Diastasis Recti Evaluation

So now I'm going to show you a quick diastasis evaluation. Any diastasis testing should be done by a pelvic physio and is really a complicated procedure. This is just going to give you a benchmark for where you are and things that you need to avoid. All right. Here's the simplified diastasis evaluation. I'm going to start lying down with my one hand behind my head and then with my two fingers I'm going to feel for the space right in between my abdominals. So what I'm really looking for is two things.

I want to feel that there's tone through the center line here, and I also want to feel for the distance apart between these two sheets of muscle. So we're going to start placing our two fingers just below the rib cage, right in the very center of the abdominals. We'll take a nice long full breath into expand. As we exhale, we'll tighten the abdominals, tighten the pelvic floor, and then gently lift the head. In this position, you'll use your fingers to determine the distance apart. The two sheets of muscle are.

So mine up here are about two fingers apart, but what I'm really concerned with is the tone. So from here I'm about one knuckle d for tone, I'm gonna release. Take a moment, relax, move my fingers down just above my belly button. Try again. Take a breath, expand three dimensionally. And as I exhale, I tighten my abdominals and my pelvic floor gently lift my head. Finding that good coordinated connection between transverse and pelvic floor. I feel for the distance between the sheets and here I'm about one finger apart and have still about one knuckle depth and then release.

All right, from here, move your hands down, your two fingers down just below the belly button and feel for that space. Take a three dimensional breath and expand. Exhale to coordinate the transverse abdominous in the pelvic floor. Lift the head to curl forward and feel like, yeah, and for the distance apart and the tone. So below the belly button, I have no gap and good tones. I mean knuckles do not sync.

That means that my diastasis lives above my belly button or right up to my rib cage is about one finger wide and one knuckle deep. So that's my benchmark. I started at four fingers wide and three knuckles deep. Now we can use this cause when you're doing exercise and you curl forward and you see a bald patch or doming through your middle, you know that you've put too much pressure into this inter abdominal space and you need to go back and better coordinate the transverse and the pelvic floor. Any doming causes pressure and can damage the abdominal space.

We really want to avoid any domain. Okay. So there's a good benchmark to know how aggressively to be working out and how, um, healthy your core is after birth. Okay.