When stress, fatigue, and chronic pain play a part in your daily life, something has to change. I’ve been there. I understand the struggle. It’s hard to find our way out of this ongoing cycle that never seems to end. But starting with something small, something very important and powerful, something that is free. I’m talking about diaphragmatic breathing.
Have you ever heard of diaphragmatic breathing? Another term you may be more familiar with is deep breathing or abdominal breathing. They all refer to the same thing. This form of breathing is actually the proper way us humans should be breathing. Not to mention, it brings with it a plethora of health benefits. This post will teach you the breakdown of diaphragmatic breathing, the benefits, why it matters, and how this foundational practice supports recovery, nervous system regulation, and strength.
Take me straight to learning to breathe correctly!
**This is not medical advice. Please consult your medical provider for more information.
Anatomy Lesson: The Diaphragm
The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that sits below the lungs. It is a muscle of respiration that involuntarily contracts and relaxes. During contraction, it flattens and subsequently the chest cavity enlarges, filling the lungs with air. As the diaphragm relaxes, it returns to its dome shape and expels the air from the lungs, allowing for exhalation.
What is Diaphragmatic Breathing?
Diaphragmatic breathing refers to the proper and conscious use of the diaphragm for deep breathing which allows us to use a higher percentage of our lung capacity.
Many people nowadays breathe with only the upper chest. This does not allow us to take deep breaths or use a larger capacity of our lungs. Instead, we have adapted to taking shorter and more shallow breaths, which only uses a small portion of our lungs. Things like poor posture and lifestyle habits contribute to the upper chest breathing. Reconnecting with the deep belly breathing can prove to be a great benefit for lots of different factors.
Benefits of Diaphragmatic Breathing
There are many benefits to deep breathing, some of which include reducing heart rate and blood pressure. In turn, this promotes relaxation. Abdominal breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) while simultaneously suppressing the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). The parasympathetic nervous system is known as the “rest and digest” system. The sympathetic nervous system is the “fight or flight” system. This is another reason why deep breathing is beneficial for relaxation because it directly suppresses the fight or flight system. Deep breathing actively promotes the body’s functional pathways for rest.
Deep breathing also helps with mobility of the thoracic spine and shoulder girdle. When you take a deep breath and expand the chest cavity, you are helping to mobilize the ribs and thoracic spine to a small degree. This can ultimately help with core muscle stability and posture. Being able to stabilize your trunk and spine using deep breathing techniques can assist with powerlifting and other forms of general strength training.
Why Belly Breathing Matters
Deep breathing might not seem like the most groundbreaking idea, but there is a reason it is a common practice in yoga, pilates, meditation, and other forms of mindfulness. It is a technique that is backed by science, rooted in decades of research, and practiced for thousands of years.
The Benefits of Diaphragmatic Breathing for Pain and Movement
Deep breathing can be helpful for reducing pain levels. As discussed earlier, diaphragmatic breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system. When this system is activated, it can promote signs of physical rest. It takes us out of a stress response, which can reduce intensity of pain. This systematic review found that diaphragmatic breathing (slow deep breathing) was associated with much lower pain scores when compared to a control group in patients with acute pain. Low back pain is one of the most common things to occur, affecting up to 84% of people all over the world, even becoming a major cause of disability. This other systematic review found that breathing exercises have a positive effect on alleviating low back pain.
Diaphragmatic breathing positively impacts movements, as well. Think about it… if you’re hurting less, you can move more. Not only do you move more, but the actual movement feels better. Working on your deep breathing can even help mobilize the spine, especially in the thoracic spine. This area tends to get tight and in later years, we tend to flex forward. Deep breathing works to help extend the thoracic spine, which helps contribute to better posture.
Taking slow deep breaths will also help with oxygen exchange. This is incredibly important for those with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Individuals with COPD have a hard time getting enough oxygen throughout the body. Focusing on slow deep breathing enhances oxygen exchange needed for the body to function.
Nervous System Regulation & Vagal Tone
Nervous system regulation is important for normal everyday function. But here me out…one day of nervous system dysregulation might not hurt you. But a dysregulated nervous system over a long period of time can lead to dysregulation throughout the body. It affects your mood, gut health, and even pain signals in your body.
Coming from someone who has dealt with nervous system dysregulation for many years, I can only express how important it is to practice mindfulness techniques. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to practice diaphragmatic breathing. If you can regulate your nervous system, the rest of your body will thank you. Find ways to activate your parasympathetic nervous system (deep breathing), this calms down your stress response, which positively impacts your mood, gut health improves, hormones become more balanced, and your body works in sync, just as it should. If this topic is of interest to you, leave me a comment down below of what specifically you would like me to talk about more!
Why You Need This If You’re Burnt Out or Dealing with Chronic Pain
Nervous system regulation is very important when dealing with both burnout and chronic pain. When you are burnout out, your nervous system gets stuck in a fight or flight state. It constantly feels like it is on guard, protecting, and “surviving.” That’s why no matter how much you feel like you are taking a break or giving yourself a weekend to relax, it’s just never quite enough. You have to do some serious work to actually regulate your nervous system. It’s not something that switches off in a moment.
In reality, this is actually how your body should respond. The switch from parasympathetic state to sympathetic state and vice versa can happen quite quickly. But when you are stuck in a sympathetic state, your body is in a dysregulated mode. It becomes much more challenging to get out of the fight or flight state. Pretty soon, your body begins to function off of constant “survive” mode. Being stuck here for a length of time is what starts to wreak havoc on the rest of the body. Your gut becomes sensitive, leading to digestion issues and sensitivities. Mood swings are more apparent. Energy levels crash no matter how much sleep you get. Even sleep patterns are disrupted. You have to put in the work to get your dysregulated nervous system back to a regulated state.
Other Articles Related to Chronic Pain & Nervous System Regulation
- How to Identify the Signs of a Dysregulated Nervous System
- A Guide to the Tissue Healing Timeline
- What is Vagal Tone and How to Improve It
- The Important Connection Between Exercise and the Gut Brain Axis
- Why Deep Breathing is Important for the Pelvic Floor
The Science Behind Chronic Pain
When dealing with chronic pain, things get a little more confusing. The brain is what perceives pain. Let’s say you roll your ankle. Although the injury occurs at your ankle and you feel pain there, it is actually the brain that is telling you, “Hey, this is injured and it hurts!” In an acute injury (timeframe of <3 months from initial injury), specific portions of the brain light up, perceiving pain at the body part that is injured. This lets you know that something is injured and you need to be careful so as to not further injure it. This is our body’s normal protection mode at work. Then, the body does its normal thing to heal!
But what happens when the pain lasts way longer than expected? The body is very good at healing itself. That is what it is designed to do. So the shoulder that continues to hurt two years after trying to lift a box that was a little too heavy back when you helped your friend move that one time…that injury is no longer there. So why does it continue to hurt? This is where the brain comes in.
A Little Pain Education
When acute pain turns into chronic pain, the little areas that light up in the brain to perceive pain starts to expand. On fMRIs of the brain, you will see vast amounts of the brain light up in someone with chronic pain compared to someone who has an acute injury. This happens by a phenomenon we call “smudging.” Smudging is when different areas of the brain associated with detecting stimuli for a specific body part begin to spread. This is why after two years, it’s not just your shoulder that hurts back when you originally injured it, but now its extended to behind near your shoulder blade and travels down your arm to your forearm. In patients with chronic pain, this smudging makes it very difficult to pinpoint pain. Instead, large areas feel painful. This is due to the smudging effect of the sensory and motor homunculus within the brain (those specific areas that detect stimuli we referred to earlier).
Now, there is a lot more that goes into chronic pain. This is only scratching the surface. But this is one of the reasons why chronic pain occurs in the way that it does. In order to get out of this cycle, we need to work at the level of the brain, since this is what perceives the pain! The brain is part of the central nervous system, hence why nervous system regulation is so useful for treating chronic pain! We’ve come full circle here. If we can teach the body and the brain to re-enter safety mode, rebuild trust with movement again, and to begin to ensure that “survival” mode is not the only way to survive, you’ll notice that you can start to reverse the effects of chronic pain.
Getting Started Today With Diaphragmatic Breathing
Here is an easy way to get started with diaphragmatic breathing:
- Lie on your back in a comfortable position with your knees bent and feet flat on the ground.
- Place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your belly.
- Take a deep breath in. Try to fill your belly with air first, meaning your hand on your belly should rise before your hand on your chest moves.
- Allow your belly to fill with air completely before your upper chest fills with air and expands, allowing the hand on your chest to rise. Keep practicing if this is hard to coordinate!
- When you have taken as deep of a breath as you can, exhale, allowing the hand on your chest to fall first. This is the opposite order from where we started.
- The hand on your belly should be the last to fall. Repeat for a few breath cycles.
With deep breathing the hand on your belly should be the first to rise and the last to fall. This means you are successfully using your diaphragm to breathe deeply.
References
Joseph AE, Moman RN, Barman RA, et al. Effects of Slow Deep Breathing on Acute Clinical Pain in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. J Evid Based Integr Med. 2022;27:2515690X221078006. doi:10.1177/2515690X221078006
Shi J, Liu Z, Zhou X, Jin F, Chen X, Wang X, Lv L. Effects of breathing exercises on low back pain in clinical: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Complement Ther Med. 2023 Dec;79:102993. doi: 10.1016/j.ctim.2023.102993. Epub 2023 Oct 10. PMID: 37827444.
TL;DR
Diaphragmatic breathing, also known as belly breathing, deep breathing, or abdominal breathing, is performed by engaging the diaphragm to inhale deeply into the belly while keeping the chest still. This type of breath supports nervous system regulation, reduces stress, improves core activation, and enhances movement efficiency. When practiced correctly and regularly, it becomes a daily reset for pain, burnout, and emotional overwhelm. This post teaches you the breakdown of diaphragmatic breathing, the benefits, why it matters, and how this foundational practice supports recovery, nervous system regulation, and strength.
Tera Sandona is a licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) and the founder of PT Complete. She helps high-achieving women break out of cycles of chronic pain, stress, and burnout through her Regulate and Rebuild Method, a sequenced approach that addresses the nervous system first and builds strength second. Her work focuses on helping women finally understand their bodies, rebuild strength, and create lasting resilience that fits real life.
