The role of the breath.

From the first breath we took as a baby, our bodies stay alive by using our breathing to provide oxygen to our brains, organs and muscles.

But the role of the breath goes much deeper than that. It directly affects the mobility of many of our muscles. It is inherently intertwined with our body’s emotional responses and stress levels.

When we understand the functionality of the breath, we can form a connection with our bodies and our emotions, and begin an excitingly empowering path to self-healing.

Fight, flight or freeze – an easy explanation.

The breath forms an intrinsic part of a chain of events that occur during the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. In this article, it is the activity of the breath during the ‘freeze’ response that we are most interested, as is directly responsible for stress-related muscular pain.

Let’s just imagine you are sitting in your cave, eating your dinner, and minding your own business. A Sabre tooth tiger strolls past the mouth of the cave, and you have 3 choices;

1. Run up, and punch him on the nose (fight)
2. Try to run past him and escape (flight)
3. Or sit very, very still, and hope he doesn’t notice you (freeze)

Now there has been much talked about the fight, or flight responses – blood flowing to the limbs and heart racing, as you get ready to meet a potential grisly death. But what is less talked about is the freeze response. Which, ironically, is the most common one experienced in the modern day workplace.

The freeze response

Let’s imagine it’s late afternoon on a Friday. You’ve only got a couple of hours left to work, before you’re due to head out for pre-planned, romantic date. Without warning your boss comes along, dumps a huge file on your desk, and asks for it to be dealt with before you leave.

What do you do?

1. Stand up, and without a single word, proceed to punch them in the head? (fight)
2. Grab your coat, and run out the door? (flight)
3. Or sit very still, and try to suppress the stress you have just been placed under? (freeze)

If you are the sort of person who took one of the first two options, you’re probably reading this whilst watching Daytime TV, and weighing up your recently-narrowed career options.

Most of us however, would have plumped for the last option. We freeze, and hope that we will survive this incredibly stressful situation.

So what’s happening to our body’s when we ‘freeze’?

Our breathing becomes shallow.
Our ribs barely move.
Muscles become extremely tense.

We are ‘playing dead’ – remember the Sabre tooth tiger? If he doesn’t see us in his peripheral vision we might survive!

When this is repeated day after day in our workplace, our muscles become semi-permanently locked in the same pattern, leading to pain and dysfunction. Typical complaints are tight, sore, frozen shoulders, stiff necks, tight chest and sore backs. Sound familiar?

At the core of this frozen movement is one factor. Its the very thing that is suppressing a basic movement that will give us away as being ‘alive’.

Our breathing.

NEXT

Find pain relief with breathing. Part 2. Exploring the breath; and the how mindfulness and deep tissue massage can work together.

© Jon Gee 2011

Jon Gee is the founder of City Sports Massage, a team of massage therapists in London who combine deep-tissue massage therapy with stress-reduction and body-awareness techniques.

Traumeel is used to treat arthritis, bruising, muscle strains and sports injuries – It is preferred by many to Arnica cream as, although it contains Arnica, it also contains 13 other herbal and mineral properties. We discovered it through recommendation by a professional dancer who’s been using it (in preference to Arnica!) for years.

You can buy your Traumeel by mail order through our website.

In this situation massage will certainly help. But to get even MORE out of your massage, check out these easy ways to ease neck, shoulder and arm pain.

1. Move
Neck pain and shoulder stiffness are often caused by a very simple reason – lack of movement. So move! Slowly shrug and rotate your shoulders, turn your head left and right, look up and down. Do it all sloooowly. Feel it!

2. Drink water
Our bodies get dehydrated working all day long. This makes the muscles stiffer than normal – our bodies need water to lubricate movement – so drink.

3. Have regular breaks
Combine a ‘movement break’ (see number 1) with a ‘water break’ (see number 2) in your daily routine. Every 20 – 40 minutes. Eventually it will become second nature. When it does become second nature even the male of our species is able to multi-task, often stretching the shoulders AND looking at the computer screen at the same time. C’mon fellas – lets show those girls our multi-tasking ninja moves.

4. Have a hot bath
Heat from the water will bring fresh blood to the stiff areas. It will lengthen and loosen tight muscles and allow more movement. But don’t fall asleep, wake up in a cold bath and be back at square one ;-)

5. Stretch
Think of pussycats. Do they need stretching manuals? Do they ‘time’ their stretches? No. They ‘feel’ what’s going on in their bodies. If it feels nice – they carry on. If it hurts, they stop. Feel it. Learn about your body. Don’t be intimidated by it. It’s yours!

6. Get a massage
Even if you’ve done all of the above, and you’ve persuaded your other half to give you a shoulder rub, the chances are (especially if you’ve left it too long) you’ll need a professional to get into those difficult spots. Go to a sports and remedial massage therapist. Make sure they’re reputable and qualified. If you live in the UK make sure they have a BTEC qualification and are a member of a contactable professional organisation. If the therapist has a website check out their testimonials before you book.

A good therapist will be able to show you all of the techniques described above, and more (although we reckon you can probably manage the bath on your own. And the glass of water for that matter).

Please note: If you think you may have an injury or anything more serious than work posture-related stiffness and pain, please consult a medical practitioner immediately.

It is a natural, homeopathic remedy which contains Arnica as well as Echinacea, Chamomile and several other plant ingredients. Because finding this cream is so difficult I thought Id set up an account and buy a few in from the UK distributor – I did and they sold out within days. So I have just placed an order for more – it’s £15 plus £2.75 postage a tube – you can get it here!