Key Points:
- Societal conditioning and feeling self-conscious have caused a lot of us to suck our abdominals in a lot of the time.
- Holding your stomach muscles in doesn’t make them strong. It makes them tight and weak.
- The increase of pressure has to go somewhere – down on the pelvic floor, or up into the diaphragm.
- Like all of the muscles in our bodies, to function best, the abdominal muscles need to be able to contract and relax, ideally throuhg their full range and reflexively (to the extent required for the task at hand).
- Bring awareness to whether you have this habit and see if you can let it go – stopping the gripping. It can be hard, so don’t expect to see an instant change!
Key points:
- Lie down on the floor on your back with your knees bent. You can have a cushion, pillow, or blanket under your head.
- Have your abdominal skin exposed if you can. Pick up the soft tissue (skin, fat, muscle) lovingly between your fingers and thumbs. Roll your thumbs towards your fingers, gathering more soft tissue with your fingers as you go.
- The idea is to do this across the whole of the abdominal wall.
- It does a number of things:
- releases tension
- increases blood flow to the area
- brings back the brain-body awareness
- if you’re doing it gently with love, compassion, and kindness for your body you will be tapping into rest and digest mode.
- If the skin rolling is too much, just rest your hands across your abdominal wall. One near the pubic bone and the other next to it near the ribs. It’s nice if you can have something to rest your arms on. In this position, you are allowing the very gentle pressure and warmth of the hands to do all of the same things.