Our culture is obsessed with flat bellies, and it’s hard to ignore. But rarely in my life have I had a flat belly. My mom didn’t, my aunt didn’t, and as a kid my mom always said I had a “round” shape. Even then, I knew that was probably something only a mom would celebrate.
It wasn’t until I started started studying alignment-based yoga that I realized how much of it was in how we carry ourselves.
Our busy, full lives tend to push us forward into our front body – think of typing, driving, and wearing heals. We walk on the front of our feet, our head and shoulders lean forward, and our belly gets pushed outward. Oh yeah – and pregnancy.
I did away with the sucking in of my belly when I learned how to move into the back of my body on my exhale.
I learned to keep a butt even when I was rooted down with my tailbone, instead of flattening my butt and back and creating low back pain.
And I finally understood that connecting to core had a lot more to do with moving my ribs back rather than doing crunches. Now I understand that the alignment we teach for pregnancy – starting with a “HA” breath and moving our ribs back so the back has space in the back of the body – engages the transverses abdominus (which is our deepest ab). So yes, this kind of ab work for pregnancy is highly recommended!
Post pregnancy, we work with the same principles. After my daughter was born, I had mild Diastasis Recti (DR) – where the space between our abs widens more than two finger width when we’re lying on our belly and we lift our head up slightly.
I was at 3-4 fingers width. Now I’m at a one. I didn’t do crunches, I didn’t wear a band around my belly. I just went back to trying to move in the same alignment I learned in grad school as a Kinesiology student, in my training as a Personal Trainer, and in my 15 years of alignment-geeking out in yoga.
If you are a mom and worried you have DR, get yourself checked. But please know that more than 1/3 of all woman post pregnancy have their abs spread more than two finger widths. And more than 2/3 of all women after more than one child have this. The abs are always split. Most of us have more of a split after having babies.
If you have it, what to do?
1.) Don’t panic.
DR is not the thing. DR is the symptom of a misalignment, sometimes called intra-abdominal pressure – where things get pushed forward. You can start moving things in the other direction right away.
2.) Learn optimal alignment for your body.
It’s the same for all of us, but each of us has unique habits, ways of carrying ourselves, and strengths and weakness so the journey will be different. Work one-on-one with your alignment-based yoga teacher to get specific on how to get there.
3.) Reconnect to your core.
When we are out of alignment, a funny thing happens: we no longer use our strength to hold ourselves up. We stack and lock bones; we over use peripheral muscles; and we hyper-stretch others instead of using the stabilizing muscles whose job it is to support our torso. You will learn ways to connect to your core simply by breathing and sitting optimally.
4.) Build strength; start small.
Can you do this action and keep your connection to core? This is the question to ask yourself over and over again. If not, change the action. So: can I sit and do this? Can I carry my baby this way and stay in my back body? Can I do a full plank and stay connected to my abdominal exhale? If you have a big DR, the answer in the beginning is PROBABLY NOT. But if you continue working this way, it will change.
5.) Change how you move.
I didn’t say it would be easy. But DR and some of the poochiness in the belly post-partum is caused by a misalignment. It doesn’t just go away on its own – this alignment was probably there before pregnancy. It is now an invitation to go into your awareness and connect to your core – not just for a flat belly, but for the access to our 1st chakra – nurturing energy; our 2nd chakra – creative flow; and our 3rd chakra – power.
Sound hard? What about motherhood isn’t? But it’s also so gratifying to realize that with awareness we can shift how we stand and how we experience everything. When we add in some lifestyle changes we might even get a flatter stomach than we’ve ever had before!
But there’s so much more than that. Do it to stay out of pain, to connect to the fullness of who you are, and because the process ITSELF gives you power. And please, don’t do a program that makes you feel LESS powerful by focusing on DR as the problem itself. It won’t work in the long term, and it will probably cause back pain.
Everything is connected in there. Core to neck and shoulders. Front body to back body. Emotions to body. But sometimes we lose our connection to our strong center. If this is you, connecting to your core is just a practice away!
