Monday Move: Dedicated to the Diaphragm

Last week I started a Monday Moves Series on the breath.  This series was inspired by the studies that Mike Reinold used in his blog post about breathing disorders.  The first study he quoted basically showed that the muscle activity of the neck increased while the muscle activity of diaphragm and the abdominals decreased while performing a simple daily activity like typing.  Breathing with increased neck muscle activity and decreased abdominal muscle activity leads to shallow breathing.  Since shallow breathing was designed to be more useful to us when a bear is chasing us, it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system (aka - the fight or flight response).  Although this is subtle, being in a constant state of fight or flight can have other effects on our overall health and well-being.

Now that you have observed your breath a couple times in the constructive rest position (see last week's blog post) let's name some of the players in the breathing team.  The diaphragm is definitely a major player.  This muscle transverses and divides the thoracic cavity from the abdominal cavity.   It is almost as though it has double sided tape on it, sticking the neck and belly cavities together.  When it contracts on the inhale it expands and pushes down on the belly cavity below. On the exhale it returns to its relaxed position which is a concave, parachute looking position.  This video gives an excellent 3D view of the movement of diaphragm.

So as you can see in the video, the diaphragm is a muscle.  It is part of the inner core unit.  We just tend to forget about it's function because we don't think about breathing (until we see studies that tell us we have adapted to our daily activities in a way that might be leading us to breathe in a less optimal way).  Also, we tend to forget about this muscle since we don't see the direct movement of this muscle like we can see the direct movement of other muscles. For example, as you perform an arm curl you see  the effects of the sliding together of our bicep muscle filaments because forearm gets closer to the upper arm.  However, as we have seen in the video due to the relationship it has with the cavity below it does push the organs downward during an inhalation.  Through contraction of the diaphragm fibers, the diaphragm lowers and the pelvic floor and stomach muscles widen (more to come on these players in future posts) in order to receive the organs.

Eric Franklin says "Breathing is the simplest thing in the world until you start thinking about it and analyzing it."  Which I find is so true!  The goal of today's move is to just visualize the movement of the diaphragm.  Return constructive rest position.  Set your cell phone timer for 3-5 minutes.  And as you close your eyes try to visualize the movement of the diaphragm.  When you breathe in, the muscle filaments slides together contracting the muscle which pushes down on the organs below.  When you breath out, the muscle filaments slide apart the diaphragm stretches and widens.  Do this visualization exercise for 10 to 12 breaths.  Then forget all breathing visualization and just feel the breathing until the timer goes off.