Diaphragmatic Breathing
This is the one common denominator that I give all patients. If you cannot breathe using your diaphragm correctly, then your body is not using all cylinders. Diaphragmatic breathing allows more oxygen to pump through your body, it allows your nervous system to calm down and it relaxes the pelvic floor muscles.
I was sitting in a counseling session re-telling the story of a recent argument. I didn’t think I was getting worked up, but my counselor did. She put a pulse oximeter on my finger and told me to take deep breaths. I did. She stopped me. She said “No, no, you are not breathing. I don’t see your chest rising.” I thought, “Lady, stay in your lane.” I was sitting there looking at my pulse oximeter. I was getting 99% oxygen saturation (totally normal) and I was diaphragmatic breathing. Your chest isn’t really going to rise with diaphragmatic breathing. That’s when I realized that the pulse oximeter must have been her new toy so she couldn’t wait to use it and I must have been her first patient that day. To appease her, I sat there and breathed incorrectly. I didn’t want to go down a rabbit hole of how she was incorrect. She was a counselor. She would have thought I had control issues (which…maybe I do, so what?).
My point is that we are told left and right that chest breathing is correct breathing. I hear that message everywhere. I’ve heard that message yoga classes, doctor’s appointments, you name it.
When you use your diaphragm to breathe correctly, you allow your pelvic floor muscles to relax with every single inhalation. When you do not use your diaphragm to breathe correctly, your pelvic floor muscles tighten with every breath.
Two things to look at here: Excessive pressure and Pain.
Excessive Pressure:
If too much pressure is being forced on your internal organs, especially the pelvic organs, then your body has to find room for that excessive pressure. Like a soda can that you shake, the carbonation goes wild and you hear the bubbles inside the can. You might see a little fizzing start at the opening of the can if there is any weakness at the top OR if it’s a soda bottle and the cap has been unscrewed ever so slightly you will see the bubbles start to leak out the top. Basically, if there is too much pressure inside and any weakness whatsoever in the body, then the pressure will want to escape. Something has to give. In the human body, this escape can look like a hernia, a diastasis recti (appearance of a separation at the midline of the belly) or a prolapse. Learning to breathe diaphragmatically will reduce the constant pressure being forced on areas of weakness with every breath.
Pain:
There is no good reason for the pelvic floor muscles to be too tight. There is no good reason or the pelvic floor muscles to be too loose. No good can come of these extremes. Plain old normal tension is perfect. Normal is good. Normal is perfect. Normal is normal. When you breathe using your diaphragm, every inhale helps make the pelvic floor muscles more “normal”. Every inhale relaxes the pelvic floor muscles. If literally every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break…wait. If literally every breath you take can assist in reducing the excessive tension in the pelvic floor, then it is important to use your diaphragm the way it is supposed to be used.
Our daily habits contribute to why we do or do not use your diaphragm optimally. The diaphragm attaches from the lowest ribs to the spine. This spans the front to the back of the body. It is like a trampoline. Imagine there is nothing else in our body but the diaphragm. If you swallowed a grape, the grape would fall onto the diaphragm and bounce up and down. The trampoline would catch it. Now, stop imagining that there is nothing else in your body. Because that is weird.
If we know that the diaphragm spans our body from front to back, then our posture will really affect how our diaphragm functions. If we constantly put yourselves in positions where our front is closer to our back, then our diaphragm will get shortened. What brings your front closer to your back? Bad posture. Sit in a chair and then slouch. Your ribs are now collapsed back much closer to your spine than if you were sitting up with good posture. When we drive in a car with poor posture, when we sit at the computer with poor posture, when we watch TV with poor posture, even when we exercise with poor posture (and I see this a lot at the gym) we are shortening out diaphragm. This makes our diaphragm much less efficient. This makes effectively makes your pelvic floor tighten.
How to Breathe with Your Diaphragm
This is very easy to do. This is very hard to do.
When you inhale, you want to imagine that you are making your belly a little bigger. When you exhale, your belly should naturally collapse back down. When your belly gets bigger, you might notice that your whole rib cage expands. The expansion is lateral (left to right). But, don’t focus on just that. If you are able to make your belly slightly bigger because of your inhale, then the rib cage should naturally expand – without any extra attention. If you want to get nit picky, then focus on your rib cage, but I get scared to ask people to get nit picky. Nit pickiness is sometimes the reason pelvic pain begins. Truly.
Breathing with your diaphragm means your chest is not rising with the inhale. That is backwards breathing, formally known as “paradoxical breathing”. You don’t want to see your chest rise and fall with diaphragmatic breathing.
And, just so you know, there is only one correct way to breathe: diaphragmatically.