Author name: Verity Yoga

I’ve put together a brief suggestion of breathing for a woman’s cycle. Pretty much all breathing studies are done on men as women’s hormone cycles interfere with the results. Since training with Oxygen Advantage and Conscious Breathing I’ve been mapping my hormones and CO2 levels. It’s not a simple process as I’m definitely well into perimenopause so I can’t rely on my 28 day cycle like I used to, but the progesterone spike before my flow definitely reduces my CO2 tolerance, making me more breathless, anxious, irritable, etc. As I’ve posted before, low CO2 tolerance can show up in a range of symptoms which all look like PMT. So I’ve been playing around with altitude training all the way through the cycle but intensely before the progesterone rises and I can honesty say my PMT symptoms have massively reduced. If a CP/BOLT score is low all through the cycle and then drops before flow then the symptoms will be much more dramatic than if CP/BOLT score is high enough to buffer for that every month. Which is why we feel it worse when we are stressed because we are most likely over breathing so it drops CO2 levels and increases symptoms. Humming breath 5in,5out to calm the nervous system and improve HRV during PMT is also excellent and studies have shown this also opens and clears nasal cavities. During the flow to ease the cramps the deep diaphragmatic breath holds make a difference, as is being able to breath deeply into the womb without pushing down. Or gentle breath holds in child’s for the back cramps. And working up to ovulation, the hormones and energy levels are perfect for some breath of fire or wim hoff. Knowing your cycle and your breath is empowering. If you practice yoga regularly it’s important to adjust your breathing with your cycle.  

After 1 session and 3 weeks of dedication to functional training, the persistent and chronic knee pain is improving and the gait improvements are visible. 1. Pelvic alignment has shifted back to neutral from a biased anterior tilt. Her obliques are more supportive and her core area visibly looks different. The spine looks longer. Hip extension has improved. 2. Femoral internal rotation (thigh rolling in) has reduced as external rotators get stronger with hip extension. This reduces the external rotation in her knees, which was an element of the pain. 3. Stance leg is also less internally rotated with more neutral pelvis. How? First session I like to work in the Sagittal plane so we focussed on hamstrings and lower glutes and obliques in and TA with the breath to find that pelvic stability in propulsion. We also worked on the awareness of the femoral alignment, on weight balance in daily life, on her foot pressures, knee pressures and breath. Interestingly, her overall strength and function was very good, but there was an old neurological pattern from childhood. Plenty more exploration to be done. The body is incredible at adapting.

Chronic long term back pain is often connected to disordered breathing. In the first picture there is no breath or movement in the back ribs, all the breath pressure is forward and down, keeping the body stuck in extension pattern of anterior pelvic tilt and rib flair. No support on the exhalation from the internal and external obliques, so they are not helping the pelvis find neutral. Overtime this has led to an inability of the pelvis to be reciprocal in the gait cycle, which means both sides of his pelvis are ultimately stuck in swing phase of gait and cannot access the stance phase. It all starts with the breath, re-learning to synchronise the exhale with the obliques/ TA/front rib internal rotation to inhibit the back extensors, while positionally inhibiting the quads and hip flexors by facilitating the lower glutes and upper hamstrings. The awareness will integrate this into his gait so over time with training he can walk/run/breathe with efficency and ease.

The foot is an incredible structure. It’s designed to bear equal weight in the base of the big toe, base of baby toe and heel. (And big toe as a quadrapod). Check out your old shoes/insoles/socks to see where you balance most of your weight as the wear and tear will show you. If you wear down the baby toe area but not big toe, play around with what it’s like to distribute the weight to the big toe as well. If you wear down the inside only, play around with baby toe strength. If you wear down one foot more than the other, play around with taking your weight into the other side when standing to see how it changes things. It’s amazing what can ease or change when you become aware of this because a solid wide foot tripod improves the whole body’s function. DM me for a foot mobility MOT online or in person so you know what you need to work on.

We have toes for a reason. Out toes are designed to be strong and mobile. Babies toes can grip around a finger. Each toe plays a part in your stability. We need the big toe to be straight and strong to be able to push into the ground to propel us forward in walking.  If it can’t do this our leg will turn out, or our knee will flick out, or our hip will hike and all of those will change our upper body and breath. The same need for pressing down strength applies to pronation. The strength of the big toe and big toe joint controls the degree of pronation as well as the strength of the muscle chain above. We need the baby toe (and 4th toe) to push down firmly into the floor to stabilise the outside of the leg, rotate the thighs and help shift us over the other leg in the gait cycle. If it can’t do this our leg rotation will be reduced and so will our ability to shift over each leg in the gait cycle. We need a strong tripod foot base. How strong are yours?

Is there a right way to stand? It’s a difficult question. We are all unique, so the answer is unique to each person. This is a good example, but make sure you read the whole thing before you try it. In the first picture my client had long term niggling knee pain. In the second he doesn’t. And that was partly because he became more aware of how he was standing and made some adjustments. In the first picture he is turning his feet out. In the second he repositions them in slightly and it helps HIM, because his femur doesn’t change much at all when he does that. Meaning that the rotation was coming from his knee and also causing some varum (knocked knee) alignment, which was aggravating his knee. It was also causing some hyper extension of the knee as it was creating knee external rotation, which allows for hyper extension in that joint. So for HIM it was a good adjustment and the knee pain went and has stayed away for 6 months now (with a few other moves to help). HOWEVER, for some people when they turn their feet straight, their femurs might also turn in. This is because everyone’s alignment is different and some people may have femoral ante-version (internally rotated femur relative to the femoral head) and the best way to manage this would be to turn the feet out. Just turning them in might cause excessive femoral internal rotation and cause hip impingement and groin issues. HOWEVER, the femoral anteverson might just be a result of an anteriorly tilted pelvis, which causes femoral internal rotation. So if we work on repositioning the pelvis, the feet might just find themselves turning in naturally (which I’ve seen happen in a couple of clients). So back to the original question – the answer is always IT DEPENDS! On the person and it takes a well trained professional to test and investigate the movement to work it out with you.