Deep Belly Breathing Stretches for Pelvic Pain

Deep belly breathing (aka diaphragmatic breathing) can help to inhibit the stress response and stimulate the vagus nerve. This can promote relaxation and a sense of feeling grounded. Stretches combined with diaphragmatic breathing helps move your belly and chest evenly and decreases the demands from an overactive pelvic floor. When you breathe and change the length of pelvic muscles, the nerves have a different stimulus that can help decrease the pain signal from the brain. For stretching for pain relief, move into the stretch, but not pain, holding for 6 breaths. Inhale into the lower back ribs, exhale all the way and pause for 3-6 seconds. Then see if you can increase the stretch a little. Here are a few stretches that can help relax the muscles of the pelvic floor when combine with diaphragmatic breathing:

1. Happy baby: Lie on your back and reach your hands to your feet. Gently bring the legs up and out and gently rock back and forth.

2. Hip flexor stretch: Lie on the edge of the bed and bring one knee to the Let the other leg hang towards the floor to stretch the front of the hip.

3. Hip external rotator stretch: Lie on your back and put the ankle of one foot on the opposite Hold behind the thigh and bring both legs towards the chest.

4. Cat-Camel: On hands and knees, arch your back bringing the belly up feeling the opening of the back with inhale and gentle abdominal contraction on exhale. Then let your belly hang and sit bones spread to feel the pelvic floor opening on inhale and gentle abdominal contraction on exhale.