Good Breathing

Article Summary

Good breathing is not about forcing a particular technique or following a rigid rule. Healthy breathing is flexible, adaptable, and responsive to changing situations. In the Feldenkrais Method®, breathing improves through greater awareness, improved posture, easier movement, and better nervous system organization. As people learn to reduce unnecessary tension and become aware of unconscious habits such as breath holding, they often discover easier breathing, improved coordination, clearer thinking, and a greater sense of overall well-being.

Breathing Is a Reflection of How You Organize Yourself

Good breathing is flexible, adaptable, and responsive to changing situations—not rigid or controlled by a single “correct” technique.

In the Feldenkrais Method®, breathing improves through awareness, posture, movement, and nervous system organization rather than force or effort. Many breathing problems develop from stress, poor movement habits, chronic tension, and unconscious breath holding.

By exploring movement and breathing together, people often discover easier breathing, reduced tension, clearer thinking, and improved overall coordination.

What is the Ideal Breath?

Ideally, your breath should be flexible and adaptable to any situation—every experience, whether of emotion, thought, or movement, requires a different organization of your breathing.

Your breathing when running differs from when relaxing and watching TV, which differs from when grieving, laughing, eating, lifting something heavy, or making love.

Many people are unaware of their breathing and often have faulty breathing habits resulting from poor posture and inefficient movement. These habits lead to fatigue, fuzzy thinking, stiffness, and pain.

Why Do People Develop Poor Breathing Habits?

How do faulty breathing habits develop? They develop primarily through our daily movement habits and our emotional experience.

Stress and anxiety cause us to stiffen our chests and abdomens, limiting our ability to breathe.

Sitting for long periods and concentrating also limit our breathing.

Email apnea is increasingly common. Many people unconsciously stop breathing or dramatically reduce their breathing while reading email, scrolling on phones, concentrating, or working under stress.

Over time, these habits can contribute to neck tension, jaw tightness, fatigue, anxiety, shallow breathing, and reduced clarity of thinking.

That’s right—email apnea is a real thing now. When people focus intensely on messages, work, or screens, they often stop breathing without realizing it.

Many of us will hold our breath when we anticipate doing something challenging, like picking up a heavy object, solving a problem, or meeting someone new.

Is There a “Correct” Way to Breathe?

Another way we get into trouble is by being instructed on the “correct” way to breathe.

Throughout my years of practice, I’ve encountered many students who were advised by well-meaning teachers to always “belly-breathe.” So they made a rule about it and tried to always “belly-breathe.”

We do NOT want to assume a rule that dictates a “correct” way to breathe. As soon as we make a rule like “this is the correct way to breathe” or “I should breathe this way all the time,” we create limitations for ourselves. Why is this? Because we choose one way of breathing to the exclusion of any other way, which requires excessive muscular effort.

Your breath should be easy, natural, flexible, and adaptable. You rob yourself of that spontaneity by making a rule about how to breathe.

In general, Dr. Feldenkrais was against schools that taught breathing techniques. I am not against learning different ways of breathing. Pranayama has a long tradition of breathing practices that effectively improve our health.

I practice the Wim Hof method of breathing—a pattern of cyclical hyperventilation with specific breath holds. I love it. I practice it daily but never assume this is the only correct breathing method.

Try This

As you read the following sentences, notice what changes

• Notice your breath.
• What happened when you noticed your breath?
• Did your breath deepen, lengthen, or change in some other way?
• Notice where you’re breathing.
• Are you breathing in your abdomen? Or your chest?
• What moves first when you breathe?

Awareness itself begins the change.

How the Feldenkrais Method® Approaches Breathing

In Feldenkrais lessons, we create the conditions for you to feel and discern all the parts of yourself that participate in breathing.

Your skeletal structure, muscles, diaphragm, ribs, spine, and even heart rate all need to change from one situation to the next. You learn to help make your breathing flexible and adaptable to any situation.

Learning Flexible and Adaptable Breathing

Our breathing lessons explore many ways of breathing in different positions and coordination with other movements. We rely on your nervous system’s natural mechanisms to retrain your brain through these explorations, making these new ways of organizing your breathing second nature.

When breathing becomes easier, more adaptable, and less effortful, many people discover that thinking, moving, sensing, and even feeling begin to change as well.

Experience Easier, More Adaptable Breathing

Breathing improves most effectively through awareness and experience—not force.

If you’d like to explore gentle Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® lessons designed to improve breathing, posture, coordination, and ease, start with one of my guided audio lessons or free resources.

Small changes in how you move can create surprisingly meaningful changes in how you breathe.

→ Explore Free Lessons
→ Browse Audio Programs
→ Join an Online Class

References

Feldenkrais, M. (1994, May). Alexander Yanai Lesson 17 Breathing [Lecture]. International Feldenkrais Federation, Paris, France, in Cooperation With The Feldenkrais Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Feldenkrais, M. (1994, May). Alexander Yanai Lesson 21 Contracting the Abdomen While Exhaling [Lecture]. International Feldenkrais Federation, Paris, France, in Cooperation With The Feldenkrais Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Feldenkrais, M. (1994, May). Alexander Yanai Lesson 35 Stomach and Chest First [Lecture]. International Feldenkrais Federation, Paris, France, in Cooperation With The Feldenkrais Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Frequently Asked Questions About Breathing and the Feldenkrais Method®