During respiration, part of the air that you breathe in, goes to your stomach. Athletes blow out air from the stomach while doing high-impact exercises like running to prevent side stitches. Some fitness trainers began advising clients to suck in their stomachs while doing exercises like Pilates on the floor or on stability balls. The thinking behind this is that sucking in the stomach targets the transverse abdominal muscle, which wraps around the torso from front to back and from the ribs to the pelvis, and is the deepest layer of abdominal muscle. This muscle stabilizes the spine, helps in breathing, and in squeezing the internal organs.
The idea came from Australian physiotherapists in 1996, who used this 'sucking in stomach' technique to treat patients with lower back pain. Carolyn Richardson, one of the original Australian researchers, said, "We only wrote the book about treating back pain. I've found that for the fitness industry, it's quite a poor instruction." For one, she said that exercisers mistakenly hold their breath while sucking in. And they sometimes do it while lifting weights or doing other intense exercises, which is wrong.
So it turned out to be a fitness fad. But sucking in the stomach as a separate exercise in itself, has been practiced for a long time in Yoga. It's called Bahya Pranayama or Uddiyana Bandha, and is done on an empty stomach, preferably early in the morning. You start by breathing in and then exhale completely from the mouth, bend forward slightly and pull the abdominal organs as far up as you can. Stay in this position for as many seconds as you can, keeping the hands on the waist or on the knees for leverage. Repeat no more than 3 times. This sucking in stomach exercise is said to be good for posture, stomach ailments, uterus prolapse, hernia, urinary and prostate problems, and it helps in keeping the stomach flat.
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