If you’ve been along to my Wednesday night yoga for trampers class, you’ll have heard me say ‘try breathing into your pockets.’
This cue is about relaxing your abdominal muscles and pelvic floor muscles, to allow more movement in your body as you inhale and exhale.
During an inhale, the diaphragm muscle expands downwards, gently pressing the organs down and applying subtle downward pressure to the pelvic floor muscles. If the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles are already contracted or tightened, as you inhale and the diaphragm pushes down, the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles will tighten more in response to the increase in pressure. This has a knock on effect, holding and increasing tension in nearby muscle groups – particularly the hip flexors (think the front of your hips). For more on the anatomy see this article on the Core Connection: The Relationship Between the Pelvic Floor & the Breath from YogaU.
We often subconsciously hold our belly in or hold tension in our pelvic floor muscles. The cue to breath into the pockets has two purposes:
- Relax the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles, so the diaphragm has room to move and so the pelvic floor and abdominal muscles will move or lengthen in response to the pressure.
- Find a secondary stretch in the hip flexors, the lengthening of the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles can sometimes help pull or tension the hip flexor muscles through fascia connections, helping to gently stretch the hip flexors.
We’ve been exploring this concept when lying on the floor and twisting.
Specifically, imagine where your front pockets would be if you were wearing trousers. In the twist pictured above, focus on the top pocket (or left pocket in the case of this photo).
First imagine just keeping the pocket relaxed as you inhale. This helps relax the muscles. Second, imagine trying to fill that pocket with air as you inhale. This helps stretch and lengthen the muscles.
We have a lot of fun in yoga for trampers. One session when I was recommending we breath into our pockets, there was a suggestion that it’s like we are marsupials breathing into our pockets (think kangaroo who carries the joey in a pocket).
Thank you to Chris Barlow of Barlovska Craft Liqueurs who brought the metaphor to life with this poster!
