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After Effects Massage Therapy & Bodywork
The Importance of Breathwork
Our body's response to threat, stress or pain turns on the sympathetic branch (SNS) of the autonomic nervous system, which mediates vigilance, arousal, activation, and mobilization which can inhibit the ability of the diaphragm muscle to fully release.
The inhalation phase is accompanied by increased heart rate and blood pressure (sympathetic excitation, parasympathetic inhibition) and the exhalation phase is accompanied by a lowered heart rate and blood pressure (parasympathetic excitation, sympathetic inhibition). The diaphragm tends to be a place where we store unconscious emotional tension or grief.
A released diaphragm indicates an inner sense of safety and increased relaxation and is part of an active process of self-awareness.
Natural
An infant's first breath occurs because the diaphragm relaxes to allow air into the lungs, causing the abdomen to expand. Upon exhaling, the diaphragm contracts beneath the lungs to expel air, causing the abdomen to move back towards the spine. This is diaphragmatic breathing and our bodies are designed to breathe this way. In addition, each breath fosters new life and each exhalation helps eliminate what is no longer needed.
Instinctual
Between 3 and 5 years old, children learn that parents want them to take naps when they aren't sleepy and eat vegetables that are yucky so they instinctively suck their abdomens in and push their chest out to override their feelings and appear sleepier and hungrier than they actually are, to accommodate the adults. We unconsciously continue to tighten our diaphragm to appease our friends, teachers, neighbors, employers, partners, law enforcement and the IRS.
Truth
When we deny our inner truth often enough, we begin to become comfortable with holding our breath and contracting our diaphragm without realizing it. Diaphragmatic breathing, our natural instinctive breath, feels uncomfortable and for some, even impossible. The ability to follow your intuition is referred to as your gut instinct. How is that even possible when we've separated our awareness of our authentic feelings and are unaware of repressed feelings?
Self Awareness
Reintroducing diaphragmatic breathing facilitates relaxation by engaging the parasympathetic nervous system and may clear the way to release feelings that have been repressed for years, if not decades. While feelings aren't physically stored in the abdomen, we are all familiar with the feeling of being sick to your stomach when you can't pay your mortgage or getting butterflies in your abdomen when you're falling in love.
