Core Activating Breath
About The Core Activating Breath
The way you breathe is the most important factor in helping you establish aligned posture and in creating resilient and responsive core muscles.
Your core, aka your torso, is the central, organizing location for all movement.
If you want to have more strength, agility, flexibility, balance and grace, learning to align your rib cage over your pelvis is an essential skill.
Most of us tend toward a posture that lifts the rib cage up and shifts it forward. This posture causes compression through the middle back, compromises breathing and core muscle function and impacts every single movement we make.
You can un-do this posture by learning to move your front ribs together, down and back. This will decrease the compression in your middle back, creating more fullness and space in your middle back.
As you exhale:
Can you draw the muscles of your pelvic floor and your lower abdomen straight up? This is not sucking your belly button into your spine, but rather lifting your lower core muscles up toward your heart.
Can you knit your lower ribs together, toward your midline, as you exhale? Can you also move your rib cage down toward your pelvis and back in space?
Can you use your core muscles to get all the air out of your lungs? Can you feel your abdominal muscles engage as you do this?
As you inhale:
Can you maintain some abdominal tone?
Can you feel your waistline and lower ribs expand laterally?
Can you fill your mid-back with air? Can you feel your middle back expand as you inhale?
When you align your rib cage and your pelvis well, every movement you do ~ from squats to push ups to walking up stairs to carrying groceries ~ will integrate and strengthen your core.
Key Points
Align your rib cage and your pelvis. Pull your breastbone in. You might also need to tuck your tailbone slightly to find the right alignment. There should be a sense of “fullness” in your middle back. You should not be in a back bend.
Most of the movement should happen in your lower ribs and waistline.
Feel your lower ribs and waistline expand first as you inhale. If you are taking a very deep breath, you will feel the expansion move up into your rib cage and collarbones and down into your pelvis.
As you inhale, feel the expansion in 360 degrees. Imagine your lower ribs opening up like an umbrella, expanding the circumference of a circle. Feel movement in the sides and back of your body as much as the front.
Can you inhale without lifting your shoulders to your ears? Can you inhale without activating your chest muscles?
Feel your lower ribs retract first as you exhale. Can you exhale without pulling your belly button into your spine? Can you exhale without tucking your tailbone or squeezing your butt? Can you exhale without collapsing your chest or rounding your shoulders?
Breathe in and out through your nose. Or in through your nose and out through your mouth.
This 360 degree movement of your rib cage and waistline should happen both with deep, voluminous breaths as well as for more gentle, resting breaths. The difference will simply be a matter of magnitude, but the movement pattern remains the same.
Exhale out your mouth. Get all the air out of your lungs as if you were blowing up a balloon or blowing out candles on a birthday cake.
Can you feel how your lower front ribs draw down and in as you complete your inhale, narrowing your infrasternal angle?
Do you notice how your rib cage moves back in space as you complete your exhale?
Allow your inhale to occur naturally through your nose. Attempt to direct the air of your inhalation into your back and the sides of your body.
Can you feel the space just above and below your bra-line expand as you inhale? Can you feel the sides of your rib cage move out as you inhale?
Can you keep your chest and shoulders relaxed as you inhale?
Common Mistakes (Don’t do these!)
Keeping your belly button pulled into your spine. Sucking in your abdomen. Not allowing your waistline to expand as you inhale.
Only moving your belly as you breathe. Not expanding through your rib cage.
Lifting your shoulders up toward your ears as you inhale. Collapsing your shoulders as you exhale.
Not expanding into the sides and back of your waistline.
Keeping your spine in a slight backbend as you breathe.