Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. My name is Joe King. I'm the owner of Physical Therapy Advantage in North Aurora. How you doing this morning? Today we are just adding to the list of just general beneficial health attributes and things and skills that you can learn to help yourself out. We've talked about stretching, we've talked about meditation, we've talked about massage. Today we're going to talk about the benefits of breathing. I'm no expert in breathing by any means, but I do know breathing is a necessity of life and a lot of times we just don't do it correctly. So, I'm going to generally talk to you a little bit about it today, but there's going to be links below to help you out with that as well, that some experts are going to take you through how to breathe correctly and how to form those good habits.

So that's the biggest part of it. Breathing is huge. Decreases stress, decreases your blood pressure, increases your longevity; kind of like stretching, kind of like meditation, all that good stuff. It's really beneficial for you. But doing it correctly, as most of us are taught, in through the nose, out through the mouth, nice and slow. Typically four and four pattern, four seconds in, four seconds out general guideline. There's more specific guidelines. Like I said, you're got to have a little controversy, but you'll find out what works best for you. And there's going to be the finding out difference between a vertical breather and a horizontal breather, or more of a chest breather versus a belly breather. And we definitely want to try to be more of a belly breather using our diaphragm, expanding the full lobes of your lung and getting the best oxygen transfer.

So those videos will help you that, and there's a book, linked from James Nester called Breath. That's absolutely a great book, great read for you as well. And liken breathing to like, we talk about drinking water. Wow, drinking eight-to-12/8-ounce glasses of water a day is very difficult for those people who have never done it before. But once you develop the habit and you get in the routine of doing it's great, you see the benefits of drinking water exponentially. Same thing with breathing. Once you learn the technique of breathing correctly, you'll do it more easily, it's more just on memory, muscle memory basically, and you'll have no troubles with it and that's great. And you'll feel the benefits of breathing, decreasing the blood pressure, decreasing stress in those very tense situations. So hope this helps. Take a look at the links before read the book, I think it's great, or audio book if you want to go that route as well.

If you have any questions about anything, even this as well. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I definitely can help you through it, so could Julie, so could Christine. Just give us a call at the clinic at (630) 892-8003 or if you have any other health questions, please don't hesitate to use us as a community resource. All right, look forward to seeing you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joe. Bye.