Pregnancy can cause changes in body shapes especially there will be significant changes in the abdominal part. Most pregnant women must experience this unpleasant changes and mostly complain about their saggy belly after giving birth. This problem could be caused by Diastasis Recti.
Diastasis recti is a condition where your midline abdominal muscle or known as the ‘six-pack’ muscle is partially or completely separate. One research shows that around 60% of pregnant women experience diastasis recti during their pregnancy and or postpartum. However, it apparently happens not only to pregnant women, but this could affect men who did wrong moves during weightlifting exercise.
To solve this problem, pregnant women usually do some treatments such as using a belly binder or belly wrap. Nonetheless, sometimes this treatment could make shortness of breath because they use it too tight and make it uncomfortable if used for hours.
Another solution that could be applied for this is breathing exercise for diastasis recti. Not many are aware that breathing exercise is one of the easiest way to treat or prevent health problems. Diaphragmatic breathing exercise or belly exercise is quite popular because it has a lot of benefits for health. According to a physical therapist, Ilene Chazan, Diaphragmatic breathing exercise could be done with the proper breathing techniques. One of those techniques is laying down your body with your hands under your lower ribcage.
Besides that, you can do another breathing exercise for diastasis recti with help of Yoga. Some yoga movements that involve the abdominal muscle can help tighten it so this could help treating the diastasis recti. Here are some movements for doing the breathing exercise for diastasis recti:
- Bridge Pose
To begin, lay down your body on the floor. Bend your knees and make sure your feet completely touch the floor. This position is similar to sit-up, the difference is you don’t need to put your hands under your head or neck, just lay your arms at your sides. Then try to inhale slowly using your diaphragm.
Gently lift your pelvic area to the ceiling and make sure your shoulders stay on the floor. In this position, try to exhale while putting back your pelvic area to the floor. You can repeat this move 6-8 times with the same breathing tempo.
- Wall sit
Maybe you are a little bit confused with this position. Wall sit is simply sitting with help of the wall. To do this move, you have to stand against the wall with your back touching the wall. Begin with inhale while lowering your body slowly and make sure your back stays touching the wall. Step forwards until you bend your knees and you are in the position of sitting or squatting. Stand up again while you exhale. Repeat this move 5-10 times. Do slowly and try to set your breathing tempo.
- Wall Push up
Wall push-up has the same move like the common push-up, the difference is it’s not done on the floor. You have to stand facing the wall and stretch your arms forward until your hands fully touch the wall. Bend your elbows while you inhale, then straighten your arms again while you exhale. This move helps tighten your core muscle on the abdominal part. Repeat this move 6-8 times. And don’t forget to set your breath.
These exercises certainly help, but indeed it would be a problem for the new moms since they have lack time to exercise. Sometimes maybe you also have problems with shortness of breath after giving birth and making it hard to do exercises like Yoga, or perhaps you can’t leave your baby unattended, so you have to watch and be with them 24/7. Therefore, WellO2 could be the best solution for you to have breathing exercise for diastasis recti treatment. You could do it without any worries and it even could be done while you are relaxing on the couch with your baby. Steps to use WellO2 are also simple, you just have to breathe the steam air from this device. Moreover, it not only functions for breathing exercise for diastasis recti, but it can also be used for other respiratory problems such as asthma.
