Can you cycle with a prolapse? Claire spent ten years assuming she could not. Nobody had ever told her that. Not a doctor, not a physiotherapist, not a health visitor. The assumption was entirely her own, and she had never once tested it.
Then her youngest son asked her a five word question in the far north of Scotland: do you have a bike? He wanted to show her the tracks and hills he had been exploring on his own all month. And she did not have one.
In this episode Claire tells you honestly what happened when she bought a second hand bike in Thurso and finally tested the thing she had been quietly avoiding. What she felt on the saddle during the first ride. What she was terrified would happen afterwards. And what actually did. This is one woman, one bike, one body, not a verdict on yours, but it is the honest account nobody seems to give.
Underneath it sits the harder realisation. Claire had become the woman she talks to on this podcast every week. She had drifted onto the sidelines without ever deciding to, and it took a month of complete stillness, no work and no diary, before a question that small could land at all.
If one month of stopping showed her something that big, what else is sitting there unseen? That question is why this is the last episode until January.
In this episode:
What actually happened when Claire cycled again after ten years, including the parts she was afraid of
The difference between feedback and damage, and why confusing them keeps women on the sidelines
How a ten year limit builds itself out of an assumption nobody ever gave you
Why an ordinary question from a child landed like a physical blow
Why stillness is what made any of it visible
What is changing about this podcast in January, and what Claire needs from you
Claire is off air for September and October, building something new in November and December, and back in January with a topic led format, deeper episodes, and her first ever guest, starting with habits that actually change things in your body.
Stay with Claire through the break:
Weekly newsletter, the one place Claire will still be every week and you can access a FREE Class
Whole Body Pelvic Health Cafe, live on Zoom, 7pm UK: Friday 18 September, Friday 20 November, Friday 11 December. Check your time zone, the UK clocks change in October.
Send your questions for the new format to claire@wholebodypelvichealth.co.uk. The January series has a whole episode built from real listener questions, and Claire wants yours, not her assumptions about yours.
Claire's book, Hope For Your Pelvic Floor: