This week’s blog is all about clavicular and thoracic breathing and the process of breathing in general.

As this month sees Love Your Lungs Week we are embracing all things breathing and examining how different styles of breathing can improve your presentations, speeches or singing performances.

Clavicular Breathing

So then clavicular breathing, what on earth is that?

Well, the bone which lots of people refer to as the collarbone, is also called the clavicle. I believe its proper name is derived from Latin.

We have a clavicle on both sides and it is attached, via muscles behind the bone, to the lungs.

When we breathe in, our clavicular muscles are lifting up and increasing the volume in our lungs and pulling in air in the process.

However, because these muscles are super small, and they’re only attached to a small part of the lungs, the volume of the lung only increases a small amount during clavicular breathing. Your clavicular breath is very shallow.

Think of when someone touches your shoulder and makes you jump a little – that would be clavicular breathing when we breathe in quickly.

This kind of breathing has a purpose, but it also creates tension in the neck.

Thoracic Breathing

What is thoracic breathing? It uses the thoracic cavity, which is technically all the parts of our body that are to do with respiration. It includes the heart as well as the lungs, but for the purposes of this subject, we are thinking of it as the chest area and in particularly the ribs.

Now your ribs for a cage structure around your lungs. The muscles that are used to open up the lungs and create volume are called the intercostal muscles. The intercostals lie between the ribs and we have several different pairs. Some of those pairs open up the ribs and pull the ribs apart and other pairs pull those ribs back together.

When you breathe from your chest, you engage the muscles which pull your ribs apart. So imagine the bellows again – if I pull them apart, it’s opening them up in pretty much the same way, increasing the volume of the lungs.

And because your chest is rising up and back down again, occasionally you’ll feel your shoulders rising up with it. Sometimes when the shoulders are involved, it’s because you’re tense, you’re actually tensing this clavicle area as well, adding some clavicular breathing in too.

Thoracic breathing allows a lot more air into our lungs than clavicular breathing. The thing to remember is that, when you breath in with your ribs, they don’t only move out, but they’re going out and up.

And that is chest breathing. There is nothing wrong with chest breathing in most cases. But not necessarily for speaking or singing. That’s where diaphragmatic breathing comes in – more on that in the next blog.

Check out the video to go with this blog or sign up to our newsletter to be the first in the know!