Are you holding your breath right now?

Before reading on, let’s try a little experiment: place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly. Take a few normal breaths and notice: does one hand move more than the other? Maybe one hand doesn’t move at all?

Ideally, we want the hand on your belly to move freely. When it does, it's a sign that the diaphragm, our main breathing muscle, is moving down without restriction to make room for the inhale in the lungs. As it does, it pushes on the abdominal organs, which makes the belly rise.

You can see this clearly in this animation:

When we're under stress, our breathing tends to become shallower. The diaphragm tightens, and we rely more on the so-called "accessory" breathing muscles, located around the chest and shoulders. These muscles tire more quickly, and tension starts to build.

Sometimes we even hold our breath without realising it. This has been described as "screen apnea", because it seems to happen especially often when we’re focused on our emails, Excel spreadsheets, and so on.

The problem is that your nervous system reads this breath-holding as a danger signal. (Think about it: when do we usually hold our breath? When we are bracing ourselves for something threatening or for a particular challenge.)

As a result, your whole body gets ready to face something that never comes. Here too, tension starts to build and fatigue accumulates.

The good news is that noticing is already half the work! You can't change a habit you don't know you have.

So here's a simple experiment for this week. Set three reminders on your phone, at random times, with one question: "Am I breathing?"

Oh, and when it goes off, don't try to breathe "properly". Just notice first. Then let one slow breath out, a little longer than the breath in :)

Clem