namaste and welcome to namaste yoga my name is surbhi i'm a yoga teacher the
goal of my channel is to tell you all those little tips and tricks that many
yoga teachers know but somehow in class setting they do not get conveyed to the
students in today's video we are going to talk
about diastasis recti it is a very common condition that
happens mostly in women after childbirth and sometimes in men when they have big
belly in this condition our six pack
ab muscles they get separated from each other
because of the stretching usually after childbirth they come back
to normal but sometimes they do not the separation of those muscles can make
a person's belly bulge or stick out it is very important to know whether you
have diastasis recti or not because the kind of workout you do to reduce your
belly fat matters sometimes people don't know that they have this problem and
they start working on their abs they do sit ups crunch ups push-ups and what
happens when you have diastasis recti and you do all those ab exercises
crunch especially crunches and sit-ups then you end up making the matter worse
because the problem is not on the upper six ab
muscles the problem is underneath the muscles underneath those
muscles help the ab muscles tighten up keep that keep them tight so
if the muscle underneath is really loose then no matter how much you work on the
surface area it's not going to work so the way that you can figure out on
your own whether you have diastasis recti or not
is lie down on the mat keep your legs folded
take your right hand and hold your neck with your right hand inhale first
[Music] on the exhale
come up so you have your abs crunches
now use your two fingers in between both of your muscles
you will see that there is a tiny gap between those muscles
so if you have one or two finger gap it means it's okay but as you go down
and the gap gets bigger if it's bigger than three fingers it means you have
diastasis recti now before we start our asana practice i
need you to be aware of some day-to-day habits
that you might be doing that might be worsening your diastasis recti
or maybe causing it to happen more so pay attention to those daily habits
and try to avoid them because no matter how much you work on
the asanas if in daily life you are doing those habits regularly then
whatever workout or asanas you do it's not going to be of any use
so first thing that you should be avoiding doing is bending down with
straight legs so whenever you bend down you're picking up something especially
when you're picking up weights when you bend down like this
don't do that it's going to affect on your tummy it's
going to make those ab muscles go even more stretched out so whenever you have
to bend down squat down that is the best way and then pick up
and then get up like that so never bend down like this
the second thing that it's important to make sure is whenever you are standing
up never
stand up with the posterior tilt or the anterior tilt
so when you are standing up keep your feet parallel to each other
and pay attention to your hip muscles when our hip joint is super tight
then we tend to stand like this or if our posture is not good we tend to
stand like this so pay attention to that make sure that
your tailbone is tucked in a little bit very tiny bit if i remove my hand so you
can see better not like this
not like this straight
and if you feel like you're going back a little bit tuck your tailbone in
and then your tummy will automatically those inner muscles will automatically
get engaged if you pay attention whenever you're
standing like this you are not able to squeeze your hip muscles so that is a
good indication see when you are standing are you able to squeeze your
butt muscles squeeze your hip muscles if you can do that then it means you are
standing correctly third thing is do not slouch down
as i said this problem happens mostly in the woman after childbirth so when they
are feeding the baby they have a tendency of keeping the baby on the lap
and then slouching down to feed him don't do that
put a pillow or a cushion underneath
keep the baby on top of that and then keep your body straight and then feed
the baby don't try to hold the baby all the way
up to keep your body straight because then you're going to end up having some
wrist problems so have a cushion
one two three however many pillow you need to keep your body straight and then
feed your baby like this don't put your baby's weight on your
wrists and the last thing that you should be avoiding is whenever you are
lying down if you are lying down straight
don't get up like that that puts a lot of stress on your ab
muscles and it is not good whenever you are lying down
always come on your side use your hands to get up
either side left right doesn't matter but do not unnecessarily put pressure on
your abs so after all those
don'ts which you need to pay attention to on your regular basis
let's do some workouts or some asanas that are important to engage or tighten
up those inner muscles so first of all lie down on your mat and
pay attention to your breath if you have been watching my videos you
know i call this a magic breath so when you lie down like this your legs
folded naturally there is a little gap
underneath your lower back
what we are going to do is we are going to fill that gap up
so breathe in so when you inhale
inhale and your tummy is going to come up
when you exhale you tilt your pelvic and you try to fill that gap between your
lower back and the ground so watch me i'm going to show this
with inhale and exhale so inhale
exhale
again inhale
exhale so every time i'm inhaling tummy is
going up my pelvic is tilting forward
and every time i'm exhaling i'm reducing the gap and pelvic is
coming up so that motion every time you breathe do that
so this is the initial breathing that you need to do if you
have not done any exercise for diastasis recti so far please start with this
it will warm up your inner muscles [Music]
and after that once you are used to this breath
then once you exhale so inhale first exhale tilt your pelvic
no gap in the ground and then try to keep it this way and
keep breathing see if you can use your muscles if your
muscles are strong enough now now i'm telling you this in a video of
10 15 20 minutes but
the whole process is going to take time it's going to take days so for a few
days you might just want to do this like that
then after a couple of days you might want to just see if you can hold it and
keep breathing see how i am holding my pelvic my pelvic is tilted there is no
gap in between but i am breathing i am able to hold
that and after that next step would be if you
are holding it like that keep your hands on your sides
inhale on the exhale tilt your pelvic lower
back to the ground keep
breathing then again take a deep breath keep your lower back on the ground
but on the exhale slowly lift yourself up squeeze your hip muscles really tight
when you're lifting yourself up and then slowly come down
just do this motion for five to six times so inhale
exhale tilt your pelvic
again inhale on the exhale squeeze your hip muscles
keep your pelvic tilted and lift up
and down
like that
so keep doing this however long you want
or five to six times it's totally based on how much you can
do so this is our next step
once you are comfortable doing this step we are going to
include our legs so again take the magic breath inhale
first on the exhale tilt your pelvic
no gap between your the lower back and the ground
keep breathing and slowly move your leg up
and down
then the other leg up
and down the whole process make sure
that you have your lower back to the ground and you are able to
breathe while tucking your lower back see right now my abs are tight my inner
muscles are tight if i let them go this is what my position is going to be
and if there is an arc and i'm doing this
like that the only thing is going to do is i'm
going to end up hurting my lower back so make sure
lower pack is to the ground tuck your tummy in
the whole time tummy should be tucked in up
down up
down if you think you're getting tired you
can't hold your tummy anymore let go
but do not do any more exercise once you get used to doing this leg up
and down you can take it more further and then again
you can
raise your maybe do couple of times one two one two
down then do it twice
though while i'm doing these exercises there
are so many other points that i want to tell you so please watch the video till
the end so you don't miss anything
and once you are comfortable doing that slowly
you can do bicycles either faster or slow that's totally up to you
so inhale exhale tuck
your tailbone in and this time raise both of your legs
keeping your lower back to the ground and you can just do that
if you're doing that make sure you're also doing in backward motion
but whole time your lower back should be on the ground the moment you feel it's
going away or you cannot hold anymore relax do not keep on doing it with your
lower back coming up now the points i was trying to make now
few things that you need to make sure sometimes those inner muscles
are so weak that they need some extra help so what you can do is you can take
there are a diastasis recti belt that you can tighten up
so whenever you are lying down what you can do is
just use a belt
and just tighten up your muscles
so when you're tightening you're pushing
those muscles towards each other that will give you extra support when you
are doing your asanas or you are doing your exercises you can find the link to
those belts in the description box and you can just go and order one for you it
will be helpful to give you some extra support so this was just a quick
tip video for you to tell you how you can
bring those ab muscles close to each other or
fix your diastasis recti so you can work out normally i hope you enjoyed the
video if you have any questions or concerns
please feel free to write them in the comment box i would love to answer them
i wish you all a very happy and healthy day namaste