Breath and Lymph

Deep abdominal breathing has been one of the hottest health topic of this century. If you do a quick search on YouTube, there are a lot of videos about the benefits, how to do a proper breathing technique, and many more. People talk about it in their yoga class, pilates class, child-birthing class, etc. If it’s so popular, it should be common knowledge right??

Unfortunately that’s not the case. Just today, I found out that two of my closest friends did not know how to do deep abdominal breathing properly. Many times, I also have found that my patients do not have a clue how to do deep breathing. In fact, I was talking to a new patient last week in his evaluation, found out that he couldn’t sleep well at night - and that he has had sleep apnea for years and could not do deep abdominal breathing well. I wish this story ends here. However, I hear similar stories from patients after patients - many people seem to share a common struggle - they have a hard time sleeping at night.

On that note, I would like to highlight some of the benefits that deep breathing bring to our lymphatic system:

1) Deep abdominal breathing activate the deep lymphatic nodes in your abdominal region. By doing so, when you breathe, the lymphatic process in the abdomen is activated and it creates a vacuum effect that pumps the lymph fluid through.

2) Deep abdominal breathing also activates the diaphragm, which sits right above our internal organs such as liver, spleens, kidney, and the stomach. In turn, this also activates the internal organs, some of which are very important part of the lymphatic system.

3) Deep abdominal breathing activates our parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation and rest. In the current world with constant change and unknown, our sympathetic nervous system has probably been overstimulated and we need to be able to tap into the rest-and-digest system.

So how do we properly do deep abdominal breathing? There are many videos on YouTube that can teach you how to do this properly, but here are my suggestions on where you can start:

1.     Start with laying on your back with your knees bent.

2.     Put one hand on your chest and the other hand on your stomach, just below the ribcage.

3.     Take a deep breath in with your nose - make sure that the hand on your chest stay down as the hand on the stomach rises up.

4.     Breathe out through your nose or through your mouth. Engage your stomach muscle so the hand on your stomach goes down as you breathe out.

5.     Do this several times slowly where you take a breath in for 4 counts, and release it for 4 counts.

Try this at home and let me know if it works for you. It takes time to practice this but once you master it, you will have a better awareness of your body and your breath, and that will really help you in many ways