So what will ‘throw’ your alignment? What will prevent your guy line from doing its job? Here’s a few things you might be doing with your body right now that are creating pressure and causing your diastasis… and how to correct them.
When your lower glutes are on permanent clench. When you stand with your knees bent. When you suck in your tummy to make it look flatter. When you wear high heels. When you do a kegel by clenching your butt or inner thighs. When you sit back on your tailbone not up and forward on your Ischial Tuberosities (sit bones).
All these movements thrust your hips forward and tuck your pelvis. They mean you have shortened and slackened your guy rope. They also incidentally shorten and slacken your pelvic floor. And turn off your glute muscles so you can’t build a strong butt when you walk or squat.
And I don’t need to tell you that a slack abdominal front line, a flat butt and a slack pelvic floor, are friends to No Woman.
Probably the instruction I give the most often is ‘stick out your butt!’. (No, you almost definitely don’t or won’t have ’swayback’ – you’re more likely to be shearing your ribs – see below).
Shake A Tail Feather Baby. Click here for some practice… Go Shake It, I’ll be right here when you’re done.
Keep checking in on yourself – are you tucked under? It’s a postural habit that is ingrained in many of us – so keep untucking.
Find neutral. That means your lower ribs, your ASIS (often called your ‘hip bones’, that stick out at the front) and your pubic bone – these 3 markers should all be on the same vertical plane – stacked, one above the other. (So, if you tuck your pelvis, your pubic bone is out in front, right? Put it back where it belongs.)
Check your knees – they shouldn’t be bent. Your legs should be straight, vertical bone stacked on vertical bone. Make sure you don’t hyperextend (if you can lift and lower your knee caps – that shows you’re not on permanent lock).
Don’t wear positive heeled shoes. I bang on about this all the time… but high heels are bad news for your core and your pelvic floor.
Stop clenching your butt – let it do its perky thing. Stop sucking in your tummy (Ahhh, breathing feels good). And get off your tailbone and onto those bones that were made for sitting.
Walking in good alignment is a straight legged *push off from behind* action, not a *lift your knee and drop forward* action.
Sit less, walk more. And when you walk…
Use your glutes. As well as the straight legs mentioned above, line up your feet. Your feet should be straight out in front, not out to the side, unless you’re about to launch into Swan Lake. Line up the outside edges of your feet on a straight line – thats the way you’re going, thats the way they should point.
Strengthen and mobilise your lateral hips, stretch your calves and hamstrings, mobilise your toes and feet.
Finally the most common alignment factor that creates pressure in all the wrong places and throws your midline out of whack, is sticking out your ribs. Most of us do it – here’s how to check. Stand against a wall with your heels just far enough away from the wall to allow room for your backside. Your tailbone is touching the wall, your shoulders and the back of your head are touching the wall.
Your bra strap… should be touching the wall. Chances are its not. This shows how much your ribs are sticking out where they shouldn’t be.
Remember neutral? Pubic bone, stacked under ASIS, stacked under rib cage. Bring your ribs back and down to put your Linea Alba guy ropes back in the right plane.
When you’re standing, your weight should be down through your heels, not in the balls of your feet or your toes. Back your weight up. Bring your ribs down. And keep checking in.
Correcting a diastasis, or rather getting a core that works right, involves much more… breathing into your rib cage not your belly or your shoulders, how to re-connect physiologically with the deep muscles of your core when its all turned off, lowering stress, nutrition that heals… and you may have noticed I still haven’t given you one ‘abdominal exercise’ to do, or mentioned ‘engaging your core’.
That’s because 1. Bethany asked me to write about alignment… ☺ and 2. Because unless you build these alignment foundations, Sweet Mama, those exercise are not going to work.
If you want to learn how to apply all this stuff, as well as the exercises to do, then the MuTu System programs can be downloaded from anywhere in the world or bought on DVD from Amazon.
And come to one of my exclusive and intimate live Masterclasses in LA, Houston, Chicago and NYC this year! I’d love to meet you there.
*Important: the function of the transverse abdominis is to apply constant compression. This DOES NOT mean you should be consciously ‘engaging’ or sucking it in. The muscle does this job by itself once you are correctly aligned. Please don’t mistake this statement for the instruction that you need to pull it in all the time. You don’t and you shouldn’t because that will actually make the problem worse.