A habit as ingrained and basic as breathing ought to be something which we need never think about right? Well, increasingly - wrong! And that is because so many of us have inverted our breathing pattern, and as with so many things, the issue is more substantial and far-reaching than we might first imagine.

Being able to see a newborn or young child breathe shows us the natural mechanics of breathing. With inhalation, the dome-like diaphragm flattens, thus creating pressure through the abdomen, and the abdomen bulges outward. The doming of the diaphragm as the air is expelled in exhalation causes the abdomen to gently 'deflate'.

However, in our (largely) Western lives we have unbalanced the muscular mechanics with altered posture - particularly time spent sitting - and so regaining our healthy breathing pattern is a little more complex.

Because we spend so much of our lives sitting - in one way or another - or other flexion positions (a mechanic over the hood of a car, a surgeon, a teacher, a driver etc.), the spinal posture can become overly curved particularly at the base of the cervical spine and into Thoracic spine.  This can then cause a gradual migration forward of the head relative to the spinal column.

This means the weight of the head is now not largely supported by the spinal column, but the neck muscles are having to tighten and change their workload in order to 'hold onto' the head.

Changing the muscular balance is a frightful thing.  Because head position changes also mean that the nose and airways are not in line, the workload has also increase at the base of the head and neck in order to draw air into the lungs.  And so breathing pattern becomes inverted. 

The immense work taken on by muscles not engineered for breathing means that the deep, relaxed abdominal breath of early childhood is lost.

So, perhaps your breathing changes ought to start with some postural analysis - get to the root of the issue - don't just band-aid it!