firebreathing postpartum question

hi gmom
i found that too.
did a bit of internet research at the time and found that the breath of fire in yoga is a breath which is supposed to purify the blood. i cut it out until after my loss was completely finished.
was so impressed by the effect said breathing had on my loss that i went to yoga teacher for 1 on 1 session. she told me to do rib breathing in an inverted pose instead. (bum and abomen up, just resting on shoulders). has radically improved cystocele and have noticed that bowels are freer, and organs no longer dragging in pelvic cavity.
regards
babs

hi

could you explain what rib breathing is and how it differs from firebreathing and any good sites on this i.e discussion's.. Is there a name for the rib breathing or just "rib breathing" is it.

Oh and when you say dramatic difference, how long did that take to achieve?

Very interesting stuff!

Thanks

xx
Anne-helen

Hi ladies

I remember a couple of weeks after the birth of one of my babies, when I had started spending more time doing stuff upright instead of just lying around being Mom, feeling like I had a football at the bottom of my pelvis, really congested and painful. My solution was to lie upside down on the sofa with my bum up in the air and my lower legs hooked over the back for a few minutes at a time. Immediate relief. Same thing? I only needed to do it a couple of times a day for a couple of weeks.

I use that inverted pose as you describe it, a lot now and it feels great to come down from. I find that by lowering my legs gently over my head as far as they want to go, and consciously relaxing, it also gently stretches those long muscles down the sides of the spine as well. Good if you have been overdoing the lumbar curve thing.

Cheers

Louise

having been to one session i am an utter amateur.
the position is really a bridge pose.
it is crucial that the shoulder blades are lying relaxed and flat on the floor.
the teacher got me to lie down, with my knees bent and feet shoulder width apart, pulled up close to my bum, then place my hands in prayer position, and push them up full stretch vertically to the ceiling, and then lower them at full stretch behind my head, and then drop my hands and arms to the floor , slide them down my sides. this helps relax my shoulders and back.
then i lift my bum off the ground. you can put your feet on 2 telephone directories under your feet if it makes it easier. my weight is on my shoulders, i lift my pelvis till it feels both comfortable and open, though for a beginner like me feet stay on the ground.
after that you just hold and breath in and out.
rib cage breathing means just that.
you breath and consciously fill your lungs to make your ribs expand outwards. your abdomen should not be expanding at all.
with each successive breath you try to make your rib cage bigger, and correspondingly your abdomen and waist smaller and more cinched in on itself.
this is done as part of the breathing.
the weird thing is that all your abs back muscles and pelvic floor seem to work together, and as you continue breathing to make your ribs wider and your abdomen smaller, everything seems to pull up.
the teacher describes it as a lock. its almost as with each breath you wind your innards up tighter.
as to how quickly i saw an improvement, it was immediate. i now do these 2 simple exercises morning and evening.
and there are no kegels involved.
my yoga teacher did demonstrate for me the breath of fire. her rib cage was bellowing in and out dead quick like a set of bellows. apparently you need to master the other yoga breathing techniques before you can do the breath of fire properly.
i am intending to go back next week for another 1 to 1 session viewed solely at improving my prolapse problems and she will hopefully show me more poses that may help.
the teacher did agree that my lower tummy muscles were quite shot as when i first went if i tried to pull in my tummy only the bit immediately below my ribcage, which seemed to have no organs behind it responded. it looked as if my whole intestines had travelled south with everything else, leaving a void below my ribs.
since doing this simple pose and breathing that organ drift has improved, and for the first time in about 5 years i have enough control in my tummy muscles to pull my butt off the ground to lie on my back and cycle in the air.
i hope this is helpful. my yoga teacher probably wouldn't be too impressed with my inarticulate attempts to explain what is going on.
regards
babs

I don’t think this exercise is going to cause harm, but it does not make sense anatomically, is draining instead of invigorating, and is totally useless in pulling up any of the internal organs. Here’s why:

When we inspire, or breathe in, the rib cage expands, the respiratory diaphragm moves forcefully down, and the abdominal and pelvic organs are pushed down and forward. Our natural abdominal wall (specifically a relaxed, rounded, expandable lower belly) accommodates this movement.

Inspiring in a supine, inverted position while sucking in the belly totally negates this anatomic function. No matter how tightly you try to cinch your waist in hopes of creating a bottleneck to hold your organs up higher as you try to pull them under your thorax with the in-breath (I assume that’s the intended point), your body is still trying to push your organs down and forward. There is absolutely no possibility of pulling prolapsed abdominal or pelvic organs up in this way because the concept is working opposite of what’s really going on. It’s like pushing against a wall with no isometric value whatsoever. If you think deeply about this you will see it is only futile, exhausting effort. It would be more sensible to try the same thing on the out-breath, when the organs are naturally moving back up under the ribcage. But the supine positioning is all wrong because it is pulling the organs away from their forward placement.

I think the firebreathing broke open your still-healing blood vessels granolamom because it creates a significant vacuum that pulls everything up with a slight wringing action. We must work with, not against, our natural anatomy and physiology.

The point about breathing is that you also exhale.
perhaps i didn't make that clear but it is on each out breath that everything gets wound up, but by intentionally only filling the lungs and pushing the ribcage out (and not your belly as i would have been inclined to do) on the inbreath (which is gentle and not forceful) this upward movement sustained during the out breath is held during the inbreath and then further upward movement achieved with each successive outbreath.
i can only say in the 4 weeks or so that i have been doing this that my cystocele is no longer "peaking out", the dragging isn't so bad, by intestines are no longer sitting in a heavy pile in my abdomen, my tummy looks smaller, my posture is better, i find that i maintain good posture throughout the day and i can lift my 2 stone 17 month old without feeling a bulge in my pants!.
even as i sit here in a chair typing, i can breath in deeply conciously making my ribcage fill out like bellows, and i don't feel any pressure down below (ie i am not feeling my body working to push my organs out of my abdominal cavity!)
i trust the yoga teacher on this as it transpires that she (aged 59 but looking 10 to 15 years younger) also had pelvic organ prolapse. through use of these poses she has sustained improvement.
i don't have the same knowledge of anatomy as you, but i can report improvement from this (perhaps the most marked and sustained improvement i have seen since i discovered this after baby #3), and i hope that if it worked for me it may benefit others also.

Christine I can see what you are saying very clearly......but what if you turned it over? That way the pelvic organs would be tilted up and towards the pubic bone-
or what if when you were on you shoulders you arched your back some?
I heard some advice I'd been wondering about-
Get on elbows and knees- then lower your chest as much as you can. Draw air into the vagina until it pushes the pelvic organs into place. Hold it there and tighten your abdominal muscles and kegal.
Does anyone think this would work??
I admit that sometimes when I am on elbows and knees I get air trapped in my vagina- it feels uncomfortably full to me- any thoughts?

Much more anatomically sound, alemama. I'm not trying to be poopy here, just sensible. Anyone can say anything about how such-and-such cured their prolapse, but thankfully we have the wisdom of our natural anatomy to refer to - created or evolved. Try these exercises and be your own best judge...the "rib breathing" in the bridge pose is utterly exhausting whereas beneficial exercise should be invigorating.

its your show, Christine, and I thank you for your opinion of my experience.

all i can reiterate is that i have found this exercise to be easy, beneficial and not pointless or exhausting.

as to your observations on anatomy all i can say is that my short experience contradicts what you are saying. i will go for further sessions with the nice yoga teacher and i will keep you ladies posted as to how i get on.

as they say if it works for me..
also having benefitted from your work and the posts from the other ladies, it would be selfish and churlish not to pass on what is helping me.

as i recall you once wrote "the rest of the healing dance is for each woman to create on her own."

ps if you dont see the value of the bridge, why is it included as fig 37 on p 143 of the first edition of your book?

it does seem that those from eastern cultures who practise yoga and such are much more aware of their bodies, and how the diaphragm interacts with other muscles. until i know more about it, and whenever i am seeing benefit from it, i am not going to discount it.

thanks
babs

The bridge pose does feel very good as does allowing your chest to open by bending your back over a large pillow or curved support and breathing passively. And there definitely is a pulling up of the organs upon exhalation in ‘rib breathing’ due to the natural upward pull of the diaphragm. The problem is, they are pulling up and back instead of up and forward.

It is true, Babs, that we all must do what works for us and I’m not arguing with your personal success with this exercise. What is crucial, however, is that we identify what works and what does not work for the anatomic female body. That is my sole agenda here and I apologize for being blunt.

Maybe this is sort of like the creation/evolution thing and instead of either/or it is really both/and….however, the underlying premise of the Whole Woman work is that human females are a lot more alike than different. Are we radically different and unique from each other? Yes. Does a forensic anthropologist know immediately upon finding a pelvic bone that it is human female? Yes. At the deepest level we are remarkably similar. The same is said of the pelvic interior – the “map” of organs and spaces in between the organs being very similar from woman to woman.

The main issue in all the different exercises for prolapse is making sure the fascial layers of the body are being pulled in anatomically correct directions. In the rib breathing your organs are definitely being pulled in a cephalic (toward your head) direction on the exhalation, but they are also being pulled, and your fascia is being stretched, away from your lower abdominal wall – directly behind which the organs are normally positioned. It is for this reason I do not believe this to be a beneficial exercise for pelvic organ prolapse.

i think it is noteworthy that both gmom and i are describing a void below our ribcages as if all our intestines have moved south to sit in a heap in our pelvic cavity. this has improved with the yoga.

just curious- is this a symptom of prolapse or a cause of it?

how are our intestines anchored? are they attached to fascia/ diaphragm etc?

is it possible that these have become weakened or overstretched due to pregnancy, causing prolapse from higher up, adding weight and increasing the prolapse of the lower pelvic organs?

or is it the prolapse by the lower organs which causes a void that the others fall naturally into?

i guess what i am asking is are our innards anchored at the bottom only?

if not will working at restoring the "void" help with the prolapse.

i have always intuitively felt that any exercise is going to be wasted unless i restore the weight of intestines back to where they should be.

before i went to yoga i was trying my own version of drawing up whilst on my hands and knees. (haha) that really was exhausting and pointless! all that happened was that the weight of intestines etc fell forward like a big sack of potatoes on to my tummy muscles, and i realised the extent to which my tummy muscles were shot!

for me, even the posture feels like just an unnatural throwing of the weight of the innards forward, and it doesn't seem to help my rectocele at all (?made it worse?) (its hard to say as it is currently better than its been following 2nd degree tearing and restitching in last labour).

i guess i really want the impossible, i want for my organs to go back to where they were before, and i guess in my case they never really rested on my pubic bone. but the reality is that my muscles are like overstretched knicker elastic, and that my perineum is now a scarred and atrophied mess thanks to the episitomy from hell which has retore open on 2 out of the last three deliveries, and that the structures which previously supported my guts are now an injured and deformed version of their former selves.

would be grateful for the benefit of your knowledge and experience on these matters.

thanks and peace
babs

The intestines are very well supported and carried toward the front of the body. They are not firmly embedded in solid tissue, but rather supported and covered by structures called “serous membranes” that connect to the diaphragm and abdominal wall. This way they can slide and move while digesting food, but not torque and kink like a mass of garden hose. It’s likely that your abdominal wall has weakened and with it perhaps some organ drift has occurred, but impossible your abdominal organs have prolapsed far. Please understand that the pelvic organs to not “rest” on the pubic bone, but are suspended above it and that there is no cavity in the unhysterectomized woman for abdominal organs to fall into.

I believe there is no better way of pulling the abdominal wall up and together than with the posture. But I cannot argue this point any further. If you feel it is negatively affecting your condition by all means discontinue it. I am glad the yoga is working for you.

Oh Granolamom, you have just reminded me of that wierd postpartum feeling. I can remember vividly following the birth of one of my children feeling as if my abdomen was like a balloon that had been blown up for a long time, then deflated, leaving it flaccid, though not empty, wrinkly and soft, instead of smooth to touch and firm in texture like a new balloon. That feeling took a long time to dissipate as all the tissues of my very pregnant belly slowly regained their former shape and size. I remember even when my youngest was nearly two and still breastfeeding, taking a gentle jog and feeling all my belly contents flopping around inside me, as well as my lactating breasts having a agenda of their own on the outside.

It takes 9 months for a belly to balloon out to its size at term and there must to be a lot of stretching of connective tissue to allow all those organs to accommodate a growing uterus. It is not going to revert overnight after birth. And perhaps it never really does revert completely. I just remember some time after that, realising that I no longer had that floppy unstable feeling in my belly when I ran.

Is this the feeling that you mean?

Cheers

Louise

christine, thanks for your thoughts on organ drift.
for the record, i am not dismissing the posture, just the possibly the wrong version of it i was doing.
i think the way i am holding myself now mainly due to the deliberate effort i am making now to fill my ribcage at various times during the day is ahving a corresponding effect on my posture.
for me to efficiently fill my rib cage does mean shoulders back and down, neck long etc.
i think the fault lay with my ability to put into effect your written instructions.
perhaps gmom is right, in that the posture may be broadly similar for us all with some slight adjustment for each of us.
btw, after years of study and a sedentary job with much time spent sitting with a dictaphone i was getting the real makings of a dowagers hump and had to have chiropractice about 4 years ago for my neck. bizarrely the yoga and the breathing and the corresponding posture is slowly undoing years of neglect. the yoga teacher did notice and focus on this for me. in getting me to lie on my back and stretch my arms before commencing the exercise it is to restore straightmess to my crooked neck.
doubtless this would not be so needed for everyone, but it has been very helpful to me.
i do think you are right about bad posture and the arched spine of sitting being very very bad for prolapse and organ stability. i also think gmom is right, it happens over years, this subtle and insidious "going to seed".
i also do think that a part of my problem is linked to my abs and diaphragm.
my hubby who is reluctant to admit or develop such a thing has always had a 6th sense and a healing touch for some things, and he has said that he sense that a lot of my problems are from a weakness in the spine

I find the issue of tone that you raised, granolamom, very interesting. The universe is known by yogis and quantum physicists alike to be based on vibration, or tone. Seers of all ages have attempted to describe the cosmic music of the spheres. Deep thinkers and ancient spiritual traditions tell us that universal, harmonic energy is “stepped down” into physical form so that we may have life.

Here’s a particularly interesting discussion on fascia, believed by Randolph Stone, the founder of Polarity Therapy, to be the “ground substance” through which this energy exchange between the Source and earthly beings takes place:

“Looking at these (chakras), their transitions and relationships, we can begin to see how these fields become physical and underlie our form. The key to this understanding lies in the body’s connective tissue and fascia. Fascia is tough, elastic tissue which connects, supports and integrates body structures and functions. Fascia wraps around all the muscles, organs and vessels of the body. It keeps them separate and allows them to function in relationship to each other. Connective tissue connects bones to each other and muscles to bones. It connects body parts to each other and surrounds and supports the body’s functional systems. It wraps around nerve sheaths, digestive organs and blood vessels. The interesting thing about fascia and connective tissue is that it is all continuous. You cannot really say where one part starts and the other stops. Fascia is one sheet which wraps around everything and is continuous from the tips of our toes to the top of our head. On a physical level, it integrates body functions. A restriction or imbalance in one area gets transferred to other areas via this continuity. Thus tension in the pelvis can be transferred to the diaphragm and thence to the shoulders and neck. Knowing these energetic and physical relationships becomes a great tool in the process of healing and health maintenance.” The Polarity Process, Franklyn Sills 2002

If poor body tone is an issue, is it wildly preposterous to think music therapy might help?

This could include a wide variety of “treatments” such as actively listening to music, playing an instrument, or delving into deep contemplative states in order to connect with, absorb, and be strengthened by Universal Tone.

Just a thought.

Christine