Breathe for Better Digestion

If you deal with constipation or bloating you probably have wondered and tried to figure out what is causing it. And often times it will lead you down the road of removing certain foods from your diet to help with this. I do believe that this is very important to consider, but before you start eliminating everything, I want you to pay attention to your breathing and posture when it comes to better digestion.

Where Digestion Begins

If you think about where digestion begins you may think digestion begins at your mouth when you begin to chew your food and although yes that is mainly true, I’m going to take it back one step. When you sit down to eat, the first thing I recommend you do is take a few deep cleansing breaths. By taking deep breaths, it helps to bring your body back into the parasympathetic of rest and digest. If you are a busy mom, it can be easy to rush around and eat on the go; the problem with this is that you are eating in a fight or flight response which will make it difficult to digest your food properly.

When you allow yourself to calm down, take a few deep breaths to move into a rest and digest state, you are allowing the body to create saliva and bile which help to not only create enzymes to help break down the food more, but also provide for more nutrition to reach the cells in your body.

When you have not only adequate amounts of enzymes but also the proper enzymes to break down the type of food you are eating you will notice less bloating occurring in the stomach. Once you sit down for dinner, make sure to take a few minutes to take some deep relaxing breaths to help bring the body into the parasympathetic response. If you practice this a few days and you are still struggling with bloating, now it’s time to start looking at the foods you are eating and consider an elimination diet.

Posture and better digestion

The other thing that we need to pay attention to when we are sitting down to eat, is how are we sitting. If you are all slumped over than you will not be getting that full deep breath that stimulates and massages the vagus nerve to relax. If your head is thrust forward in positions commonly known as text or tech neck, your throat will have a harder time getting the food down the esophagus. Then add to that the grip at the ribs and you are now causing all of your organs to squish together which will in turn create a slow and sluggish system. This continues on all the way through the small and large intestines down to the colon, so it is important that we are not only breathing for better digestion but also paying attention to your posture when eating.

Emptying Out

The last part of the process which can create problems with constipation is how you sit not only at the dinner table but also in the bathroom. If you tend to tuck your tailbone under with a rounded lower back, you are creating tension and tightness in the back part of the pelvic floor. Tight muscles lead to the inability to effectively empty out which could be causing you to deal with constipation. It is important to make sure you are able to move your pelvis forward and back so that you don’t create too much tension and tightness in the pelvic floor muscles. Below is an exercise for you to ensure you are able to move through these two positions easily.

If you would like to learn some things you should be focusing on when it comes to posture at the dinner table, then take a look at our FREE guide on breath for better digestion. And let me know in the comments below what you think and if you notice a difference.