Headaches have a variety of causes, but one overlooked cause is your breathing.
The Head and Neck
The head has a variety of muscles that work together to produce movement and control facial and head movements. Sometimes the muscles should contract together, but at other times some should relax while others contract. When we get locked into a fully contracted muscle state, headaches and migraines show up.
How you breathe is linked to this in three ways.
Stress Response
Fight or Flight Breathing
“Stress kills,” but it does something long before that. It causes a lot of pain. When our nervous system is ramped up, muscles throughout our body tighten to guard us against threats. When this happens, our breathing shifts into a fight-or-flight pattern. Our rib cage lifts up as our breastbone pops up and forward. This allows us to breathe differently to address the stressor. Like how a sprinter holds his chest up high. It’s a fight-or-flight breathing pattern.
The Neck Muscles add Pressure
When this happens, the neck, jaw, skull, and face muscles contract and often stay contracted instead of relaxing back to their resting position. This extra muscle contraction puts pressure on the head and skull and can trigger a headache. Lifting the ribs also shrinks the space for the neck and head, creating compression. Often, because we are not symmetrical, one side of our neck or jaw is dominant over the other, so pain starts or is more prominent on that side. These are subtle changes and often need an outsider to point them out.
The Calming Fix
To fix this, breathing mechanics need to change to calm the nervous system. Relaxing the breastbone and letting the belly spill out during exhalation will help the rib cage drop down so that you can use your diaphragm more effectively to calm your nervous system. These changes to your breathing mechanics will help not only your nervous system, but also create more space for your neck and head. This will allow your head to move more easily when you look up and down or over your shoulders. This is critical to relieving head pain.
Overinflation
The Stale Air Problem
Another way that breathing problems trigger headaches or migraines is overinflation. Ideally, we want to breathe in, have our lungs fill with air, and have that air then be used in the bloodstream. On exhalation, we want to expel all the stale air that isn’t serving us so we can refill with fresh air.
The Missing Fresh Air
If our breathing mechanics are off, this doesn’t happen. If the rib cage is elevated, we can’t fully expel all the stale air, so our lungs remain overinflated. If the lungs don’t fully deflate and you inflate them more on your next breath, the air in the lungs is now a mixture of stale and fresh air.
The Result
This creates pressure on our neck from the rib cage being too high. Our neck muscles often help hold the ribs up, and they remain contracted. This causes muscle knots and tension, leading to headaches and migraines. Being overinflated also means the blood isn’t getting as much oxygen as it could. This can lead to headaches and migraines since we know the brain is extremely dependent on oxygen.
The Lower Rib Fix
The fix is to lower your rib cage and keep it down when you inhale. It’s hard to learn this skill, but it pays off in the long run. The key is to learn to sense the side abdominals (obliques) that attach to the ribs and help pull the ribs down.
Overuse of Neck Muscles
The Problem with Neck Breathing
This last link between breathing and head pain is critical yet often overlooked. Overuse of neck muscles for breathing is incredibly common, and a quick glance at a person can tell you if it is.
The Neck Pop out
If you look at yourself in the mirror, do you see a soft neck that is smooth with slight undulations of muscles, or do you see muscles popping out? Breathe in gently through your nose and exhale gently through your mouth. Did your neck muscles contract? If your neck muscles were already popped out, did you see them become even more well-defined?
Test Your Neck Muscles
You can also put your hand on your neck muscles to feel if they tighten when you inhale or exhale. Neck muscles should be soft and relaxed while you breathe. If you are using your neck muscles to breathe, you have to work on relaxing them. The average person breathes about 15 times per minute. That is a lot of repetitive work for the neck muscles. The neck muscles are designed to control head movement. When they work to lift up the ribs to breathe, they become overtaxed. They become shortened and contracted and pull on the skull, jaw, and shoulder blades abnormally. This creates pressure and reduces the space for movement, creating headaches and migraines.
The Neck Fix
When your breathing is now dependent on your neck muscles, headaches and migraines can become chronic. Any stress triggers pain because your breathing mechanics change even more when stressed. This can cause a pain spiral. The fix takes time since changes to breathing mechanics can feel wrong or make a person feel vulnerable or out of control.
Update your Breathing
That said, there are some simple steps to start with.
- Find the most comfortable position for your body. It can be sitting, lying on your back with your head supported, lying on your side, or even reclined. We want your body to feel as relaxed as possible with your head pain.
- Inhale gently through your nose and exhale gently through your mouth. You want to get into a rhythm. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your belly.
- Work on sensing your chest melt away from your hand and your belly spilling out into your other hand.
Starting with this technique in your preferred position will help calm your nervous system and lower your ribs, giving your neck space to exist. Do this for a few minutes several times per day to build a foundation of good breathing.
Dr. Amy Novotny, Founder of PABR® Institute, pabrinstitute.com
