How massage can help to breathe

The ability to breathe at full capacity can be easily put at risk by poor posture, muscle tightness, stress and even air pollution; because our body may react to protect the lungs from potentially dangerous particles decreasing the air intake. Consequently, the diaphragm, rib cage muscles and abdominal muscles get tired and contracted, restricting the capacity to breathe deeply even more. 

When these restrictions take place, we often switch to “vertical breathing” which is a shorter breath that involves only the upper part of our respiratory system making chest, neck, and abdominal muscles (all muscles attached to ribs) tighter and overused. If your breathing is shallow (chest breathing or even called forced breathing) the oxygen taken in won't be able to reach many blood vessels located at the bottom of your lungs, therefore not much oxygen will be brought to body cells.

Especially people who suffer from any respiratory issues such as allergies, asthma or bronchitis put the respiratory muscles under constant stress, resulting in continuous lung constriction. 

Giving these muscles a shake and some pressure with regular massages would be strongly beneficial to help loosen them up giving more space to the lungs to expand allowing them to absorb as much oxygen as we can.

The therapist will manually break down the adhesions and tension build-up. Furthermore, the vibration generated by the massage can help loosen and clear the airways from build-up mucus. Have you ever noticed that if you get a massage while you have a stuffy nose at the end of it you can breathe better?

Even if you do not suffer from any respiratory issues, many factors contribute to unconsciously tense shoulders, neck, chest and build-up tension because of general stress, restricting on a physical level our breathing capacity. 

Breathing is interlinked with the nervous system; when we are stressed our breathing becomes faster and we switch from diaphragmatic breathing to more superficial breathing as a natural reaction part of the fight or flight response. The more we stay in this stress state the more our body gets used to acting in a certain way developing a bad habit such as superficial breathing which does not involve the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a muscle and therefore has to be constantly trained to work efficiently. Massages help to retrain the diaphragm to function as it is supposed to; during a massage session messages of calmness and peace are sent to the body helping it to switch from a stress state to a relaxation state, which is the moment when the lungs expand at full capacity, working efficiently using the diaphragm.   

Breathing is the most vital activity in life, and if done properly can make a huge difference in so many aspects of our life, donating us more clarity and peace; it is definitely worth it to take care of it.