How to gauge the right posture by breathing

Adjust your pillow height to unblock your breathing

Sometimes do you feel that you wake up feeling as if there isn’t enough oxygen going into your head? It just means that your breathing is blocked with your current sleeping without you knowing.  If there is no one to help you check if you are sleeping on the right posture, you can consider gauging it with a simple breathing test. 

Breathing Test

Push your head forward. Take a deep breath, do you feel uneasy breathing? 

Woman leans her head forward.

Imagine if this would be your sleeping posture for 6-8 hours, it will affect your breathing which would cause giddiness when you wake up due to the lack of oxygen during the night.

So when some people sleep on their backs with head push very much forward, because of the pillow pushing the neck too forward. The posture is as good as slouching. For side sleepers, it would not affect much unless the height of your neck and shoulders have a difference in height when using your pillow.

Forward Neck Tilt

So what would be a good measurement of a good posture?

The forehead should be higher than the chin, and the maximum horizontal angle is between 5 - 10 degrees. A little change in sleep positions can alter oxygen intake. For people with high blood pressure, we would recommend users to have a pillow a bit height higher than normal.

Optimal Sleep Posture comparing too high and too low

The safest way to say so far is that you can lie down on the pillow as you measure your posture. The posture you stand should be equal or similar to the way you stand. Your head and neck should not be in an awkward position.

Head too high

Measure your angle by feeling your tongue. If you felt that your tongue is pressing against the top area of your mouth, this will indicate that your head is tilting too high, suggesting that the forehead is higher than the chin.

Head too low

If you felt that your tongue isn't touching the top area of your mouth, this would suggest that your posture using the pillow might be too low. This might cause your breathing to take in less oxygen as well.

Sometimes obesity causes your trachea to be press down creating an airway that is compressed, snoring will most likely occur during sleep.

What if you are sleeping on your stomach?

For stomach sleepers,  although we would not recommend it, you can add a mini pillow on your stomach area so that it would support your spine. This way of sleep would not improve your posture. We would recommend people to sleep on your side in a fetal position, to have lesser stress on their spines and back. We would also advise you to have a pillow between your knees.

A bolster would be great as well.