Your Diaphragm - one of my favorite muscles in the body
Your diaphragm muscle will work all by itself or you can control it.
Your diaphragm is your main breathing muscle. When you inhale your diaphragm moves downward which creates more space in your lungs, causing air to flow into the body. As you exhale, your diaphragm moves upward and compresses your lungs, squeezing air out of the body. The diaphragm is shaped like an umbrella and acts somewhat like a jellyfish as it moves through the water, curving and flattening. The picture below shows the location of the diaphragm in your body. Your diaphragm attaches to your spine and your lower ribs and separates your heart and lungs from your visceral organs.
Our diaphragm acts as a communication tool between our mind and our body, or between our conscious body and our unconscious body. We can control when and how our diaphragm moves as we can control our breath. Yet if we don’t pay attention, breathing happens automatically. Our diaphragm and our breath is the only automatic function in our body that we can also control. By observing our breathing, we can obtain insight into how we feel. By intentionally controlling or altering our breath, we can influence how our body feels. Because of this two way communication feature of the diaphragm, intentionally altering your breath is one of the best ways to influence your nervous system.
Your respiratory stamina, particularly during endurance exercises, are partly determined by your diaphragmatic strength. Just as your train your heart through cardiovascular activity, you can train your diaphragm through breathing exercises. The most common exercises to strengthen your diaphragm are those that involve rapid contractions of the diaphragm while you breathe or during a breath hold. Overtime, you would want to increase the number of repetitions.
Also the more resistance you add to your breathing, the harder your diaphragm has to work. If you breathe through your nose rather than through your mouth, your diaphragm gets a better work out. Some athletes train with a resistance mask reducing the size of the air opening smaller than their nose and further work their diaphragm. And for a random animal fact, the mammal with the largest greatest airway resistance is the giraffe as giraffe’s have to pull air through a very tiny airpipe all the way down it’s neck. Giraffes have really strong diaphragms.
Some short good videos related to the diaphragm are below:
Your Breathing Muscles.
Your primary breathing muscle is the diaphragm. Your auxiliary breathing muscles are the Intercostals and muscles of the neck and chest.
If you want to create a customized breathing plan for your diaphragm, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.