Weight Lifting & Open Posture Part 1

Hey love, ​ I get asked a version of this question almost everyday: “Are your workouts good for a person with significant Diastasis Recti or should I focus on fixing that first?” asked a postpartum mama of three this week. This is what is so profound about this work. This is the healing. This work applies to every ailment. Yes, even degenerative disc disease, prolapse, scoliosis, the list goes on and on because all those diagnoses are simply telling us that the tension of our fascia in a specific area isn’t right. You aren’t broken, you just need better alignment (there are metabolic diagnoses that are exceptions here, of course). You, and every body that wants healing, needs to start with the natural foundations of alignment. Then you increase your capacity and those same healing movements turn into your workout. And yes, when you’re doing this correctly you can generate enough stimulus for muscle & bone growth (more on that next week). Let’s dig deeper into Diastasis Recti, which is when your ab muscles separate, specifically. Usually when someone goes about trying to heal their diastasis, they find a PT or class that instructs them their deep core is just too weak and that’s why the muscles are separated. You’ll heal through “specific” activation training, hypopressives, and finding your “deep core.” This is a myth and if you go down this road of tighter core = better, you’ll have to un-pattern it all to open your posture later because they are diametrically opposites. Blunt, but the truth. Firstly, all babies and all moms have diastasis in the postpartum period. It is a healthy, normal way for mom to make space to grow a baby (doesn’t have to happen as severely if your rib cage isn’t collapsed), and for a baby learning to have a body. There’s no amount of tightening that makes diastasis not happen. A tighter core actually has a harder time morphing shape to accommodate baby and then go back together. Add this to this list of reasons why I'll never cue you to tighten your core (if you haven’t, you want to read the 45 page long posture pdf I made on my website repatternco.com ). Almost all babies throughout history have healed their diastasis, not through a “deep core” program like women have been sold, but through tummy time, crawling and rolling around (NOT in carriers or bouncers most of the day, but that’s a topic for another time). Now, the reason this works for babies is because there is a natural alignment hardwired into them. They move with a taco foot, they stick their bums out, they breathe with their diaphragm and they never tighten their core. These principles are entrained out of us by the time we are doing the birthing. And we need to get them back. So that all the daily movements we do are healing our diastasis, just like babies. Here’s the deal, sometimes these deep core programs work for women. But this depends on what your definition of “work” is. For one, almost every case of diastasis heals with time, no matter what you’re doing (unless you’re tightening your core all the time, then sometimes it never will heal). Secondly, if the gap in your core closes but now you pee when you laugh, have regular low back pain or constipation, did it really “work?” My definition of work is instead of teaching you how to tighten your core more (which actually often pulls the diastasis wider because you are tightening the fabric that’s already being pulled apart), teaching you how to take up all the space you were made to. This looks like an expanded ribcage that looks confident and magnetic. Easy breathing that heals your pelvic floor. And the principles of tone that babies naturally do. So that you don’t pee yourself, ever. Your ribs aren’t flared but you didn’t have to contort yourself tighter to make that happen. And you feel like a literal spring inside your body. And this is never easy. Repatterning back to factory or “baby” settings doesn’t feel like an exercise, it feels like an expansion on every level of your being. And when the basics start getting easier, we increase the intensity until you get ripped muscles like all wild animals that never touch weights. So, when you think to yourself, “should I heal this issue before I do Dr. Lily’s programs?” Remind yourself that these programs are how you truly heal. The principles I teach help close diastasis, while healing your pelvic floor, while supporting scoliosis, while making you stronger. Because a body that works well is a body that looks and feels well. If you enroll in REVIVAL, you would start slowly building on the FOUNDATION series and skip the strength training (RETRAIN) sections for a while. If you enroll in REPATTERN, you’ll go step by step through your healing journey over the 8 modules. You can use this quiz to see which is the right fit for you ​ https://tally.so/r/LZ4pkv ​ ​ REVIVAL Short, guided movement practices you can come back to again and again. ​ → Explore REVIVAL ​ ​ REPATTERN My deeper, structured course for understanding your body, movement patterns, and the principles behind my work. ​ → Explore REPATTERN ​ ​ Work with me 1:1 For more individualized support based on your body and what you’re working through. ​ → Explore 1:1 ​ ​ All my love in your healing, Dr. Lily

Hey love, ​ Your gut– the literal way you metabolize the outside world to create yourself. It is our lifeline to the nutrients all around us. Like so many of you, I struggled with stomach aches, bloating, and digestive issues for most of my life (I’ve yet to meet a hypermobile, sensitive feeler that doesn’t). And while my gut isn’t perfect now (unlike my husband who can travel across the globe with great bowel movements the entire time – #goals), it is light years better than ever before. And honestly, it wasn’t changing my diet that made the biggest impact. Like Danielle told me as she started to do this work, I’m “in awe that so many years of bloating can simply have been something with my breathing/mechanics.” So let’s break this down. Clinicians are starting to realize that the digestive system isn’t just about the chemical abilities of our gut, but it is the tension surrounding our gut, too. This is why when they hit a block in helping someone with digestive issues, they refer them to a Pelvic Floor PT. It turns out the tension of where we empty ourselves matters a lot in our ability to empty ourselves – makes sense right? But this is one small part of the holistic story of our gut. Our entire fascial fabric web, and the nervous system housed in that web, matters when it comes to our gut health. Now, what I’m not saying is that this work will heal everybody’s gut issues. I’ve worked with people that have extreme gut issues that this helped a bit, but was nowhere near everything they needed. But what I am saying is that this work is non-invasive, pretty cheap and has helped thousands of women have a better feeling gut. And here’s why: Learning how to keep your pelvic floor open and long improves your ability to easily release bowel movements. What I teach about learning to live with an anterior pelvic tilt made from moving the top of the thigh bones back, worked much better for me than Pelvic Floor PT. This is because changing the way you hold yourself goes beyond trying to manually release your pelvic floor muscles (they just tighten again) or heal them in the traditional “neutral” pelvic position that keeps the pelvic floor short and everything tight. (I love you Pelvic Floor PTs and know my intention is to lift us all up and make us better at helping women. I like you, was trained into thinking neutral pelvises are helpful, turns out, they aren’t!). We don’t tighten the core back here. When you’re constantly sucking the core backwards to “protect your low back” or “get rid of your mom pooch” or “connect to your deep core” you are strangulating your gut. That sounds dramatic but once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it. Your gut gets its nutrients (blood and nerve supply) through a curtain-like structure coming off the front of your back. When you tighten your core it's like bunching up this curtain and wondering why the flow decreases. This leads to feeling like you can’t digest anything well or fast (slow digestion is a main reason for bloating because there’s more time for bacteria to accumulate and make gas). This is why you can restrict all types of food (trust me i’ve cut EVERYTHING out) and still have the same symptoms (so annoying!). This work gives you more stability and control of your body in general which signals to the nervous system that we are safe and can focus on things like digesting food and pooping, instead of fighting the threat that is constant joint instability or tight muscles. Your nervous system is inside your fascia which wraps around and in between every structure of your body. When the fascia has the right tension to it, the nervous system and body work better. As always, this isn’t personalized medical advice, as maybe you’re straight up allergic to some things, but a permission slip to consider loosening your grip on food restriction and focusing your attention on how you’re holding yourself and thus you feel inside your body. With that said, the two diet changes I’ve found extremely helpful for my gut are taking magnesium (at least 300 mg and increasing it until you have perfect poos) and eating something fermented everyday. This video is a good place to start if you’re new to this work, and the diaphragmatic breathing & ribcage expansion videos in the FOUNDATIONS section of REVIVAL is where to go if you’re refining this work. ​ All my love in gut healing, Dr. Lily