75% of People With Anxiety Have Dysfunctional Breathing, But Almost None Get Breathing Training

Tom Myers has spent over 50 years working with breath and body, bringing unique insights into how breathing patterns have changed—and worsened—over time.

In a recent conversation with breathing expert Patrick McKeown, Myers shared his perspective on everything from the biomechanics of the diaphragm to the emotional roots of dysfunctional breathing.

His approach blends structural bodywork, fascia research, and a deep understanding of how modern life has fundamentally altered the way we breathe.

What emerges is a compelling picture: breathing problems aren’t just individual—they’re epidemic.

The Zoo We Made: Why Breathing Is Getting Worse

Myers believes breathing patterns are deteriorating across the board. His explanation? Humans have created an environment—what he calls “a zoo”—that our genes weren’t designed for.

We made a zoo and now we live in it.

Our paleolithic genes evolved over millennia in environments requiring constant movement and physical engagement. Now we live sedentary lives dominated by screens, chairs, and chronic stress.

This mismatch creates anxiety, which directly impacts breathing. Myers points out that our genes tell us to “eat everything in sight” and “be lazy”—adaptive strategies when food was scarce and energy precious.

But in a world of abundance and convenience, those same instincts become liabilities.

Domestication and the Narrowing Airway

One of Myers’ most striking observations involves domestication. Just as domesticated animals develop narrower jaws compared to their wild counterparts, humans have experienced similar changes.

Wild wolves have broad jaws; tiny domesticated dogs have narrow ones. The same transformation has occurred in humans.

Our jaws are measurably smaller than our ancestors’, which crowds the teeth and narrows the airway. This contributes to the explosion in orthodontic needs and breathing disorders like sleep apnea.

Head forward posture is everywhere. I’ve been all around the world and it’s ubiquitous across the culture. I think it’s an urban effect on breathing.

Myers estimates 936 million people globally suffer from sleep apnea, calling it “a train wreck ready to happen.”

Mouth Breathing: The Hidden Epidemic

McKeown highlighted a fundamental issue often overlooked: mouth breathing. Nothing inside the mouth serves a respiratory function—no teeth, tongue, or palate contribute to breathing.

Yet 25% of children are persistent mouth breathers, and 50% of adults breathe through their mouths during sleep.

When the mouth stays open, the tongue can’t rest against the roof of the mouth. This causes the tongue to drop back, narrowing the airway and prompting forward head posture to compensate.

McKeown noted a curious connection few researchers have studied: mouth breathing shifts breathing into the upper chest, while nose breathing engages the diaphragm more effectively.

The Diaphragm: Two Domes, Two Phases

Myers offered a detailed explanation of diaphragmatic mechanics that challenges common assumptions. The diaphragm isn’t one dome—it’s two.

It’s also the only muscle that changes its origin and insertion halfway through its motion.

In the first phase of inhalation, the diaphragm’s origin is the rib cage. Muscle fibers contract and pull the central tendon downward, drawing air into the lungs.

But as the diaphragm meets resistance from the abdominal organs, the central tendon becomes the fixed point—the new origin.

Now the diaphragm lifts the ribs in bucket-handle and pump-handle motions. All rib motion during breathing is driven by the diaphragm, not the intercostals or scalenes, which contribute minimally.

People don’t realize that the diaphragm is moving the ribs. In the first half, the ribs are the origin and the diaphragm pulls down on the lungs. In the second half, the domes are the origin and the diaphragm lifts up the ribs.

Tensegrity and the Rib Cage

Myers introduced the concept of tensegrity—a structural principle he learned from Buckminster Fuller. In tensegrity structures, rigid elements (like sticks) float, held in place by elastic tension (like rubber bands).

The rib cage functions similarly. It’s not held together by leverage alone, but by a dynamic balance of ligaments, muscles, fascia, and membranes.

This box expands and contracts from birth to death—everyone dies on the exhale, Myers noted.

Understanding breathing through tensegrity rather than rigid biomechanics offers a more accurate picture of how the system works.

Posture, Pelvis, and Breath Support

Myers emphasizes the role of pelvic position in breathing. If the pelvis tilts forward excessively, the back of the diaphragm is compromised. If it tilts backward into a slump, the front is restricted.

He offered a simple self-assessment: sit without back support, feel your sit bones, and rock forward and backward.

• Tailbone closer to chair: slumped posture cuts off the front of the diaphragm
• Pubic bone closer to chair: arched back restricts the back of the diaphragm
• Neutral pelvis: allows full, balanced diaphragmatic movement

Where in the middle are you in a poised place? That’s something you can do with yourself when you’re disgruntled and something you can do with your clients.

Emotions, Trauma, and Trapped Breath

Myers views breath as intimately connected to emotion. Every traumatic event involves a movement that didn’t happen.

Trauma is undigested experience. Normally, a sensation produces a feeling, which produces a thought, which results in action—fight, flight, or freeze.

But when movement is blocked—by powerlessness, denial, or circumstance—the energy gets stuck. Breathing patterns freeze around it.

In every trapped breath is a sob, a sigh, a scream, something waiting to happen. A movement undone.

Unresolved stress becomes distress, which becomes illness. Myers watched his mother carefully after his father’s death, noting how unresolvable grief can break health.

But she adjusted—accepting what couldn’t be changed—and lived another 18 years.

Can Emotional Release Fix Breathing?

Myers has seen both outcomes. Sometimes a cognitive breakthrough or emotional release spontaneously corrects breathing patterns.

But the pattern can return if the person returns to the same environment—same job, same marriage, same stressors.

That’s why breathing retraining must accompany emotional work. McKeown pointed out that 75% of people with mental health issues have dysfunctional breathing, yet few receive targeted breathing intervention.

Breathing training isn’t one-size-fits-all. It must address the biochemical (CO₂ tolerance), biomechanical (diaphragm recruitment), and psychophysiological (stress response) dimensions.

Rebuilding the Airway: Intraoral and Intranasal Work

Myers uses hands-on techniques—including intraoral and intranasal work—to widen the palate and open nasal passages.

McKeown recounted a physical therapist in the U.S. who placed thumbs against his palate and a pinky inside his nasal airway, gently expanding the structures.

The septum shifted. Breathing improved. No surgery required.

Another method involves inflating small balloons inside the nasal passages to open constricted airways—a more sudden, chiropractic-style approach.

Myers acknowledged that adults can change more than people think, but intervention is far more effective in children, whose structures are still malleable.

Spatial Medicine: A New Paradigm

Myers envisions a future he calls “spatial medicine”—a field that integrates yoga, Pilates, physiotherapy, orthodontics, bodywork, and breathing training.

Currently, these disciplines operate in silos. But as the body crisis deepens, Myers believes they’ll converge into a unified approach to movement and structure.

We have lived in the world of material medicine or chemical medicine. And we have psychiatry and psychology. But there’s a third system—your movement system. I call it the neuromyofascial web.

This system governs how the body is shaped in the embryo, how we come to standing in the first year, and how posture and breath develop—or deteriorate—over a lifetime.

Practical Takeaways

Myers and McKeown offer several actionable insights:

• Breathe through your nose, not your mouth
• Check your pelvic position when sitting—find neutral to support the diaphragm
• Pause at the end of exhalation and wait for the natural urge to inhale
• Address forward head posture to prevent airway compression
• Support children’s breathing early—mouth breathing has lifelong consequences
• Combine emotional work with breath retraining for lasting change

Myers emphasized that breathing isn’t just another isolated system. It’s central to resilience, emotion, posture, and health.

Breathing 17,000 times a day, moving 119 joints with every breath, the diaphragm is the body’s most repeated movement—and the most overlooked.