Hi, I'm Lucy Macdonald, physiotherapist. Welcome back to my virtual clinic, thank
you so much for all your messages of support, I really really appreciate them
and I'm so so pleased that so many of you have found the breathing exercises
video so very useful, today what I'm going to do is I'm going to demonstrate
those exercises and I'm going to answer your questions
so what positions should you do the exercises in, is it valuable doing the
exercises lying on your tummy over some pillows, should you be doing breath holds,
should you be breathing in and out of your nose or your mouth, how often you
should be doing them and how many repetitions you should do when you do
them, so first of all what I'd like you to do is sit down in an upright position,
if you're unwell and in bed the best thing to do is to make sure that
you've got lots of pillows propping you up so that you're in a nice supportive
upright position, that's because we know that you get best air in, the maximum amount
of air into the bottom of your lungs if you're in an upright position and you
may remember that in the last video I explained that you get, you've got lots
and lots of blood vessels in the bottom of your lungs and therefore if you get
the air to the bottom of your lungs you get maximum oxygen into your blood and
maximum carbon dioxide out of your blood and that's what it's all about, now it
might be that if you're in hospital your doctor, nurse or physiotherapist might
advise you to get into different positions, for example lying on your
tummy over some pillows and by all means of course follow their advice, however
for those of you watching this at home make sure that you do the exercises
sitting upright because that will give you the maximum benefit, so let's get
cracking, put your hand over your diaphragm, now your diaphragm helps to
bring the air into the bottom of your lungs so if you just first of all note
what it feels like as you just gently breathe so as you
breathe out you'll notice that your hand moves closer to your body and as you
breathe in your hand moves away from your body
likewise if you put your hands over the sides of your ribcage so don't forget
that your lungs fill up the whole of your ribcage all the way down to the
bottom, all the way around the back, so you place your hands over the sides of
your ribcage and you notice that as you breathe in the sides of your ribcage
move away from your body and as you breathe out the sides of your ribcage
move back again, so just take a few gentle breaths, about three gentle
breaths, in and out, now we're gonna move on to the deep breath, deep breaths, now
ideally it would be good if you could do this breathing in and out from your nose
because there are additional benefits from breathing in and out of your nose,
however if you're breathless then that's gonna be really quite tricky and that's
fine, don't panic about not being able to breathe through your nose just
breathe through your mouth you'll still get really really excellent benefits
from doing this breathing exercise, so I'm going to focus on your exhalation so
breathing out and you're going to try and make your exhalation longer, so
you're gonna try and breathe out out out out out and then you'll notice that you'll
inhale, so you'll breathe in as a reflex, because breathing in is a reflex
breathing out is not, so as you focus on breathing out for longer you'll then
notice that as you breathe in and you take a deeper breath in you're able to
fill the bottoms of your lungs more and more and as you keep breathing into that
deep inhalation when you get to the top you just pause, you don't try and force extra
air into your lungs you just have a little pause at the end of that
inhalation and then you breathe out again
out out and through your nose breathing out
it can be useful to visualise your lungs like a sponge so your lungs
being a spongy tissue, as you breathe out you want to try and wring the sponge
so as if you're trying to get water out of a sponge so as you breathe out you're
squeezing the air out of the bottom of those spongy lungs to try and really get
all of that carbon dioxide out of your body and then take a deep breath in
again and then hold at the end of that inhalation and breathe out again, so you
want to do three deep breaths out and in and then you want to return to your
normal gentle breathing, it's important that you don't do more than three deep
breaths otherwise you'll become lightheaded and you may well faint so
just do three deep breaths and then return to your normal breathing, now
ideally the more frequent that you do this exercise the better and
particularly if you're unwell and in bed and you're not up and moving then
it's particularly important that you do it very frequently so try and do it
whenever you're awake try and do three deep breaths and then some nice gentle breathing
I hope that's been helpful, please do follow me on my youtube
channel, so just click on the subscribe button I'm going to be producing more
videos over the next few weeks and months on how to keep you and your
family healthy over the coming weeks and months, so I look forward to seeing you
next time, bye!