Why we are going to learn how to breathe.

What Difference does Breathing Make for Diastasis Recti?

Let’s try a little breathing experiment. Take a deep breath

Give me a deep inhale.

Now exhale ALL of your breath out.

What areas of your body move with your breath? Try the exercise again and take note.

Ideally, we want our entire core to expand out evenly. Like what you see demonstrated in the video below.


As you see, the breath goes deep down evenly into the belly, sides and back. I like to cue ladies by saying to breathe deep down and into the lower back. You obviously can't just breathe into your lower back. It's often the area that we are neglecting to breath into. In doing so, we will inadvertently breathe into our sides and stomach as well.

There are many benefits to breathing in this way, including:

  • stretching our mid back
  • relaxing and stretching our hip flexors 
  • maximizing oxygen intake (very important for healing)
  • reduce stress
  • lower heart rate
  • relaxation

What breathing patterns do we often see?

We often see chest or belly breathing, with the former being most dominant.

Some of us may find that mainly our chest rises up and down with our breath — chest breathing. Others of us find that mainly our belly moves out and in with our breath— belly breathing.

Both scenarios can be problematic for Diastasis Recti. Take note of the diagram below.



To put it simply, chest breathers can put stress on an upper diastasis. The flaring of the ribs up and out pulls on the diastasis from the top because the abdominal muscles are attached to the lower part of the rib cage. On the other hand, belly breathers can put stress on a lower diastasis, from ballooning the tummy in and out all day every day.

However we breathe, we have developed that habit over time. It’s now important to recognize it and establish a more efficient way. This is why we practice how we breathe in the beginning of this program. Sometimes people literally begin closing their diastasis recti by just correcting their breathing.


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