Breathing & Posture

In this day and age we are on our phones an average of 4-5 hours a day, spending endless hours on the couch watching tv, maybe you play sports, are at a desk 8 hours a day or perhaps you’re a trades person. What ever your job or lifestyle is, has anyone taught you about alignment, good posture and correct breathing?? In most cases, probably not: we are taught by society to be in survival mode, no one is going around tapping you on the shoulder and say “hey you’re breathing into your chest instead of your diaphragm” (belly), “your posture is out of alignment” , you’re not lifting this correctly” and so on. People worry about money, winning and success but not so much about their health as if we have forgotten that our health is our life…

I have found myself my whole life looking in the mirror and noticing when i was relaxed my shoulders were slouched and neck was tilted forward. I guess my Dad did always tell me to sit up straight but to honest that never really helped because I didn’t know the actual solution and neither did he.

It wasn’t until 6 months ago when I met a wonderful lady named Shoshana Leibner who I had the privilege of learning from. Since her training i have noticed a significant difference in my posture, I had already been doing breath work for a couple of years, had started my own business www.binauralbreathwork.au and I thought I knew how to breathe correctly and that I was aligned….but I wasn’t.

Human beings and animals take shallow breath’s when they are nervous, feel threatened, anxious or stressed. Shallow breathing is not what we want to be doing because it’s not optimal for our posture, nervous system or stress response system. We start to breath into our chest and take short breaths and this is why we can feel short of breath and people can feel like they are having a panic attack, this will activate the fight or flight response.

Just from being more conscious of how i breathe, how i stand, where am i breathing into I’ve seen my body transform in a short period of time. My digestion is better, i feel stronger, fitness has gone up. I’m not slouching over, i feel taller.

Try this: For example,

• Start by placing your hands on the front of your rib cage, breathe into where your hands are!

• Place a hand each side of the ribs, left and right and breathing into them feel your ribs expanding.

• If you can reach and place your hand on the back of your rib cage, or visualise breathing into the back of the lungs.

• This a simple exercise to get you breathing and activating you muscles that support your diaphragm, this will help stabilise and engage the core.

This is just one of many exercises that I have learn’t in my training with Shoshana Leibner.

Things to be aware of;

• Where are you breathing into?

• Breathing through the nose?

• Engaging the right muscles when breathing?

It seems simple to just breathe into your diaphragm or through the nose, its not it takes time. Be patiant, don’t be to hard on yourself.

This is just one facet to creating a good posture. I’m referencing the breathe, this is what has help me in the last few years to become my optimal self. If anyone has any further questions or is curious about learning how to breathe please contact me on:

Aurie Bourke |
Instagram: binaruralbreathwork
Website: www.binauralbreathwork.au
Facebook: Aurie Bourke

Shoshana Leibner |
Instagram: floatdreams
Facebook: shoshana leibner