Do you have a top tip on how we can breathe more effectively
to help our pelvic floor?
I do because
breathing is something that people can get in a bit of a muddle with.
And there is a danger of overthinking it as well.
But it is good to think about how we breathe and it's
something we do all the time and we don't give a bit of thought to
really, we just breathe away. So I brought my
Hoberman sphere along because I think this shows
the movement of lungs beautifully, and lungs
gently move in and out
all the time through the day, it's a complete miracle.
But we know that we can breathe in more
and really fill them up.
And we know that if we needed to blow out a candle,
we could empty them completely. But most of the
time, they breathe like this.
Now the bottom of the lungs is a
muscle called the diaphragm.
And it moves down as you breathe in,
and up again as you breathe out. And it's
flexible and pliable and moves with us.
And underneath here is the pelvic floor.
Now as the diaphragm moves up and down,
so should the pelvic floor.
So though we talk about it being a support
shelf, it's not a fixed, rigid structure.
It can move up and down
as well. So if we thought of this
as the pelvic floor. The pelvic floor should come
down as we breathe and in as we relax.
It should move just like the bottom of the lungs and the diaphragm move.
So one of the problems we get when people are exercising
is because people are trying so hard, we tend to hold
our breath when we're concentrating. If you think of children writing,
they hold their breath don't they? And so we see a lot of people
holding their pelvic floor
but holding their breath.
It just makes it all very rigid
and not how it's going to be in real life.
So when you're a beginner, don't
get bogged down by the breathing too much, just first find
your pelvic floor muscles. But soon as you can
start to notice whether you
can contract your muscles
and breathe normally at the same time.
And that's one of the things you might
do when you're using a stimulation machine.
Let the machine do the tightening so that you
can concentrate on breathing and
noticing that it's possible to do both things at the same time.
Getting your muscles to contract
a little trick a lot of people use and you'll
find a lot in things like pilates and yoga
and exercise classes is they say 'breathe
in first letting your muscles be relaxed,
and then as you breathe out,
that's a good time to switch your muscles on'.
Because they're going in the right direction anyway, and then
you can hold them there and go on
breathing normally over the top.
And you won't think that you're still holding your muscles
but if you let go, you feel them drop away.
So that you'll hear a lot, people say 'breathe in first,
feel the muscles relax a bit.
As you breathe out tighten them up,
not tight tight, just gently. And then
feel yourself breathing over the top and
you might feel some movement of the pelvic floor
but it's not collapsing on you. And then
when you choose, you let go'.
And I say this is a particularly important thing to try
and get right when you're practicing those endurance
exercises - the ones where you're trying to hold for 10
seconds or where the machine is giving a longer
contraction. You want to be able to breathe over the top.
Otherwise it all becomes a bit grippy and not
like how it's going to be when you really need
it because you're carrying your shopping and talking to people and in a real-life situation.