Diastasis Recti: The Whole-Body Solution to Abdominal Weakness and Separation

By Katy Bowman

Our abdominal muscles are rarely broken; rather, their weakness is a reflection of how little we use our entire body. Whether you have diastasis recti, a hernia, are postnatal, or simply have a very weak midsection—this is the definitive whole-body guide to restoring your core!

Abdominal muscles have many important jobs; twisting the spine safely, accommodating pregnancy, protecting your abdominal organs, and even breathing are just some of the jobs we want them to do well.

Many will try to fix their middle through crunches and other abdominal exercises without realizing that things like tight shoulder muscles, poor posture habits, and even our breathing patterns can be affecting what’s going on in our abs. In Diastasis Recti, biomechanist Katy Bowman:

• Gives 30+ exercises, organized into Small, Medium, and Big Moves
• Expands the core to include essential parts, like the shoulders and pelvis (and how movement patterns here can worsen abdominal separations)
• Explains why it’s better to think of a diastasis (abdominal hernias, or even weakness) as a symptom rather than as the problem
• Teaches 5 simple postural adjustments to change the forces on the front of the abdomen
• Notes that in addition to exercises, you can sit, stand, and walk for a stronger core

By making the material understandable, approachable, and achievable, Bowman offers an outstanding and necessary guide to diastasis recti and many other abdomen-related issues. Everyone can benefit from these insights and improve their health in an empowered and proactive way. —Foreword Reviews

Diastasis Recti is for anybody wanting to improve both the function and the appearance of their abdomen!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uphill Books
• Release date: Dec 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9780989653978

Katy Bowman

Bestselling author, speaker, and a leader of the Movement movement, biomechanist Katy Bowman, M.S. is changing the way we move and think about our need for movement. Her 10 books, including the groundbreaking Move Your DNA, have been translated into more than 16 languages worldwide. Bowman teaches movement globally and speaks about sedentarism and movement ecology to academic and scientific audiences such as the Ancestral Health Summit and the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Her work has been featured in diverse media such as the Today Show, CBC Radio One, the Seattle Times, NPR, the Joe Rogan Experience, and Good Housekeeping. One of Maria Shriver’s Architects of Change and an America Walks Woman of the Walking Movement, Bowman consults on educational and living space design to encourage movement-rich habitats. She has worked with companies like Patagonia, Nike, and Google as well as a wide range of non-profits and other communities to create greater access to her move more, move more body parts, move more for what you need message. Her movement education company, Nutritious Movement, is based in Washington State, where she lives with her family.

Book preview

DIASTASIS

RECTI

DIASTASIS RECTI

THE WHOLE-BODY SOLUTION TO ABDOMINAL WEAKNESS AND SEPARATION

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KATY BOWMAN, M.S.

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ALSO BY KATY BOWMAN

Move Your DNA

Dynamic Aging

Movement Matters

Simple Steps to Foot Pain Relief

Whole Body Barefoot

Don’t Just Sit There

Alignment Matters

Copyright © Katy Bowman 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America.

Sixth Printing, 2019

ISBN paperback: 978-0-9896539-6-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953478

Propriometrics Press: propriometricspress.com

Cover and Interior Design: Zsofi Koller, liltcreative.co

Illustrations: Jillian Nicol

Photography: J. Jurgensen Photography

Cover and interior graphics: shutterstock.com, vectorstock.com

The information in this book should not be used for diagnosis or treatment, or as a substitute for professional medical care. Please consult with your health care provider prior to attempting any treatment on yourself or another individual.

For Penelope. Not only couldn’t I have written these books without out you, I wouldn’t have written all these books without you. No, you’re not allowed to edit this dedication. See?

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

SECTION 1:THINK

Chapter 1:The Anatomy of Diastasis Recti

Chapter 2:The Forces of Diastasis Recti

Chapter 3:Under Pressure: DR, Hernias, and Pelvic Prolapse, Oh My

Chapter 4:Diastasis Recti and Nutritious Movement

SECTION 2:MOVE

Equipment List

Chapter 5:Stance and Body Neutral

Chapter 6:Little Moves

Chapter 7:Medium Moves

Chapter 8:Big Moves

Chapter 9:Drop Your Ribs

Conclusion:Change

The Program

What’s Next

References and Further Reading

Index

About Katy

PREFACE

Before we start detailing how a diastasis recti is made, and what you can do about it, I’d like to share my story.

I’ve given birth to two children, seventeen months apart. After the birth of my son, my first child, I ended up in bed for four days following surgery on one of my pelvic arteries. I was still in the blissful stage following the birth, so the time spent flat on my back (with a catheter, so I wasn’t even walking to the bathroom) went by quickly, but when I went to stand up for the first time, I realized that labor and delivery followed by major pelvic surgery and then lying flat on my back for five days had left me without any strength. The hospital staff told me it would take at least ten weeks before I could walk with ease again. The difference between me and other patients, I suppose, was that I knew how to create exercises and a movement program that would build my functional strength back up so that I could stand, walk, and carry my newborn without pain.

I started training the day I got home from the hospital. I broke the eighth-of-a-mile walk around my block into steps, assessing which muscles my weak body wanted to use with each step and coaxing a different use pattern to get rid of any compensations brought about by my stint on bed rest that wouldn’t serve me in the long run. It took me about a month to get back to normal—not to before the birth normal, but back on track to where I would have been were I not bed-ridden for those first few days. From there, it was a few more weeks before my pre-pregnancy strength returned. By the time I got pregnant again—a surprisingly short eight months after my first baby—I was stronger than I had been before being pregnant the first time, and my second (home) birth went smoothly.

I’m including this story not for motivational purposes (I did it, so you can too!), but because I want you to know that I created and used this program when I could barely walk, with no abdominal strength, following a major pelvic surgery, a blood transfusion, and a vaginal birth. This program comes from my training as a biomechanist and from my experience as someone without a lick of core strength on which to draw. I’ve experienced firsthand the need to break down exercises into smaller motor skills and postural adjustments, and anyone who follows this program can make improvements to their core strength and separation, regaining the functionality that allows you to move through life with ease, joy, and vitality.

INTRODUCTION

If you’ve picked up a book with the term diastasis recti (DR) in the title, I’m going to assume that you have at least a basic understanding of DR as gathered from magazine articles, blogs, and pamphlets at your doctor’s office. At this point you’ve become aware that the front of your abdomen has split open, although maybe you’re not sure how or why.

Maybe you’ve Googled diastasis recti only to find that DR is a natural result of pregnancy—a frustrating explanation if you’re a forty-eight-year-old man with a DR. Or maybe you’ve been told that DR isn’t a real problem. (According to one insurance company’s medical coverage policy: Other than its untoward cosmetic appearance, diastasis recti does not lead to any complications that require intervention. Diastasis recti has no clinical significance, does not require treatment and is not considered a true hernia.) No matter what you do know, I’ll guarantee that some of what you don’t know about diastasis recti is covered in this book.

As a biomechanist, I believe that this book is full of information that anyone with a diastasis recti they’d like to correct needs to know. Diastasis Recti: The Whole Body Solution to Abdominal Weakness and Separation is not really a book about body parts (though we will cover those in Chapter 1); it’s a book about forces. (And before you put it down thinking, Forces? How boring! allow me to remind you that Star Wars is about a force and that movie is awesome.)

Imagine, for a second, an orange. To break the orange down for the purpose of scientific investigation, I must make a note of each part as I dissect it. For example, the outside of the orange is the epicarp, also known as the rind. The epicarp is made up of an epidermis, hypodermal parenchymatous cells, and oil glands. If you’ve ever squirted orange oil mist into your face while peeling an orange, then you are acquainted with the oil glands of an orange.

Connecting the rind to the meat of the orange (and the orange segments to each other) is the pith, or albedo (alba meaning white, just like the linea alba, the abdominal structure damaged when you have a DR). Beneath the pith is the endocarp—the part of the orange we eat. Each individually wrapped section of the orange meat is called a carpel. Carpels, in turn, are made up of smaller, individual juice-filled sacs, or juice follicles. Each of these juice follicles is an individual plant cell—a cell that you don’t need a microscope to see! (image previous page)

It might appear that I’ve catalogued all of the essential parts of an orange, having described its appearance in detail, but any good biomechanist will point out that there are parts I didn’t include when breaking the orange into pieces.

For example, when you’re trying to open a segment of orange—a carpel—to look at the juice follicles, you will see that making a small puncture in the carpel’s skin causes the follicles to burst out of the skin. This reveals that the follicles inside an intact carpel are under pressure. The tension created by the carpel skin wasn’t visible to me, but it was there. This tensile force is part of the orange, even though it’s not visible.

Just as we can itemize the parts of an orange, we can (and many have) itemize human abdominal anatomy. There are the muscles down the front of your belly—your rectus abdominis—and the obliques on each side. There are the abdominals that wrap around from the back, the linea alba down the middle of your abdomen, the guts inside your abdomen, and the fascia and skin that wrap around it all. But just as with an orange, there are many invisible parts—forces—not represented when we approach anatomy in this way. (image next page)

When it comes to a DR, the forces at play are just as, if not more, important than the parts they are acting upon. If you don’t know about the forces, and specifically how you can create forces that pull your abdomen open, then how could you possibly stop creating a DR? Many people, in fact, are actively pursuing corrective exercise to restore their core while simultaneously continuing the very habits that created this abdominal separation in the first place.

This book is about:

•The forces that we create through position, movement, and everyday habits, that make us more susceptible to developing a DR, or, if we already have one, keep us from putting the abdomen back together again.

•How—through sitting, standing, standing in shoes, lying down, getting back up again, squatting, not squatting, breathing, and even how comfortable we feel in our own skin—we can shove our internal body parts up, down, and sideways.

•How sometimes, we shove around the muscles making up the front of the abdominal wall and call it diastasis recti.

•Corrective exercises, getting really strong (although not in a way you’re expecting), and enjoying your life more.

And did I mention the forces? There’s going to be a lot of force-talk. Just so you know.

Maybe you don’t have a DR. Maybe you’ve lost strength or tone to your midsection, or perhaps you’re experiencing other pressure-related issues, like a hernia or prolapsing organs. Whatever your motivation for reading this book, you’ll be able to learn about and improve your strength and the way you use your body. Everything I’ve written here applies to you.

CAN I USE THIS BOOK WHILE PREGNANT?

As I’ll explain more on page 13, a DR isn’t simply the distancing of your abdominal muscles from each other, but the unnatural distancing of your abdominals from each other. And so, the goal is not to get your abdominal muscles sitting side-by-side again, but to restore them to a more natural distance for better uterine, sacral, and lower-back support. You can do this while you’re pregnant. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that your body, your baby’s body, your pregnancy, and your delivery could benefit greatly from working to restore your functional, biologically necessary core strength while you’re pregnant. Not all the exercises will be doable while you’re pregnant. You might not feel comfortable on your belly or back, for example. Just eliminate those exercises and do the ones you can, as well as adjusting the rest of your movements to the best of your abilities. If you have been given any specialized guidelines (like bed rest), consult with your birthing professionals and ask for their assistance in modifying this program as they see fit.

I HAVE HYPERMOBILITY ISSUES, PELVIC ORGAN PROLAPSE, PELVIC FLOOR DISORDER, HERNIAS… IS THIS BOOK SAFE FOR ME?

Yes. it’s not only safe for you—It’s designed for you. With the exception of genetic disorders, the issues I’ve listed here are often symptoms stemming from the same problem—a set of forces created by a way of moving over a lifetime. This book is not really about fixing a diastasis recti so much as it is about how to move so that you are strong enough to carry the weight of your own body and not create excessive amounts of pressure. By learning the content of this book and applying it, symptoms of a movement deficit—like a diastasis recti, hypermobility issues, pelvic floor problems, etc.—should decrease. That being said, your ability to execute these exercises safely requires that you pay very close attention to the instructions (bolded to remind you when form is super-duper important). As with everyone following this program, I recommend you proceed slowly and mindfully, and enjoy the improvements that you find in your body!

SECTION 1: THINK

THE ANATOMY OF DIASTASIS RECTI

CHAPTER 1

If I begin with a tidy definition of diastasis recti, we’ll already be veering off the course to repairing it. You see, DR is a whole-body issue defined by its symptom—the displacement of one or more of your abdominal muscles. Setting up the symptom as the problem ignores the bundle of habits and habitats that led to the symptom in the first place. We look for exercises or belts or surgeries to correct this issue that just won’t resolve itself because we’re entirely unaware of how it was created. Once you know how a DR was created, you can take steps to correct the deeper issues at work.

Imagine you lay beautiful carpet throughout your house, but find that one area constantly fades. You dye that area to match the surrounding carpet, only to find it faded again and again. You head to the store to find the dye, mixing it and applying it to the faded patch regularly throughout the year. Until one day someone points out to you that the faded spot (the symptom) is