The Breathing–Posture Connection: How Poor Breathing Habits Impact Alignment

When most people think about posture correction, they think of sitting straighter or doing more strength training. But one of the most overlooked foundations of healthy alignment is something you do over 20,000 times a day — breathe.

If your breathing mechanics are off, your posture probably is too. And it’s not just about oxygen. Poor breathing habits change the shape of your rib cage, tighten surrounding muscles and disrupt how your spine stacks.

Let’s break it down.

Why Posture and Breathing Are Closely Linked

Your spine isn’t just a bony column — it’s deeply influenced by how your diaphragm, rib cage and abdominal wall move together. If any of these are restricted, your body finds compensation patterns. This can lead to:

An extended lower back
Rounded shoulders
A collapsed chest
Tension in the neck and jaw

All of this starts with dysfunctional breathing. Many people are stuck in either chest-dominant or belly-dominant breathing — and neither helps restore true postural balance.

The Problem with Chest Breathing

Chest breathing relies heavily on accessory muscles like the scalenes, upper traps and sternocleidomastoids. These are the muscles that tense up when you're stressed.

If you’re always pulling your breath into your upper chest:

Your rib cage loses mobility
Your neck and shoulders stay tight
You reinforce a forward-head posture

This kind of shallow breathing can also signal your nervous system to stay in fight-or-flight mode, which further increases muscular tension throughout the body.

The Problem with Belly-Only Breathing

Now, belly breathing has its place — but only focusing on expanding your stomach forward (while your rib cage stays still) creates a new set of problems:

The rib cage becomes stiff
The spine goes into excessive extension
You lose intra-abdominal pressure in the right places

As Ramin explains here, we need to expand the rib cage in all directions — front, side and back — to support proper alignment and avoid compressive postures.

How Poor Breathing Affects the Spine

When you breathe in a dysfunctional way, your spine pays the price. Here's how:

Thoracic stiffness: A rib cage that doesn’t expand laterally or posteriorly leads to a locked-up mid back.
Lumbar extension: Belly breathing often forces the pelvis into anterior tilt, leading to excessive lumbar curve.
Neck tension: Shallow chest breathing tugs the cervical spine into extension, straining the neck and jaw.

Over time, these patterns create the exact kind of chronic pain and fatigue that people seek help from a posture coach to fix.

How to Fix It: Train Your Breathing, Align Your Posture

So, what can you do to breathe better — and in turn, feel better aligned?

1. Expand Your Rib Cage

Start by retraining the rib cage to expand in all directions. Ramin demonstrates how in this video-supported guide:
👉 Breathing Exercises to Decompress Your Rib Cage and Relief Back Pain

2. Test Your Diaphragmatic Function

Learn whether you’re truly using your diaphragm. Try the tests and exercises in:
👉 Better Diaphragmatic Breathing to Relieve Your Back Pain

3. Pair Breathing with Movement

Try combining rib cage expansion with gentle posture drills like these:
👉 Dynamic Morning Mobility: Energize Your Day in 5 Minutes

Awareness Before Strength

Before you load your spine with squats and backbends, you need awareness of how your ribs, pelvis and diaphragm are stacked. Breathing is the first step. Without it, no posture cue will stick.

If you’ve been training hard and still feel “compressed,” “stuck,” or like you can’t stand tall, don’t overlook your breath. It might be the missing link in your alignment puzzle.

Need Help Retraining Your Posture and Breath?

If you're local to LA, Ramin offers posture coaching in West Hollywood that combines breathing mechanics, movement drills and mindset tools to reset how your body feels in space.

It’s not just about straightening up — it’s about learning how to move and breathe in sync.

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