, and all day long to allow your diaphragm to work naturally and efficiently. I teach many clients the difference between North-South breathing (bad) and East-West Breathing (good) and how good posture is the key to allowing normal, natural diaphragmatic breathing to happen. 

Keeping your stomach relaxed (not pulled in and tight) allows for normal healthy function of the lungs, heart, stomach, intestines, and all internal organs. Pulling your belly button towards your spine or tightening your stomach muscles shuts down normal joint range of motion, muscle synchronization, joint stability, and makes natural, graceful, balanced movement impossible. 

Tightening your pelvic floor during exercise is also a bad idea. All muscle tightening should happen naturally and contracting your stomach and pelvic floor muscles together basically squeeze and smash your internal organs. Not good! When teaching East-West Breathing, I talk about how the movement of the diaphragm and lungs during natural breathing acts to aid digestion by massaging the stomach and intestines and helps with spinal disc lubrication by creating small flexion and extension movements helping blood, lymphatic, and spinal fluid movement increase throughout the torso. Since we breathe about 22,000 times a day, tightening your stomach and pelvic floor muscles takes away those vitally important 22,000 movements a day! 

This videos by Eric Franklin offer great visuals of what natural breathing is and why holding your stomach or pelvic floor tight is a bad idea. 

I would love to hear your thoughts, please leave your comments below.

This routine of Egoscue posture exercises demonstrates the power of partner work by leveraging your friend’s body weight and your own to help increase flexibility and build strength. This partner workout was designed by Pete Egoscue, author of the Pain Free series of books. You and your friend or significant other can use one another as a barometer for balance and maximize muscle engagement with this fun routine. If one of you loses your core stability, there’s no hope for the other—so lean on each other! You’ll work on shoulder and back flexibility, abdominal and leg strengthening, and you’ll conclude the routine in Downward Facing Dog.

For more parter or individual workouts, personalized to your body and goals, that will help you restore and build core strength, flexibility, agility, balance, and better posture for improved health and performance and a pain free life contact us today. 

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Ever watch kids on a playground? Notice how beautiful their movements are? They run, climb, jump, swing, and fall with such ease of movement, grace, and fluidity. They are examples of natural movement made possible by postural alignment. 

You can regain a childlike ease of movement, strength, mobility, and grace with a little dedication to restoring your postural alignment. This workout of Egoscue posture exercises (e-cises) is a good introduction. For more information about how to restore full, natural, pain free movement contact Matt at Oregon Exercise Therapy.