Are you breathing properly? How I found out I wasn’t

You might think of breathing as automatic, but dysfunctional breathing can arise even if you’re healthy We’re often taught that breathing is automatic. We barely think about it, as with blinking or the quiet, constant work of the heart. But many otherwise healthy adults have dysfunctional breathing. “Dysfunctional breathing, also known as breathing pattern disorder, is when breathlessness and/or difficulty in breathing is felt,” said Dr Stephen Fowler, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester. It can occur outside the context of any disease. If a related condition is present, like asthma, the breathlessness might feel disproportionate to that condition, he said. Because we often don’t think much about it, many people do not know their breathing is problematic. For instance, I had panic attacks for more than a decade. They usually happened at night, and I woke up feeling exhausted and out of breath. When I was eventually diagnosed with panic and anxiety, I thought feeling out of breath was linked. I found out later that my physical pattern of inhaling and exhaling itself was out of sync. It wasn’t just in my head – my breathing was dysfunctio