Stabilize your lower back with core activation while maintaining a steady, lateral breath.

English

This track guides you through a progression from full body relaxation, deep breathing, core activation and then breathing while activating your core to different levels. Learning to breathe while activating your core can help in daily activity when you require some added stability around your spine, and need to breathe at the same time. It is not healthy to hold your breath every time you want to engage your core muscles. Of course there is a dance between depth of breath and level of core activation, I will guide you through this in a relaxing and educational way. 
Background music by Chris Collins.

Breathing Behind The Brace

Welcome to Breathing Behind the Brace. I will guide you through breathing while using your core muscles to stabilize your low back. This practice will be helpful to those who benefit from more core stability and support around their low back in everyday living, so you can learn how to breathe without losing core activation. It is a fine dance between breathing deeply and maximizing support. Let's begin with full relaxation. I invite you to find your most comfortable resting position that keeps your spine unloaded. I recommend lying down. If you are lying on your back, see if adding a small folded towel in your low back feels best. If you are lying on your tummy, see if it feels best to have your head down with your forehead resting on your hands. Or maybe it feels best to put your hands under the front of your hips to slightly prop up your pelvis. If lying down does not work for you, you could sit with your full back supported in a chair. Relaxing into your position. Exhaling and melting. Exhaling and surrendering. Bringing your awareness to your face, your ears, your eyebrows. As you exhale, just relax all the muscles in your face. Breathing in through your nose and out through your nose or mouth, whichever is more comfortable. Unclench your jaw. Relaxing from your jaw down into your neck now. Letting your shoulders melt away from your ears. Letting your pecs and lats just relax. Melt down towards the floor. Down your arms, all the muscles, your biceps, triceps. All the way down your arms now, relaxing as you exhale. Down your forearms, all the way to your fingertips. Let it go. Release and relax. Bring your attention back to your torso now, relaxing your chest. Down into your abdominals now. Unclench any bracing. Right now is the time to relax. Release. Let go of any tension. Into your pelvis and your glutes, your lower abdominals. Just letting them go as you exhale. Down into your upper legs, your quads, your hamstrings. Letting your legs relax, letting those big powerful muscles just relax, rest, recover. Down into your lower legs, all the way down into your feet now, feeling them fall heavy. Into your toes. Fully relax now from your head down to your feet. Bring your awareness into your belly. And if your hands are free, placing one or both hands on your belly. As you inhale, allow your belly to expand. Inhaling through the nose. As you exhale, allow your belly to fall naturally. Right now we're focusing on relaxation, restoration, recovery. Breathing into the belly. Calming the nervous system. Breathing with ease, nothing's forceful. Full breath in through the nose and let it go naturally on the exhale. Become the observer and notice if breathing down into your belly, down into your lower belly, feels foreign to you. Does it feel strange? Or does it feel comfortable and normal? So just noticing if breathing in this way is usual or different for you. This is a great way to breathe and an effective way to breathe to calm your nervous system down into the belly. Slowing the breath. Breathing with ease. Now bring your awareness up into the sides of your ribcage. If your hands are free, bring your hands around with all of your fingers and hold the sides of your ribcage. As you inhale now, expand laterally into the ribs. So feel your ribs expand out to the sides. You can visualize this in your mind. You can feel it with your hands. As you exhale, just let your ribs fall back together. Inhale and expand. Exhale and contract. The breath is a little bit higher now, up in the ribs instead of just in the belly. Noticing if one rib expands more than the other. Noticing if your ribs move at the same time as you inhale. No need to worry, you're just observing right now and staying present with your breath. Noticing if breathing laterally into the ribs feels familiar to you. Or if it feels foreign and strange. But just observing and remembering how this feels. Now we're going to deepen a full breath by breathing into the belly and then the ribs on one inhale. And then as you exhale, let it contract from your ribs and then belly. You can follow my cue or breathe on your own time, but as you inhale, expand into the belly, ribs. And exhale from the ribs and then the belly. Inhale and expand the belly, ribs. Exhale and let your ribs contract and then your belly fall. Inhale belly, ribs. Exhale ribs, belly. Inhale belly, ribs. Exhale ribs and belly. Breathing fully now, expanding through your whole torso, inhaling into the belly and ribs. We've practiced progressive relaxation, working through the body. We've practiced belly breathing, laterally breathing into the ribs, and then combining it for a deep full breath. All of these practices, calming the nervous system, relaxing the body, releasing tension. Let's begin to wake up the abdominal wall and your core muscles now. With your fingers, gently push them in to the sides of your abdominals, below your ribs, above your hips, in that soft bit. Out to the side from your navel, so you're not pushing into the front of your belly. Draw your hands out to the sides, below your ribs, above your hips. Activate your core now to feel the resistance against your fingers. And then let it go. Again, activate your core to push out against your fingers, so it's more of a lateral activation than just simply pushing your belly out. Again, full activation into the core, squeezing your core muscles. Now slowly let it go, so slowly let it go. Feel the resistance against your fingers. With your fingers still cuing yourself now, just activate a light brace, so you're not fully gripping and clenching through your core. Just a little bit of that activation. When you're bracing your core, when you're activating those muscles, we can't achieve a deep belly breath like we just practiced. So remember that lateral breath into the ribs. And we're going to dance between a little bit of that core activation, and still breathing, but feel the expansion up higher now, laterally into the ribs. So fingers in the sides of your core, still breathing from the ribs and the chest now. Not letting the resistance underneath your fingers change as you exhale. Don't let your core go as you exhale. We're practicing breathing while maintaining that core activation to stabilize the lumbar spine. Activating a little bit more of that abdominal brace now, so feel a bit more resistance against your fingers. Continuing to breathe. Feeling that dance between core activation and still breathing. The breathing will feel different than it did when we were fully relaxed. Relax your abdominals now. Let it all go. Release that tension. Take a big breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Sigh it out. Relax. Put your fingers back into the sides of your core now, below your ribs, above your hip bones. Now bring on a full brace. So bring on that core activation to fully stabilize your spine. Now continue to breathe. Your breath will be compromised. It's not going to be a full belly breath. So breathe, feel the expansion through the ribs and the chest. Continue to dance between creating spine stability with your core and breathing with ease, training that diaphragm muscle. Let your core go. Again, big inhale through the nose. Exhale, sigh it out. Relax. Release. Unclench. Reduce all the tension through your core. We've gone through relaxation. We've gone through creating some core stiffness. We've gone through dancing between core stability and breathing. Before you stand up, activate a little bit of that core control again. You can use your fingers to cue yourself. Bring back some of that stability. And slowly make your way back up to either seated or standing. Remembering to breathe. Breathe with ease and tune that brace depending on the demand at hand. I hope you enjoyed this practice and I look forward to joining you for another one soon.