How to retrain your breathing | Part 1 | Asthma, long covid or breathlessness

this exercise is called breathing control and it might be recommended to you by your physiotherapist because your breathing pattern is disordered normal breathing happens through your nose and using your diaphragm and sometimes your breathing pattern might change and that can be normal too for example if you have an acute viral illness if you have an asthma attack or if you have pain in your chest in any of those situations your breathing pattern will change and that's normal but when the virus resolves or the asthma control is better or the pain is gone your breathing pattern should settle back to normal sometimes your breathing pattern can stay altered and that can then cause symptoms for you if your breathing pattern is disordered you might experience symptoms of breathlessness chest tightness feelings of not being able to get enough air in all of those are common features of breathing pattern disorder and that's where this exercise will help you might find with a disordered breathing pattern that you tend to breathe using your upper chest rather than your tummy and you might find that you're breathing more in and out through your mouth you might also notice that you have symptoms of sighing or yawning and we call those symptoms air hunger this first exercise breathing control aims to get your breathing back to a normal pattern to start with i would advise doing this lying down okay lie down on the floor or on the bed with your knees bent and your feet flat place one hand on your chest and one hand on your tummy and relax into the surface beneath you as you're breathing in you want to feel your tummy lift and as you breathe out you want to feel it relax back down you want to try and avoid any movement in your upper chest imagine you've got a balloon sitting under the hand that's on your tummy as you breathe in the balloon fills and your tummy lifts and as you breathe out it relaxes back down as you breathe in tummy lifts and as you breathe out relax back down if you can feel your tummy and your chest moving try making your breath smaller so that it's just your tummy that moves as you breathe in tummy lifts and as you breathe out it relaxes back down make sure all the time that your mouth is closed and you're breathing in and out through your nose and your breathing should be silent if you're breathing a bit fast you can add a slight pause after each breath out just to slow the rate of breathing you might experience something called air hunger when you're practicing this exercise your brain has become used to an altered way of breathing so when you then try to retrain your breathing back to what's normal your brain can find that quite uncomfortable and when you start taking these smaller abdominal breaths you might feel like you're not getting enough air in and your brain might want you to take a big deep breath or yawn or sigh and that's what we call air hunger when you're practicing this exercise if you feel the air hunger coming on just try to push back on that sensation for as long as you feel comfortable swallow hard and keep practicing those small abdominal breaths so your breathing pattern is something that happens subconsciously and you obviously can't think about this new way of breathing all the time so our advice would be to practice this exercise regularly four times a day aiming to build up to five minutes you'll probably find that you can't manage five minutes straight away and that's okay that's quite normal you might find you can manage about 30 seconds or a minute before that feeling of air hunger becomes too much over time with regular practice you'll find that you can build up to 5 minutes and once you can do five minutes of breathing control lying down comfortably you can then progress onto the next exercise which is breathing control in sitting

Channel: University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Views: 11,528

Keywords: uclh, nhs, ucl hospitals, london hospitals, respiratory, covid, longcovid, health, asthma, respiratorytherapy, medical, lungs, allergies, wellness, respiratorycare, coronavirus, cough, flu, medicine, healthcare, hospital, colds, breathe, nurse, doctor, breathing, bronchitis, nursing, detox, copd, healthylifestyle, natural, virus, breathlessness, physiotherapist

Id: k9-8AG3sUi4

Length: 4min 28sec (268 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 25 2022