Restore your core through breath.

In the last post, I introduced the 4 deepest core muscles that work together to manage the pressure in your abdominal canister: the diaphragm, transverse abdominus (TA), pelvic floor and multifidus (spinal stabilizing muscles). When they don’t work well together, you might experience signs or symptoms of core dysfunction. That can look like:

• heaviness in the pelvic floor

• leaking during exercise or incontinence

• pain in the low back, or hips

• coning or doming along the middle of the abdomen (especially during pregnancy or early postpartum)

The good news is that the first step in rehabbing core function and getting those four deep core muscles to work together is breathing! Sometimes called core breathing or the connection breath, this breathing pattern aims to enhance the mind-muscle connection with the pelvic floor and help restore full range of motion.

Step 1: Tune into your breathing pattern

• Find a comfortable position, seated or standing, and place on hand on your abdomen and the other on the side of your rib cage

• Take a nice deep inhale through your nose, and breath into your hands, trying to feel that expansion 360 degrees into your ribcage. You should feel your hands rising.

• Exhale slowly through your mouth and notice your hands coming back down as your abdomen “deflates”

Step 2: Layer in the pelvic floor

• On your next inhale, continue to expand the abdomen, AND as you inhale, actively relax your pelvic floor (you can image a flower opening in your vagina).

• As you exhale, think about engaging your pelvic floor muscles by drawing a blueberry into your vagina, and engage your deep core muscles, by visualizing your hip bones drawing together. This should be a 2-3 / 10 in terms of engagement.

That's it! Simple, but not necessarily easy. Give yourself time and patience to become familiar with this breathing practice. If your default breathing pattern is into your chest and shoulders, this will feel “backwards”. Remember, our primary breathing muscle is our diaphragm, it contracts down to draw air into the lungs, which expand. With that, our abdomen and ribcage should ALSO expand to make space. If you’re sucking your stomach in as you inhale, there’s nowhere for your breath to go but up into your shoulders, that’s not what we want.

Follow along with my Diaphragmatic Breathing Practice