Breathing FAQ

Ideally you'll feel activation and tension/engagement in your abdominals on the full exhale, and slight expansion in your lower back on the inhale. It takes time and practice for many students to feel this, especially if the deep abdominals have been inactive for a while. Once you get this feeling, build on it. This skill can be improved and continue providing benefits over a lifetime, and that is true for me to this day.

Here are some comments from students sharing what they feel:

"I can really feel a difference in abdominal engagement when I focus on breathing into the lower back and it forces me to take longer deeper breaths."

"It felt like I was strengthening my lower back"

"The breathe felt like a vertical cascade from the low back and up to the cervical, and I even got a subtle relieving adjustment pop."

"I actually had a light 'pop' in my lumbar spine, indicating some amount of decompression I'm assuming. My core was stronger and my spine actually got some extra space between the disks instead of getting compressed together."

"Was doing this while standing and felt decompression"

"My poor abs are shaking on the exhale."

"It feels supportive but definitely needs strengthening. It feels good."

"I feel improvement, even stretching in my lower back and even onto the top of my glute muscles."

"When I let all my breath out and breathe from lower back I feel pinching in multiple places."

Note: if you feel short muscle contractions or pinching on the full exhale:
It has likely been awhile since these muscles have engaged this way. For now, turn down the intensity with this until your muscles get more comfortable functioning in this new way. Deep exhales are very safe (and healthy), and sometimes it just takes the body time to adapt. This is just an introduction, and there's plenty more time to feel the benefits.

Extra Resource:
My Video Response on 'CBT Coaching LIVE'

If you're having trouble with this at first, that's OKAY. While some students feel improvement right away, others need a few sessions of practice before it starts to ‘click’.

No matter who you are, this skill takes everyone time to develop.

Our breathing pattern is so ingrained, that changing it cannot happen instantly. It requires consistency/persistence over time. Maybe the muscles that send your breath down and back are asleep, and need some consistent ‘nudging’ to wake up. 

Breathing is subtle most of the time, so this technique should be too.

The benefits should be subtle, and will compound gradually over time. This does not reduce the fact that there is a HUGE amount of benefit to be gained from building this foundational connection.

If you are already experiencing some benefit, it’s a great sign that you're on the right track… so keep at it! This is truly one of the most important skills for a healthy spine.

My recommendation to all students:
Be Consistent, Patient, and Apply this breathing in your daily life (remember ‘My 3 Tips for Success’). Give your body time to wake up those muscles that might be asleep. The exercises in the following days will be very helpful to accomplish that as well.

If you can’t feel the expansion, your abdominals, or if you’re even doing it right:

The BEST thing you can do is practice the INTENTION of sending your breath down and back, and allow the body to figure out HOW it will do that on its own. You don't even need to know which muscles to use... The intention is all that matters.

It may take a few sessions, but soon you'll have a breakthrough and feel that expansion/decompression in your lower back.

And don’t stop there… You'll continue to get more and more benefits from this skill as you deep core muscles wake up. I continue to be impressed at the benefits I receive, even today. Like meditation, using breath to activate your deep core is a skill that can continually be progressed and improved upon for a lifetime!

Extra Resources:

• Help Feeling The Expansion in Module 1
• My Video Response on 'CBT Coaching LIVE'
  

My Video Response on 'CBT Coaching LIVE'

Not ALL your life. We start life breathing this way naturally. When we go through life, experience chronic stress, and get older... things become less efficient. Your breath gradually shifts forward towards your belly, among other things. What you are experiencing now is a shift back in the right direction - towards a more optimal way of breathing - and closer to the way your younger self would have breathed naturally... and it does feel good!

Extra Resource:
My Video Response on 'CBT Coaching LIVE'

It's true that this style of breathing is 'against the grain' of what is taught in yoga studios and many physical therapy clinics. The conventional belief is to breathe into your belly, yet the research shows that this promotes a forward facing diaphragm - which is strongly correlated with lower back pain. The 'down and back' style of breathing in Core Balance Training is a strategy founded upon evidence-based research.

I practiced yogic "belly breathing" for many years, despite the fact that it never felt right on my lower back. Since I began practicing this 'opposite' direction of breathing, it has been invaluable in my journey to reverse back pain. It's an endlessly beneficial skill that I still work on today, and will continue to improve upon for the rest of my life. Its effectiveness has been validated, not only by high quality studies, but also by hundreds of CBT students, and multiple continuing education courses I've taken. It actually makes sense, anatomically.

A note about yogic breathing:
In yoga, the goal of breathing is to activate Prana (energy flowing through the body). This is completely different than the purpose of breathing in CBT, which is to correct a common dysfunction in the angle of the diaphragm, especially in the lower back pain population. We are looking at breathing through an orthopedic lens, not a spiritual lens. The two styles may both be effective, but since they have different purposes, it may not be appropriate to compare them at all.

Furthermore, it's possible that the two styles may be able to coexist because they are not exactly opposites. Once the correction in the angle of the diaphragm is made, the breath is ideally sent downward, not back. This may be able to work with the direction of energy flow in yogic breathing, and I believe it's worth putting more thought into.

At the end of the day, there's no 'right' or 'wrong' and each style has its benefits. I recommend you give both a try, and "tune in" to feel your body. In the experience of many CBT students, sending the breath 'down and back' feels supportive of the lower back, by providing a gentle activation of the abdominals. Personally, I believe the benefits of 'back' breathing are more beneficial to the lower back pain population. There will probably be an ongoing debate about this eventually, but right now there's not much awareness out there about the CBT style of breathing.

In the beginning, learning this method of breathing is easier to practice at a higher intensity, in order to get the 'feeling' and develop a pattern of 'muscle memory'. However, the higher intensity is not sustainable to perform all the time. Once this breathing style becomes more familiar, you can start to decrease the intensity significantly and integrate it into your normal breathing pattern. The ultimate goal is to integrate this into your normal breathing at a very low level, so that you're not 'trying' anymore. You'll naturally have a tiny bit more tension/tone in your abdominals, and support for your spine throughout the day.

My recommendation to start: As you remember to focus on your breath at times throughout your day, perform a deep exhale to activate your abdominals. Then, feel the decompression as you maintain that same abdominal tension on the next inhale. Repeat this as long as you can maintain focus, but of course your mind will go elsewhere eventually. The ultimate goal is to integrate this subtle intension into your normal breathing, but that takes time.

For now, find the position that works best for you to feel a little change in your breathing pattern. This is just an introduction to a way of breathing that will be reinforced throughout the program. Tomorrow (Day 1), you will apply this technique in the Back Anchor (hook-lying position), which feels very good.

Related Q: Is it okay to breathe into the lower back while walking? It feels great, slows my pace down, and increases my awareness which is nice too :)

You can ABSOLUTELY apply this breathing to walking. Just remember, it's a very subtle shift when implementing all day long.

Ultimately, you can apply this breathing into all positions and movements in your life. It's a bit more challenging to learn the subtleties of doing this throughout the day, but the benefits are undeniable. As you turn up the intensity of your movement (like a squat) you can also turn up the breathing engagement.

If this feels a little overwhelming, don't worry... We will continue practicing this breathing throughout all the movements of the program.

The breath expansion is always going to follow the path of least resistance, and so this side of your lower back is likely just that. It's a side to side difference in muscle tone, which is likely a 'learned' behavior of the muscles. So for a reason in your history, one side of your back has become more developed or tighter than the other. The good news is this L vs. R imbalance can be corrected gradually, over time with focus and effort.

Before we can address side to side imbalances, we have to achieve front to back stability - so that's what we do first in the program. We will start to address side to side imbalances in Phase 2, and in the meantime this is what I recommend: Have the intention of sending your breath into the tighter side of your back to get some expansion in those tissues. Similar to sending the breath down and back, this automatically creates tension in the right areas to accomplish your goal. By sending your inhale into the tight side, you’ll generate some tension in the other side - to start evening things out.

There can be several factors influencing the cause of shallow breathing. Yes, deep abdominal/diaphragm weakness and shoulder/neck pain are correlated with this pattern. The good news is that you can reverse this pattern gradually over time, through intention and focus. Even if it's been going on for a long time, simply having the intention of sending your breath low (down and back) gives your body all the information it needs to make changes to your firing patterns. The changes are gradual, subtle, and require persistence over time. Nevertheless, it's pretty amazing.