Breath and movement are deeply and intrinsically connected

What is the most obvious difference between a dog or a cat and a human like us? They are quadrupeds: they walk on four legs. We are bipedal: we stand upright and move on two legs.

There are many advantages to being on two legs. For instance, it frees up our upper limbs as hands to manipulate our environment, thus enabling more complex tool use. But those points are not our focus here.

The question we are asking here is this: “How does this difference between us and quadrupeds impact breathing?”

To appreciate why this is relevant, take your mind to a video of a cheetah sprinting. You have surely seen videos of it at high resolution and in slow motion. If you look from the side, you can observe how, at high speeds, the cheetah’s entire body flexes and extends with each stride.

At one end of the sprinting movement, the forelimbs extend forward and the hindlimbs backward. Here, the spine is elongated. At the other end, the forelimbs and hindlimbs are crossing each other, with the forefeet behind the hindfeet. Here, the spine is rounded or scrunched.

That is, when sprinting, every stride the cheetah takes is coupled to a large alternating spinal extension and flexion movement.

What does that mean for the cheetah’s breath? It has no choice but to couple its sprinting movement with its breathing in a 1:1 ratio. Every spinal rounding, with the forelimbs and hindlimbs coming closer, takes place on an exhalation. Every spinal lengthening, with the limbs reaching away from each other, takes place on an inhalation.

This spinal movement is like a pump: when flexing, it squeezes the abdominal organs into the diaphragm, pushing it into the thorax and creating an exhale. The reverse happens when the spine extends.

As the cheetah sprints, this coupling of movement and breath is not optional. It is important, even mandatory, for energy efficiency and for the safety of its tissues. This coupling happens automatically and involuntarily. It is not a deliberate decision by the animal; it is evolutionarily ingrained. This phenomenon is known and researched; it is termed “locomotor-respiratory coupling.”

I have chosen an iconic example—a cheetah sprinting—where this phenomenon is easy to see. But this happens in other sprinting quadrupeds too, as their body plan is largely the same.

When quadrupeds trot, running at a slower speed, the coupling between movement and breathing can be more relaxed, but it still tends to happen. Consider that there are two oscillations happening simultaneously, like two waves intersecting. One is from the movement of the limbs. The other is from the movement of the breath. They can conflict or they can synergize. If there is a rhythm, it is naturally more efficient and comfortable. In fact, while this is not biomechanically mandatory in humans, you can still see runners often moving towards a rhythm of breath coordinated with their steps.

In humans, as we are bipedal, we do not place weight on our upper limbs (which are connected closely with the rib cage where breathing takes place) and do not significantly flex and extend our spine with each step. This means that we can decouple breathing rhythm from locomotion.

But while walking does not require significant spinal flexion and extension, a great many other movements do. Those movements should be coupled with a biomechanically synergistic phase of breathing.

In some yoga schools, the connection between movement and breathing while doing asana is presented as a rule or a style: “This is how we do it. When you move into this asana, this is how you breathe.” These instructions can become rigid, encoded and dogmatic.

Such teaching is missing the fundamentals. The crucial reason why we must consciously and intelligently integrate movement and breathing is this: The fundamental connection between spinal movement and breathing is intrinsic to the design of the human body. We must understand it and work with it. We must not ignore it.

This is a biomechanically sound principle, but in application, it is more than that: it should be a felt experience. When your spine elongates, your trunk volume expands, and this naturally synergizes with the expansion of an inhalation. When your spine flexes, your trunk is compressed, and this naturally supports the contraction of an exhalation. This is not a rule, a style, or a tradition. It is what you feel as you move.

Breath and movement are natural, experiential partners. If we ignore that, we decrease efficiency, increase risk of injury, and fragment what evolution has wisely integrated over millions of years.

If we understand and appreciate this synergy in asana—biomechanically and experientially—the outcome is powerful: ease and efficiency, safety, and a feeling of being whole.

The synergy of movement and breathing is a deep and fascinating topic. This is just one important aspect of it.