Practice: Diaphragm Discovery: Explore Your Breath Muscle

Jenna Zaffino [00:00:07]: 

Hi, everyone. I'm Jenna. In this session, we're going to explore the movement and function of our diaphragm, which is one of the most important aspects of breathing. And we're also going to look at its relationship with our posture and our pelvic floor. Now, if this is new to you, not to worry. It just some focus and some breathing and you might notice that I'm sitting on a ball. I like to sit on something that's a little more buoyant or has a little bit of give to it like a stability ball. But if you don't have this available to you, you might just sit on your couch or on your bed or put a pillow on a hard chair so you just have a little bit of a surface that has just a tiny bit of give to it. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:00:51]: 

For this session, we're going to widen our legs just a little bit and bring a little external rotation into the mix. So that's with knees just pointing a little bit more on the diagonal and toes pointing outward. You want your stance to feel really stable, so you can kind of noodle around with it and make sure you feel balanced and right on top of your hips and like your legs are supporting you. So our diaphragm is this beautiful, almost parachute shaped muscle that is underneath our lungs. And when we inhale, it contracts to pull downward on our lungs, which helps pull air into our lungs, almost like a vacuum effect. When we exhale, the diaphragm contracts upward on our lungs, pressing the air out of our lungs and helping us exhale. In our previous exploration of breath, we looked at the role of the ribs and the chest and spine in terms of how we create space around the rib cage. And now we're gonna look at the space that we create vertically up and down. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:01:59]: 

So when we take a breath in, we can imagine that our diaphragm contracts down. In life, it's not a huge movement. It does a huge job, but for our purposes, we're just gonna move our hands downward here to kind of animate what happens. And when your diaphragm contracts down and the air enters into your lungs, now you've got more in your body. And so that more in terms of the air and the shape of the lungs when they're full is gonna put a little pressure onto your internal organs and also onto your pelvic floor. So we can think of the diaphragm moving down, the pressure on the internal organs getting greater, and the pelvic floor widening. That all happens on the inhale. Now as we exhale, the diaphragm starts to contract upward which relieves pressure on the internal organs and allows our pelvic floor to almost narrow and maybe even lift. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:03:03]: 

So I think of this nice arc down and out on the inhale and a nice arc in and up on the exhale. Let's think about that as we take a few breaths. You can rest your hands on your legs. If you're comfortable, you might even like to put your hands on your low belly and your low back. Sometimes that can help with your awareness. And let's just take a few breaths, thinking about breathing down. You inhale. It travels downward. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:03:37]: 

You exhale. Everything travels up and out. Let's do that a couple times, breathing in and down, breathing out, and again, breathing in. And breathing out. And again, if your breathing cadence is faster or slower than mine, just go with the cadence that really works for you today. Good. Exhaling fully. Right. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:04:19]: 

So we've got a little bit of a sense and again, sometimes this action and the feeling is subtle at the beginning when you're just trying to bring your awareness to it. So if it doesn't feel super obvious right away, not to worry. Just ideas are percolating in your brain. We're starting to build some new ways of thinking about our breath. We want to just let them marinate for right now. Alright. So now we're gonna take our awareness towards the pelvic floor And for this, I like to make a little triangle with my hands. The thumbs represent my tailbone. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:04:55]: 

The fingers represent my pubic bone. And the divot kind of space between each thumb and finger, those are my sitz bones. So we're gonna take this triangle and we're gonna bring it like so. Now, when we breathe in and that pressure goes on to the internal organs and puts pressure on the pelvic floor, we can imagine that the triangle widens a little bit. When we breathe out, we can imagine that the triangle lessens or becomes smaller or narrows and comes up slightly. So let's think of our inhale as reaching down and widening. Sometimes you can feel that downward pressure into your ball or your pillow and our exhale up. Alright. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:05:41]: 

Let's take a couple breaths. If you wanna mimic that breathing with your hands, all movement is good movement. So let's breathe in. Think of your diaphragm moving down and out. Breathe out. Everything's coming back together and up. Breathe in and breathe out. And and more time, breathe in and breathe out. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:06:18]: 

Now you might be noticing your abdomen is widening and narrowing too. Your belly is getting maybe bigger on the inhale and more connected on the exhale and that's a natural action of the breath. But what happens if you're having a hard time breathing down? I'm gonna give you a little trick that I use. So sometimes we can be very acclimated to breathing using a lot of our accessory muscles of our neck and shoulders and our chest. And while those muscles are important, they're not necessarily the primary breathing muscles that help us take in more air. So sometimes when we're having a hard time getting air in, we kind of breathe in an emergent way that creates a lot of tension around our neck and shoulders, and again sometimes this is necessary. When we're practicing calm breathing and just building our awareness about our breathing apparatus, I like to think of breathing below my eyebrows or not letting my breath go beyond my eyebrows. So let's think about this for a moment. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:07:22]: 

Take an inhale, however long or short, and imagine sending that air up to the top of your skull. and. Notice the tension in your neck, your shoulders, your ears. Release all the way. Now on your next inhale, don't let that breath go beyond your eyebrows. and. What did you notice? Did anyone notice that the breath happened more around the rib cage and the abdomen, and less in the neck and in the shoulders? That's ideally what we're looking for as we're breathing. And listen, when you are in the throes of challenging breath, when you are having a hard time breathing, It's a big leap to go from having a challenge breathing to getting calm and paying attention to all of these things. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:08:18]: 

And that's why we're practicing them in a space where breathing is happening with more ease. Hopefully, as you gain more awareness and you practice a little bit more, you'll start to recognize that your calm breath can help you during times of challenge. So my suggestion for you to weave this well-being tip is take a few moments each day and maybe integrate our down breath with our wide breath that we learned in a previous session and just think about how you can expand on that inhale and reconnect on your exhale. So to complete our practice, let's try that. We'll have our hands on our knees. When you're ready, take an inhale. Make sure it doesn't go above your eyebrows. Feel the breath traveling down. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:09:15]: 

Maybe feel your pelvic floor widening and as you exhale, everything comes in and up. Breathing and exhale. And one more. Alright. I hope that you learned something new about the way that you are breathing and if you're a person who's breathing up regularly into the crown of the head, not to worry. The awareness we gain through these practices is a tool that can help us make subtle shifts to the way we habitually breathe or think about breath. So every single step along the path is important. If today showed you some new strategies, the best course of action is to practice them a little each day moving forward until they truly become your strategies. 

Jenna Zaffino [00:10:13]: 

I hope that you had a good experience in this session. I'll look forward to more breathing with you as we move forward, and thank you. Remember, you are strong and resilient, and the small moments matter. I'll see you soon.