Belly Training
Learning to breathe diaphragmatically is the first change that a pregnant woman can make to encourage her baby’s health. Chronic poor breathing allows toxins to stagnate, hinders cellular growth, and adds negative stress to the mother and the unborn child. Diaphragmatic breathing can prevent these effects, charge the system, improve nutrient exchange, and enhance the environment for body, mind, and womb.
A diaphragmatic breath means that you use your primary breathing muscle (diaphragm) to draw air deep into your lower lung. This appears to fill your tummy, sides, low back, and lower ribs with air, instead of your chest. Breathing in and out through your nose, rather than mouth, tends to encourage deep belly breathing.
Benefits of Belly Training
- Improve Baby’s Development
- Increase Nutrients to the Pregnant Client’s Baby
- Decrease Toxins for Baby
- Reduce Muscle Spasms and Cramping
- Enhance Baby’s Feeling of Well-Being
- Increase Baby’s Vitality
- Stave off Sickness
- Reduce Pregnancy Aches and Pains
- Reduce Feeling of Shortness of Breath
- Assist Easier and Less Painful Labor
- Assist in the Pushing Stage of Labor
- Increase Overall Mood
Breathing Improves Baby’s Development
Diaphragmatic breathing nurtures a low-stress environment that encourages neural and physical development. Like everything else that circulates in the blood stream, stress hormones also find their way to the growing baby. These are the chemicals that evolution has prescribed to help mom, if necessary, run faster to escape an invading tribe. Research has clearly shown, however, that chronic exposure to stress hormones creates an environment that hinders cell growth.
Cells in an environment of stress hormones simply cannot grow optimally. This especially includes the cells of a growing baby. Part of the hindrance that stress hormones cause is the suppression of human growth hormone. Human growth hormone is needed to stimulate growth and repair of all organs in the body. This includes nerve cell growth and repair in the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves.
Deep diaphragmatic breathing is wired to help mom return to the relax-repair-rebuild phase. The human body functions either in sympathetic (fight or flight) or parasympathetic (relax-repair-rebuild.) These two systems represent the hormonal, chemical, and all physiological processes that ramp up to produce effective responses, respectively either performance/stress response or conversely digestion, immunity, tissue growth. The body cannot optimally perform both at the same time. One of the most effective ways for a pregnant woman to phase out of the stress response, and to return to a beneficial tissue building physiology is proper diaphragmatic breathing.
A blood supply that is free from stress hormones also fosters nerve growth and development. This occurs because neurons are more likely to branch out and explore in the absence of the stress-induced restriction. The multitude of these nerve-branching connections ultimately equates to increased ability on all levels, including growth of muscles, bones, organs, hormonal systems, and intelligence.
The stress cycle of the mother sets a pattern of life-long nerve branching for the child. Nerve branching occurs fastest when the child is inside the belly; it’s a window of opportunity for the baby. A stressful nine months means that baby will be wired with a quicker-firing stress response, in preparation for the environment that he or she is preparing for. By stopping the release of stress hormones, deep breathing can maximize the physical, emotional, and mental attributes for the unborn baby, enriching his or her life for years.
Increases Nutrients to Baby
Diaphragmatic breathing rhythmically re-circulates blood while massaging the organs and baby. Pressures caused by a strong breathing diaphragm encourage fluids to flush in and out of body tissue, including tissues in the womb. The extra fluid exchange encourages nutrient uptake in the cells. This means more nutrients to the fastest growing group of cells in the pregnant body: the baby.
Decrease Toxins for Baby
A pregnant mom who strengthens deep breathing can remove many harmful toxins from her baby’s environment. Nine months of rapid growth creates large amounts of wastes. Metabolic wastes are the wastes excreted by individual cells. A partial list includes nitrogen compounds, phosphates, sulfates, indoles, medicals, and food additives.
Reduce muscle spasms and cramping
Since electrolyte balance is maintained in part by fluid exchange in the cells, there may be an added side effect for the mother. As deep breathing encourages electrolyte exchange, it may help to calm muscle spasms and cramping.
Enhance Baby’s Feeling of Well-Being
Unborn children feel every emotion that mom feels. It happens instantly, both chemically and energetically. Nervousness about a work deadline tosses baby a handful of “nervousness” in the form of chemicals, hormones, and energy. Mom’s anger at friends or family injects “angry” chemicals. Fear about gaining too much weight during pregnancy showers baby in chemicals for “fear” all pregnancy long. These negative chemical feelings register in baby and set the stage for programming the same reactions in him or her. Taking a deep breath helps the mom de-stress for herself and her unborn child.
Increase Baby’s Vitality
- Breathing enhances baby’s well being by enhancing mom’s electromagnetic field.
- Nutrition doesn’t always arrive in the form of food.
Like all forms of matter, humans are electrically charged. Both Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., and Paul Chek, HHP, teach that the diaphragm acts as a pump to enhance the electromagnetic field. In Radical Healing, Ballentine explains how positive ions from the air cross with the negative charge of the blood. As this occurs in each breathe, the electrical current of the body increases in the same manner an electric engine uses magnets to create energy. With energy levels linked to breathing, mom’s diaphragmatic breathe affects baby’s energy and vitality.
Breathing Mom Means Healthy Baby
Diaphragmatic breathing helps mom stave off sickness, manage pregnancy pains, and reduce overall pregnancy discomfort. A pregnant mom who benefits from diaphragmatic breathing passes those benefits to her growing baby.
Illness
It is estimated that poor breathing plays a role in 75% of the ills that cause a person to see a doctor. Disadvantages to diaphragmatic dysfunction include lack of oxygen and all sorts of physical maladies like heart palpitations, nausea, and asthma. In fact, every disease process in the body is affected either positively or negatively, depending on the function of the breath.
Aches and Pains
Breathing is highest on the hierarchy of needs; more than water, food, and shelter. The brain will sacrifice whatever it must in order to ensure that respiration takes place. An underused diaphragm forces other muscles to work overtime. Because of this, diaphragmatic dysfunction can be the starting point of many muscle imbalances. This links poor breathing to all kinds of joint pains. Diaphragmatic dysfunction that leads to muscle imbalance sets the new mom down the path for serious discomfort, possibly for the rest of her life.
The diaphragm muscle is also the foundation for the core, the center of movement, balance, posture, and strength. The diaphragm enables one to organize movement in a more centered and grounded manner. Having full use reduces a woman’s chance of falling while pregnant and possibly reduces chance of injury in other ways. “Core breathing,” as it’s called in Power Posture by Lee Parore, strengthens the internal corset keeping the deep abdominal muscles strong.
Many moms say back pain is what they remember most about pregnancy. A diaphragmatic breath can sometimes relieve low back pain instantly. It decompresses the spine and increases fluid exchange in the lumbar spinal discs. A strong diaphragm plays an integral part in preventing back pain from ever starting.
Every pregnant woman carries a relatively sudden increase in weight from her rapidly growing baby. This weight often pulls her lumbar spine forward into lordosis which is another common cause for low back pain. Worse, this lordosis then rounds her shoulders forward and knocks her knees inward in what’s referred to as “pronation-distortion syndrome.” This can contribute to why so many pregnant women have pains throughout their body, from neck aches to calf cramps. A strong diaphragm tones the tummy muscles, which can help prevent lordosis from worsening.
Shortness of Breath
Especially in the later stages of pregnancy, many pregnant women experience shortness of breath with seemingly no solution. A de-conditioned diaphragm causes shortness of breath because the muscle is not strong enough to gently push through the resistance of the organs and baby. In order to fully inhale throughout pregnancy, the diaphragm must remain strong enough to gently nudge the growing uterus and newly compressed organs out of the way.
Easier and Less Painful Labor
A strong diaphragm, trained to pull air deeply and slowly into the body, maintains focus, control and relaxation during pregnancy and delivery. Breathing is, in fact, one of the primary bases for many labor techniques including The Bradley Method, Lamaze, Hypno-birthing, Active Birth, and Birthing from Within.
Pushing Stage
A strong diaphragm increases the likelihood of a strong core. This helps mom in the pushing stage of labor. This enhanced ability for mom means less risk of intervention and complication for baby.
Mood
Being the muscle linked with lowering stress, the diaphragm can provide tremendous aid to a pregnant and laboring mom. Deep breathing keeps mom alert during the day, yet prepares her for sleep at night. It is a master regulator and is considered the only unconscious function that can be consciously controlled.
