Myth Busting Hypopressives

Let’s bust 3 common myths that often come up with hypopressives.

“It will confuse your breathing”

I’ve come across this a couple of times, when it’s assumed we’re trying to totally change the way you’re breathing in every-day life. But it’s not what hypopressives is about!

Yes, a very different breathing technique is used in practice, but we’re not trying to get you to breathe in this way all the time.

The breathing technique is a combination of a few different strategies. First we practice 360-breathing where the inhale is directed into your sides and back around the bra line - evenly to all directions. This on its own can already be really helpful and ease pelvic floor symptoms.

But what hypopressives are famous for is the apnea breath, the vacuum breath. (Have a look at my stories and highlights to see what it looks like!)

This breathing technique works with the whole deep core system and the pelvic floor is one part of it too, the so called floor. The ceiling is the diaphragm and the walls are your deep tummy and back muscles. Whilst we’re working with the breath during the practice, the goal isn’t to get you to use this way of breathing all the time. You need much more variation than that to get through your life.

So think of the technique as what it is, an exercise that practices the way the whole system functions, and is able to work more efficiently when you’re not thinking about it.

We’re not claiming to be offering a whole new groundbreaking way to breathe, we’re just training the system, so that it has its full capacity at hand outside of the practice.

“It’s not functional“

This is an interesting one, and also my favourite myth to bust. In a way I do understand where it’s coming from, but I think it’s also said with a lot of misunderstanding about what hypopressives are all about.

Firstly, I think we need to define what functional training is, and then agree on when it’s the correct time for functional training. 

The way I define functional training is when the practicing looks as much as possible like the task you’re practicing for. I also see it as a continuum starting from simpler exercises and moving step by step towards the goal task. 

I do believe it’s important to progress to functional training as soon as possible. However, we need to be mindful that we don’t try to progress too much too soon, because that’s only going to aggravate symptoms and hinder improvement. 

So what if we found ways to start from basic breathing strategies, letting go of tummy gripping and reducing symptoms with the apnea breath and creating that lovely lift of the pelvic floor? Add the gentle whole body strengthening effects of hypopressives which also aim to improve posture and how pelvis and ribcage sit on top of each other whilst maintaining an optimal level of pelvic floor activity.

Once you’ve got all of these things in lying down we start to move to more challenging poses, standing, on all fours, sitting, lunges and kneeling. Then we add movement whilst you’re still practicing posture, breathing, relaxation, strengthening and re-positioning the pelvic organs. To begin with it’s a momentary re-positioning, but all the effects of the technique put together and the symptom-relief becomes more permanent! And sometimes even the pelvic organ re-positioning becomes permanent and many women report their prolapses lifting all together.

So could we be thinking of hypopressives as that stepping stone towards the functional training, that allows for symptom reduction, builds in the needed strategies and then enables the woman to move on to more challenging training without aggravating symptoms? 

I think yes. Hypopressives is that missing link between “just breathing” exercises and the heavier full-body functional training. But being this stepping stone between the extremities doesn’t, in my opinion, make it a non-functional type of exercise at all.

“It’s only helpful for prolapse“

You’ll be relieved to know this isn’t true!

Yes, it’s very effective in reducing symptoms of pelvic organ prolapse, but it can have a big impact on other challenges and symptoms of pelvic floor or abdominal issues, even on pelvic pain.

You will probably already have an idea about what I’m about to say: that as we aren’t only and simply working with the pelvic floor, but the whole deep core system and other factors around and affecting them, we can and will make a difference elsewhere too and not just to the pelvic floor!

Incontinence, urinary frequency and urgency, even diastasis recti, are symptoms within the same complex and so can be positively affected by this technique if practiced correctly. They are part of the same complex but symptoms of a “dysfunction” in different part of that same complex.

So working with these consists of looking at the same factors, same and similar work and you’ll notice improvements in your core and abdominal function over all!