In the blog series so far, I have explained the vital role of breath and how the movement of breath can be used to stimulate better responsiveness of your pelvic floor. You won’t be surprised to know there are other ways. It goes back to my favourite quote, “Motion is lotion,” because you can move in different ways using tempo, gravity, and alignment to facilitate exactly what you want from your pelvic floor.
Following on from training your pelvic floor for the activity you want it to perform in everyday life. In everyday life, ideally, your pelvic floor is automatic and reliable, and you don’t need to tell it what to do; it just shows up and does it in the background.
However, when there is any presence of dysfunction, it may not be as spontaneous, and there can be a delay or partial function. For example, when you go for a run, you may not lose bowel continence, and you do lose urinary continence. This suggests that the posterior pelvic floor is more dominant and the anterior pelvic floor is under strain, lacks coordination, or is delayed. Either way, the pelvic floor is not balanced.
What is an unbalanced pelvic floor?
What I mean by balanced is when there is give and take throughout the pelvis and no one area is dominating another. The exercises I suggested in my first blog in this series will help release and restore balance; you can find that here.
Once you have released tension and restored balance, you can then explore movement for pelvic floor health in a controlled environment, i.e., not when you are running or taken by surprise by a sneeze. Think of it like a rehearsal for them to perform fluently on the day of the big show. The rehearsals start with the basics of reading the script, introducing stage direction before props, costumes, and the full stage production with the audience. Don’t worry; your pelvic floor doesn’t have to perform for an audience, only for you.
Movement and the Whole Body Pelvic Health Method
This is exactly how you evolve through the Whole Body Pelvic Health Method. Start with a small introduction to the sort of movements for pelvic floor health, all very low stress, where gravity, your alignment, and props assist your pelvic floor in finding itself before building up to more challenging orientations to gravity, alignment, and increased coordination. These movements become more similar and more directly relatable to your everyday life activities, or the action of the movement stimulates your pelvic floor in the way it’s needed for your everyday activities.
Movement exercises to stimulate your pelvic floor
For a cough or sneeze, your pelvic floor, in particular around your sphincters, needs to contract very quickly, and as we learned in the last blog, that is on an exhale. This means the exercises we do need to be quick.
Using the analogy of a theatre performance, here are some examples of where you can start with movement for pelvic floor health exercises to stimulate your pelvic floor for coughs and sneezes. The equivalent of reading the script would be slow movement to wake up the pelvic floor by standing feet together, and swaying your body weight forward and back.
To add stage direction, you would sway forward, stay there, and gently bounce your knees rapidly. A dress rehearsal might involve adding some arm movements, like the Pilates One Hundred pumping straight arms by your side. The final performance would incorporate the HA HA HA breath from my previous blog. You might find you can do this entire sequence in one go, or you might build up each element over a number of weeks.
Stamina and Sustained Pelvic Floor Engagement
What about the stamina of your pelvic floor? What movement exercises can you do to stimulate your pelvic floor for a long, strenuous walk or a fulfilling sex life? A favorite exercise in any Pilates class is Bridging. There are many ways you can approach this, and it is not a glute bridge.
Sorry, just had to say it because you may have done glute bridges before, or you may be a glute clencher like many of the women I work with. We need to tame those glutes for bridging and focus on the very bottom of your spine and your pubic bone lifting up and down. You can even hold it up in the bridge to build more stamina.
Another favourite of mine is mini cat stretches, focusing on that very lower part of your spine and your pubic bone curling towards each other. This would be your script; to add stage direction, hold the mini cat, then for the dress rehearsal, start to rock forwards and backwards and then finally lift your knees just off the floor and hold or rock.
Conclusion
Whatever you do, think about what your goal is for your pelvic floor. E.g., what does it need, and when you do the exercise, are you feeling a sense of that happening?
This month’s pre-recorded class in my membership is all about finding your pelvic curl! Join us today and TRANSFORM your life with movement for pelvic floor health!
I hope you are having a wonderful day!