You breath on average 26,000 times a day.  Every time you inhale, your entire spinal column should move, thus creating space between vertebrae.  Every time you exhale the space closes down back to your normal spinal curve.

Lay down for a few minutes and notice where you feel the breath going in your body.  Do you feel your thoracic rib cage open and close?  Do you feel the breath in your lumbar spine?  What about in the neck?  Is it more noticeable in one section of your spine, but not the other parts?  Do you only feel your chest moving?  Do you feel the inhale down towards your pelvic floor?

Every 24 hours your cerebrospinal fluid uses the breath to pump it through the spin. The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and spinal cord.  Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is a clear, colorless liquid that surrounds and protects the CNS. It bathes the brain and spine in nutrients and eliminates waste products. It also cushions them to help prevent injury in the event of trauma.

If you don’t have a full diaphragmatic breath available to help remove the waste you end up with the propensity of blowing a disc mostly because you’re body has been under a state of stress for long periods, and that part of your body is holding everything together tightly to the point where all it takes is bending over to vacuum and BAM you’re on the floor in pain.

If you aren’t able to use a full diaphragmatic breath you are not supplying oxygen to the lower lobes of your lungs.  As you age the muscles around the lungs will get weaker and weaker, while the fascia surrounding all this will just become stiff and rigid.  Let’s set the stage….you only breath in the upper chest, you get older, you get the flu, you develop pneumonia, you die because your lungs do not have the strength and elasticity to cough the shit out of your body.

You’ve seen an older person walking down the street before right?  Have you noticed how they can’t move their upper body?  How they can’t use their hips?  How they have to use their big toe to pick up one foot to place in front of the other?  Don’t be that person.

If you only breath in your upper chest, chances are really high that you can’t access the psoas muscle (it start to shut down and get shorter and shorter) because the fascia connecting the diaphragm muscle, and the psoas muscle are not able to talk to each other because the diaphragm is barely being used, and that movement of the diaphragm with the attaching fascia pulls/pumps on the psoas itself.  Think of it like an electrical line where you have a switch, and then several other switches along the way.  If one of the switches is off, then the rest of the switches downstream will also be off.

Diaphragm/breath, Psoas/hip flexion, then Glutes/hip extension.

To move, and move well you need to be able to breath.  You need to get the fascia on the front of your body to release to help open up the thoracic rib cage so that you can increase your oxygen uptake.

Even if you believe that the Be Activated/Reflexive Performance Reset is not for you, at least activate your diaphragm for me every day please.  You would be amazed at how spending 1 minute a day can change how you breath in the future.