Diaphragmatic Breathing and your Pelvic Floor

The dynamic duo: Breathing and your pelvic floor

The interaction between the diaphragm and the pelvic floor is key to a happy and healthy pelvic floor.

As a quick anatomy lesson, your middle section is made up of the diaphragm muscle at the top, just under your lungs, your abs at the front and sides, your spine and muscles at the back, and then your pelvic floor at the base. All of these together create like a cylinder through your mid section.

As you breathe in, your ribs expand and your diaphragm flattens and moves down slightly to allow the air in. At the same time your pelvic floor muscles lengthen and move down.

Then, as you breathe out, the air exits your lungs, your diaphragm lifts up and so does your pelvic floor.

This synchronised movement of diaphragm and pelvic floor is crucial to the function of our pelvic floor. If this is not working due to pain, tightness, posture, bad habits or whatever else then we can have dysfunction in the pelvic floor which may lead to difficulty passing a bowel motion, urinary incontinence or pain.

So how do we breathe better?

To start, let’s think about our posture.

It’s a real challenge to take a deep breath if you are slouched into the shape of your lounge. So either sit up tall, or lie out flat on your yoga mat, place one hand on your chest and one on your tummy.

Tune into your body then take a breath in. What is moving? Is your chest hand the only one moving? Is your belly moving at all?

Now try and breathe all the way into the belly. You should feel your belly move in and out as your lungs expand and relax. If you’ve got this then well done!

Next step is to think about how your breathing changes throughout your day. If you are feeling stressed or worried or rushed you will probably notice your breathing becomes more shallow and only in your chest. Whereas if you are relaxed and content you will likely notice slower, deeper breaths.

Once you’ve noticed these patterns then let’s look at taking back control of your breathing.

When you notice that shallow breathing pattern, try to take a moment to yourself and think about slowing your breathing, inhaling all the way into your belly and then all the way out.

By doing this we let our diaphragm, and our pelvic floor, move through the whole range of movement. It can take some time to unlearn years of old habits but this is a great step toward a happier pelvic floor!