Awaken The Spine
Reactivate the natural strength in your spine through your breath!
In this post, I am going to highlight one of the most important but also the most neglected muscles in the core system: the multifidus. Whether it’s neck, back, shoulder or hip pain pretty much everyone who walks into my treatment room works on the multifidus.
The multifidus (yellow) lines each individual level of the spine from the base of the skull to the sacrum. Individually, they extend and rotate. When they work as a group, they maintain the suspension and the fluidity of the spine. They provide the “lift” required to maintain your spine alignment against gravity.
In the last post, we went over how to use the breath and the full relaxation of the diaphragm to find and activate the deep abdominals (red) and the multifidus (yellow). Here is how we are going to engage it and strengthen it.
To do this, you are going to lie on your stomach and prop yourself up on your elbows.
The “Push Lift Tuck”
Push down through your forearms
Lift through your chest
Tuck your chin
Pull your head back in line with the rest of the body
Draw your shoulders away from your ears
Breathe in with just the belly
Exhale pulling your ribs down and in, cinching the lower ribs together.
Don’t squeeze your glutes!
Being in this position does these things:
You are in a functional posture of the spine (hip and spine extension). From bad breathing, posture, and movement habits, many spines and hips get stuck in a flexed position. Being positioned like this starts to undo that.
The weight of the head provides the “weight” to strengthen the spine muscles. The head is heavy. Have you ever seen a new born try to hold up their head? It takes a lot of muscle power. Being in this position is like tummy time for adults!
Diaphragmatic breathing here lengthens the tension that develops in the torso and the hips. The downward “bucket handle” motion of the ribs creates a stretch in the latttisimis dorsi (lats) and pecs, iliopsoas and rectus femoris. These muscles are often short, overdeveloped, and tense (but often all of the above) in cases of chronic/ recurrent pain.
One breath = 1 rep for the multifidus and the upper deep abdominals. Getting the multifidus and deep abdominals to fire in this position using a maximum exhale makes it work hard to maintain the weight of the head, the position of the shoulders and the extension in the spine.
Do this exercise below for 2 minutes then see how you feel. You will be amazed at how easy it is to sit, stand and walk “tall” afterwards. This is a great exercise to do to get your core online and reduce accumulated tension in the torso before you walk for exercise or work out.
Note: If this position is uncomfortable, you can practice it by sitting at a table and propping your elbows up on the table instead.
