Breathing into the kidneys while Opening the Spine

Our Opening the Spine movement – as the name suggests – helps improve mobility and functioning of the spine. But the unique breathing pattern, and especially when we inhale with the spine open, may also energize and stimulate the kidneys.

Recently on the private forum for our Complete Course members, one of our students wrote:

I’ve been meaning to ask: How do we breathe into the lower back/kidney area vs. the abdomen? I just now reviewed Opening the Spine again and I don’t see a more detailed explanation. I have just been assuming that it meant to breathe more deeply.

And another student responded with:

Let me know if I am off point but it seems to me that during opening the spine, at the point where you inhale while bent over, you start to breath into the kidney area. I have just started to perform opening the spine since my surgery. The movments are helping with healing and pain.

Yes, I think both students are headed in the right direction with the kidney breathing.

Look at it this way. The idea when you breathe deeply is to keep your chest and shoulders relaxed. As the lungs expand, the diaphragm expands downward and your abdomen expands to create more room for the diaphragm and lungs.

I found this nifty little animation that shows this:

That’s what happens when you are standing up and breathing deeply. Now think of what happens when you are bent over in Opening the Spine.

As you breathe deeply, and your diaphragm expands downward, there’s not as much room for your abdomen to expand. And depending on your position and body shape, there may be almost *no* room for the abdomen to expand.

But the diaphragm has to go somewhere! So generally, your back expands as you inhale deeply, either along with or instead of your abdomen . And what’s back there, right below the diaphragm? Look at this drawing (click here) and you’ll see that the liver and kidneys are right there.

So “breathing into your kidneys” really means letting the back expand as you breathe, rather than the abdomen , which massages the internal organs back there.

Of course, during normal standing deep breathing, you get some kidney massage anyway. But you enhance the effect when you are bent over and your abdomen has nowhere to go. And it’s much easier to do bent over.

After you get the feeling of that in Opening the Spine, you’ll find that you can also do kidney breathing standing up, or sitting, or lying down. Just focus on expanding the back instead of the abdomen when you inhale. You might want to try that – just remember to keep the shoulders down and the chest relaxed, and focus on breathing into the back.