Exhalation

Try something for me. Exhale as deeply as you can. Now, without inhaling, exhale again. Keep exhaling. Exhale more. How far can you go before you inevitably inhale? This is often the strategy utilized when folks arrive for physical therapy. They have maximized their ability to move in one direction, however they are unable to fully move in the opposite direction, leading to problems.

Breathing is crucial, we all do it and there is a sequence to doing it effectively. Breathe in, breathe out. Pretty simple, and effective, yet not as easy as it may appear on the surface. The key principle here is that in order to inhale you must first exhale, and vice versa. One cannot exist without the other. All movement revolves around this concept. Movement, with respect to something else, is how we identify change, it is how we know we’ve gone somewhere.

Your heartbeat is another example. When the heart squeezes it pushes blood around your body and nourishes tissues. The squeeze is not possible if the heart did not relax enough to allow blood to fill its chambers. This is why a heartbeat sounds the way it does, lub-dub. The difference in pitch is a change in pressure. Without the change, without the ability to relax and then pressurize, tissues would not survive.

Daily movement operates on the exact same foundational principles. A squat requires you let your body sink toward the floor, so you can push it away from the floor. A pull up necessitates you create enough pressure to rise toward the bar and then decompress to allow yourself back toward the floor. You must rest before you can apply energy to the world.

Energy transfer is a complex topic, but it follows simple rules that apply to everything. To move comfortably, we must uniformly obey the rules.

Austin Ulrich, Physical Therapist