{my journey back to me…. by our own tLm #boss, Kelly Wackerman!}
Living the last 10 years with Diastasis Recti & an umbilical hernia was just something that I had learned to live with. In 2009, I had an amazing stroke of luck and got pregnant with twins. One of my eggs split in two and today I have two amazing boys named Cash & Miles. At the time they were born I was a Pilates instructor and carrying the boys wasn’t actually that terrible for me (besides the fact that my stomach actually resembled the size of a small planet), my body felt great. When the boys were born via cesarean (I wanted to have them naturally, but that’s a whole another story) I knew the second they were out of my abdomen that something was wrong. As a certified BASI Pilates instructor I had actually randomly chosen to do my final paper on diastasis recti (way before I was pregnant). The condition fascinated me, as I had never heard of it at the time, so I felt it was the perfect topic to learn more about. Little did I know that I would become one of the many victims to it in my years to come.
Today, I want to explain what it is, how it affects the body, why I believe the ORIGINAL work is so effective in allowing the core muscles to gain superior strength even when you have the condition. Once I returned to Pilates, after having my boys I immediately became certified in Pre & Post Natal Pilates. I relearned about diastasis recti and right away confirmed that I most certainly was suffering from this severe separation of the abdominal muscles. It is defined by Wikipedia as being “a gap of about 2.7 centimeters of greater between the two side of the rectus abdominis”. There is a connective collagen sheath, called the linea alba, which is a connective sheath made of collagen that has basically stretched too far and now it sits there and is no longer able to do it’s job to hold the two sides of the rectus abdominis close together like it used to. For my, I also had a hole in this “sheath” which is called a hernia & it was right to the side of my belly buttom actually pushing it outward.
Basically, if you got all that. My little situation was a mess! Now, this is actually very common among women who have multiply pregnancies or multiply births at once like myself so if you are reading this and thinking, “Hey, that sounds like my situation” I am not surprised. What I am surprised about was how much abdominal work I was able to do even with my condition once I learned the ORGINAL technique. It was taught to me by Esther Fairfax, Lotte’s daughter and what made it so different than any other technique I had done before was the support that my body was given while doing the abdominal exercises that had become nearly impossible for me after my twins. If you can imagine when you have an internal situation going on like the one described above many abdominal exercises could be quite dangerous & actually make the situation worse.
I began to gain strength with my Pilates & my Pre & Postnatal work, so when I came to train with Esther in England I was not “weak” by any means, but I definitely had my limitations. In the Original work, the abdominal work specifically you are always supported behind your back or able to use the barre as leverage to support you while you deeply engage your core. I found that these elements together helped me rebuild by core muscles in a way I was never able to do before. My belly pooch, that is so common with diastasis recti pulled flat, all though I still had the separation between abdominals I was able to strengthen them where they were sitting, enabling me to do all the ORIGINAL exercises and I kept getting stronger and stronger every year I did it. Due to my hernia, I did have to have surgery and it was recommended to me by several doctors that I close the gap in my abdominals even though they were very strong, the space would never go back to where it was designed to be without it. I am 2.5 weeks out from my surgery & I can’t tell you how easy it was for me to begin to recover from. I was terrified due to the fact that it took me a full year to be able to even start doing my abdominal work after I had my twins. I worked with what I had and thank goodness I found the Original work because it enabled me to build strength and prepare me for my journey today.
I wanted to share this story because I know there are probably other women out there who are suffering from the same condition and I want to be able to help them find their way through it with the team we have now built at theLONDONmethod teaching the ORIGINAL method for the last five years.
More to come on all this, but please let us know if this is something that has affected you as we would love to help you on your journey back to YOU! Join us for a LIVE class or try our fully on demand TLM TV anytime, from anywhere!