ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the main anatomical and physiological features of balanced and imbalanced breathing, emphasising the aspects that are psychophysically most significant. Breathing forms the basis for life. Imbalanced breathing may be due to somatic disease but also to emotional problems. Breathing and the respiratory system have many other tasks affecting psychophysical well-being that are not always recognised. In psychophysical breathing therapy, images, movement, and voice are used as aids in various breathing exercises. In psychophysical therapy, the aim should not be to correct either posture or breathing from outside but to help patients observe these themselves. Tensing the muscles can be consciously utilised in methods of psychophysical therapy to control intolerably strong feelings or emerging images of trauma. Methods of psychophysical breathing therapy are therefore highly useful in addition to actual speech therapy methods. In a Norwegian study, physiotherapists trained to treat and assess breathing observed the breathing of patients with musculoskeletal pain before and after psychomotor physiotherapy.
