Author name: Verity Yoga

We all know the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with extremely dry mouth and thirst and needing to down a pint of water. Mouth breathing plays a huge part in this, during the day and night. Your body is about 60 percent water. Lose even 1.5 percent of that H2O — the tipping point for mild dehydration — and your mood, energy levels and cognitive function all drop, according to research from the University of Connecticut. It can cause mild headaches, dull skin, dark circles, general tiredness. Start somewhere by breathing through your nose.

A quick (terrible) sketch of a man who recently came to see me, to help him visualise his pattern. He had a knee surgery 20 years ago – can you tell which knee? The one he’s avoiding (left side). Pain is in the right hip now, because it’s exhausted, it obvious from my sketch that he is always standing on his right but he was not aware of that at all. Old habits die hard! As soon as he was aware of this the pattern changed and so did the pain, especially as I gave him some moves to get back to the other side. If we don’t take time with our injuries in the hope that they will get better on their own without checking in on our weight distribution or strength or mobility, chances are the old patterns will stick around to some degree and show up 20 years + later. Awareness is all it takes.

Shoe wear tells our walking/running gait pattern story. Wear above the big toe is not uncommon as many of us in the west struggle with ankle dorsiflexion because we no longer squat throughout our day. Squatting deeply is one of THE best movements for the lower body. If you struggle you can use heel lifts of even a chair to begin. Without the ankle mobility our toes (particularly big toe as it’s 4 times stronger than all the others) will try to help out by lifting up. But without eccentric control of the ankle, the foot will slap the floor, over time causing pain in the toes or big toe. In this case my clients pain in his toe was resolved within a week of consistant awareness and exercises.

Teaching yoga for so long, I saw the incredible transformations people made on the mat, but over time noticed that their walk or breathing mechanics didn’t change massively when they left the class. I was no exception. I would always have right rib rotation restriction, left shoulder flexion restriction, hip extension restriction ……. No matter how much yoga I was doing. And yes I was avoiding poses which challenged these areas, but they felt blocked and inaccessible. That’s when I realised I needed to deep dive on functional anatomy, daily movements, gait and breathing and I’m still diving. It’s all in your daily life patterns – breath, walking, picking things up, sitting and standing, even how you walk down the stairs can be the cause of discomfort. It’s all about awareness and once you adjust those frequent, repetitive patterns – change & relief is quick.

Have you tried toe socks? They feel wonderful. My biggest foot care life hack is to wear toe separators when you are at home. The difference is huge, you’ll become addicted to the space they create and it only takes a second of your time to put them on. As it gets colder you’ll need few pair of these socks to wear with them. I get mine from toe toe. They are a great way to find out which of your shoes are too narrow as it will be hard to get these on at first, but over time they prevent your toes being squished / bound tight. This will improve your balance, proprioception, walking and running.

Over-breathing means breathing in excess of your metabolic needs. Breathing more than 14 gentle diaphragmatic breaths a minute at rest (standing/sitting). Mouth breathing, sighing regularly, yawning, gasping all contribute to over-breathing. Doing this regularly leads to mild blood PH alkalosis. To counter this the body dumps bicarbonate in urine to re-balance the blood PH. But the bicarbonate often takes magnesium, sodium, calcium & potassium (and possibly others) with it.  So we become deficient in these minerals just from the way we breathe!   How are you breathing?  

I want to do a shout out to the scapular (shoulder blade). It’s enormous, takes up a HUGE part of your back, is connected to everything and vital for good locomotion and yet it’s pretty much always ignored. In 20 years of working with people, they bring up lower back, neck, glutes, hamstrings…. No one has ever said, ‘I’d like to work on my scapular glide’! Scapulars should glide over the ribs. They have SO much movement ability. The are KEY to shoulder, neck, jaw, locomotion well-being.  But most importantly they really, really can impact your breathing. Why do we ignore them? If your ribs are in a habitual pattern of right rotation and right flexion then your right shoulder blade will be winged, and restricted in certain movements and your left will probably be higher and protracted more….. which will affect how you can breath into your right side, which will increase the imbalance over time.. Take some deeper breaths. Can you feel them moving equally?  Can you feel your breathing equal in both  lungs? If not get doing some scapula moves!

This is a human cadaver slice. Can you see how the asymmetry between the right and left lung is distinct. The liver plays a part in that by pushing the right lung up and the heart pushed the left lung to the side so the balance themselves out mostly. But life is full of knocks and breaks and traumas and all of these can shift us more out of balance and we often need a little help finding our way back. Evolution is wonderful at adjusting to a new normal, but this backfires when the new normal is detrimental and it takes the body’s communication of pain to force us to listen and re-calibrate. Guided specific movements/breathing and awareness and strengthening is all it needs and it’s never too late but it does often need a skilled practitioner to help you notice the imbalances and get them back into balance.

Imagine you’ve been snoring, wide open dry mouth, drooling all night. Now imagine you’ve been sleeping quietly, mouth shut. Which one feels sexier? ???? It’s a chemical thing (among other factors). Nitric Oxide (NO) is made in the nasal cavities. It’s a vasodilator, antiviral/antibacterial and helps cellular communication. NO was only discovered in the 1980’s so we are still understanding it’s many benefits but one is viagra.  It’s the main ingredient as its a vasodilator (which means it dilates the blood vessels, which is how erectile tissue expands). Studies show that nasal breathing increases Nitric Oxide in the body by at least 10% so it improves this function. Did you know that you also have erectile tissue in your nose, which is what actually happens when you feel ‘stuffy’, it’s often the tissue expanding, not just mucus clogging it up. The nasal cavities functions are only recently being understood and we have way more to learn.  But we do know for SURE that nasal breathing during the day and night has way more benefits that we every realised.