Mastering Diastasis Recti
3 Effective Strategies
In my last blog, we talked about diastasis recti, what it is, and how to test for it. Today, I will give my top three tips and tricks on potentially closing the gap, but more so reducing low back pain, easing digestion, and connecting to your core more, i.e., the symptoms of diastasis recti.
Breathe People…Breathe!
The first thing is breathing; believe it or not, many of my clients have learned interesting breathing patterns. I don't know if it's a compensation technique, allergies, obstructive nasal passages, or all the above. But it all comes into play with breathing.
My favorite type of breathing that I teach to feel the core (I'm going to say core, but we're talking about our abdomen/low back waist area) is “H-A” ha breathing.
When it’s cold out, we like to fog our hands to heat them. It's the same sort of fogging breath when you fog a mirror. That's the sound that you're making.
So you take a deep breath, and then “H-A” ha. And try to prolong it for as long as possible. You'll feel a natural gathering of your waist, ribs, and abdominals.
You inhale. And then exhale. You have a bit of an open mouth and release in the jaw. In yoga, it's called uji breathing. I particularly like opening the mouth and jaw; it relates to the pelvic floor and has a little audible exhale. Feel that natural gathering.
Layer in Breathing with Your Exercises
If you exercise, lift weights, do what you will do, and layer in that form of breathing. Empty your lungs a bit, like 30 to 50%, and then start to do whatever you're going to do. So if I do bicep curls, I'm going to “H-A” ha, about 30%, and then I will do the exertion phase of the bicep curl, exhaling. The exhale adds a natural pull so that my abdominals can come together before I load.
2. Number two, I've talked about this before; it's using my favorite ball. But your pelvic floor, the base of your pelvis, is a superhighway. The tissues from the front of the body wrap through the ground, and the back of the body wraps up the front of the side. Everything interconnects at the base of your pelvis. If that gets tight, it can also pull on the tissues of the abdomen, causing a potential diastasis.
My favorite ball is deflated. If you can't sit on the floor cross-legged, you can sit on a dining room chair where your feet are flat. And you practice that same “H-A” ha breath.
So you inhale and then exhale with “H-A” ha - feeling that natural corsetting at the tail end of your breath; it almost feels like a cough or a sputtering car. So you inhale and breathe out with a ha.
You keep repeating that while sitting on the ball. You're going to relax and release the fascia of the pelvic floor. It will help encourage the diastasis to gather and release the tissue surrounding the site. That one is a pretty quick, easy, simple thing!
Dancers and Gymnasts… Slouching May Help
3. Lastly is where you place your upper torso, specifically your ribcage. And when I learned this through Nutritious Movement, it was the most eye-opening thing I'd ever learned and all of my Pilates and Gyrotonic education or lack thereof.
My ribcage has a natural slant when I'm just upright and vertical. If I put a brick on the bottom floating ribs, it's running along an angle. If I took the brick and put it on my sternum from a side vantage point, you could see the slant of the brick. So that indicates that my upper thoracic, ribcage, and upper torso are not neutral. They're in extension.
I've essentially done a mini backbend with my upper back and have stayed there. To all my dancers and gymnasts who have been told to stand up straight, that tends to be a hyper-correction that leads to these arched ribs. You have to do the exact opposite to correct it. And when you do that, your ribs will stack over your pelvis, giving your abdominals better organization instead of constantly living in an overstretched position.
What I have to do is the three-part process.
Step one is to de-rotate. I don't think that's the word, but you're going to think of curling and rounding your chest forward because if I'm doing a back dive, I need to do a forward dive into the swimming pool like a bow with my sternum and chest.
Step two: I need to slide my ribs back. Because when they're sitting forward in my body, I need my ribs to slide backward. So, as I do that, you can see your upper back starts filling out.
Step three: if there's a hook under my bra line, I will pull that hook like a conveyor belt up to the ceiling. So I've got a little bit of length and traction. And believe it or not, this is a neutral ribcage. If I take my brick, now if it's on my ribs, it's pointing straight ahead. It's not angled upward.
To compensate for too much dancing and gymnastics, you slouch. I know it feels horrible internally, but I promise, from an abdominal standpoint, it's lining everything up better.
Stacked, Organized, and Ready To Go
Then I slide my ribs back so they're genuinely over my pelvis, and the back of my ribs are up to the ceiling. When I do that, I can feel the floating ribs in my hip bone stacking, like two blocks right on top of one another. This allows my abdominal wall to be prepared so that it's ready to go when I load it. If I repeatedly do it from an overstretched position, it's working the dysfunction. And then if I load it, load it, load it, I'm just going to keep opening the gap. But if I can bring my ribcage directly over my pelvis and then start to do my bicep curls, squats, lunges, or whatever I'm doing, I'm in an optimal abdominal position to load. You’re not overstretched when you're stacked. You can feel again that “H-A” ha breathing. It's like everything's sort of organized and ready to go.
Sit on your deflated butt ball to release your pelvic floor and fascia. Then try to find a neutral ribcage; sometimes, they say to drop your ribs. I don't think that's enough, but if you're going to layer on exercises, you will need to drop them into a slouch, pull them back, and then traction them up to the ceiling.
If you have any questions, let me know. As somebody who's dealt with this for over seven years because that's how old my son is, I understand the feeling and hope this helps.
Hopefully, you got some good information from this, and I'll see you soon!