I’ll often ask a class to “engage the core” before lifting into Navasana (Boat pose) or settling into Utkatasana (Chair pose) and I can see, in the slight pause that follows, that for most people the core is a somewhat vague region – somewhere around the belly, engaged by tightening something, though nobody’s entirely sure what. It’s worth actually knowing. Not for the sake of anatomy as an end in itself, but because understanding what you’re working with tends to make the engagement genuinely effective rather than a vague clench and hope.
Why This Matters Beyond the Mat
The core isn’t really about appearance and it was never primarily about the “six pack” most people associate with the word. It’s the part of you that steps in, almost without thought, whenever your spine needs protecting. Lift something heavier than expected and your core engages to keep the strain out of your lower back. Hit a pothole faster than you meant to and it absorbs the jolt before it reaches anywhere more vulnerable. Jump, dance, twist suddenly to catch something falling – your core is quietly doing the work of keeping your spine and the organs around it safe through all of it.
What’s Actually in There
It’s a more layered structure than most people expect. The diaphragm, your main breathing muscle, forms the top of the core. The pelvic floor forms the base. Between them sits a genuinely intricate group of muscles working together rather than alone.
The rectus abdominis is the most familiar – the long vertical muscle running from ribcage to pelvis, the one usually pictured when people think “abs.” The internal and external obliques run diagonally along either side of the torso, supporting rotation and side-bending. Beneath all of these sits the transverse abdominis, the deepest layer, running horizontally – when properly engaged, it works rather like the gentle cinching of a corset, drawing everything inward and stable. And running along the spine itself, the multifidus muscles act as small, steady struts, offering support at each individual vertebra.
These muscles are where movement genuinely should begin. Learning to recruit them properly – rather than simply gripping the surface abdominals – tends to improve posture, stabilise the pelvis and lower back and take a good deal of unnecessary pressure off the joints.
A cue I come back to often in class: imagine drawing a girdle from each side of the spine around to the front of the body, holding everything gently in place. It’s a small image, but it tends to find the right muscles far more reliably than simply being told to “engage.”
Another Way of Seeing It
Classical yoga offers a different lens on the core, one worth holding alongside the anatomical picture rather than instead of it. In this tradition, the core is closely linked to agni – often translated as digestive fire, though it points to something broader than digestion alone: our general capacity to process and assimilate, whether that’s food, experience, or emotion. Some teachers describe a core that’s weak or under-engaged as one way agni might struggle to do its work, with low energy or a general lack of vitality as the felt result. It’s a way of seeing, not a diagnosis – and I’d hold it loosely, as an interesting thread to notice in your own practice rather than a claim to take as settled fact.
At a more symbolic level still, the core is sometimes connected to manipura, the solar plexus chakra, traditionally associated with personal power and our sense of place in the world. Some students find that as their physical core strengthens, something in their confidence shifts alongside it – harder to pin down, but worth noticing if it arises for you. I offer this as an invitation to explore, not a rule about how it must work.
What I find genuinely true, anatomically and otherwise, is this: wherever you direct your attention in a pose, the muscles there tend to respond. Bring your attention to the core early in your practice and you’ll likely find it easier to find and engage, every time you return to it.
If you’re curious how posture, alignment and the way you carry your core shape your everyday wellbeing, my course Coming Home to the Body: Alignment, Awareness and Ease in Everyday Life goes deeper into exactly this, on the mat and well beyond it.
If you’re working with something specific – stress, sleep, back pain – Yoga for Wellbeing is worth a look.
If you’d like to explore your practice further and with a teacher, I have classes in Bebington and Hooton – you’d be very welcome to join us.