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Core breathing really affects the way you exercise and your day-to-day life. Today I am going to talk about core breathing, breathing exercises for core strength, core breathing techniques and core breathing exercises.
Core Breathing — The Core Foundation of Exercise
Hi, I’m Margaret Martin at MelioGuide, and today I’m going to talk about a really important core foundation to exercise.
That core foundation is our core and how we breathe and how we use the muscles around the diaphragm to best support us in our day-to-day function as well as when we’re lifting weights or exercising in anyway.
Core Breathing and Your Core
Let’s first talk about the breath and how that breath is integrated with the rest of the core.
Core Breathing From Your Diaphragm
Everybody here knows how they should breathe with their diaphragm, whether it’s through Pilates, Yoga, or relaxation training.
You should do your core breathing with your diaphragm.
If you have my book Exercise for Better Bones, you will see my description on core breathing with your diaphragm.
If you’re not 100% sure, you place your hands on your lower ribs, even place your hand on your tummy.
I like the ribs to be a really essential part of it, so it’s important that you feel the diaphragm expand.
It’s attached right under the ribs, and it’s attached to the front of the spine. So as your diaphragm contracts, the ribs are going to expand.
Core Breathing and the Pelvic Floor
Where does all that energy go?
It goes down through the organs, all the way down to the pelvic floor. At that point your pelvic floor releases and relaxes with your breath in. As you exhale, that pelvic floor starts to tighten back up.
I like to think about it as the ocean.
Most of you have, hopefully, have been to the ocean. I want you to think about a really quiet shoreline, where that wave of energy being your diaphragm, that wave of energy comes into shore, washes down across the sand. As that wave goes down onto the sand, that’s your pelvic floor releasing. It peaks and then it flows back up into the ocean.
All day long, day and night, this is going on just like your breath. Having that as your foundation to everything you do is so critical.
Reduce the Tension in Your Diaphragm
So many people hold their tension up through their diaphragm.
If you hold the diaphragm tight, then there’s no give and take. Everything is pushed down. Everything is held here, and you breathe with upper chest and not down here.
Core Breathing and Your Core Foundation
Why is that so critical?
This is your foundation, and if you don’t utilize your foundation, other muscles are going to try to help out for that reason.
I’ve had four women, all young women, in the last two weeks that all have an impairment in this breathing pattern.
They’ve tried really, really hard, through Pilates or through fitness. They push really hard and in that desire to improve their core, they’re just trying to stabilize with whatever they have.
They just haven’t gone back to the foundation of safe breathing. Effective, efficient breathing. What’s happening is all other muscles around their pelvis, around their lower back are trying to hang on for that stability They are reaching for the stability that the core would provide.
They all had another characteristic: they all had foot problems.
Often their issues started with foot problems, and the innervation of the pelvic floor is the same as the innervation in the feet.
If you’re interested in more information about this, the person I took my course with was Julie Wiebe. Julie talks about the pelvic floor as a piston.
I like to visualize it more as waves. Whatever works for you as long as you get it working for you.
That’s all from MelioGuide today on how to breathe from your core. Thanks for tuning in.
Core Exercises
Visit my Core Exercises page to read more articles like this.
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