Episode 005 – Pelvic Floor Exercises

Episode 005More on this is future podcast episodes, but for now, here is an introduction to your pelvic floor! We talk about how intra-abdominal pressure affects pelvic floor recruitment, what the best position to practice your pelvic floor lift is, what can be do about ‘LBL’ (Light Bladder Leakage) and of course we wrap things up with some home play.

In This Episode You Will Learn

As promised here is a better visual or your pelvic floor muscles,

pelvic floor musclesIf you haven’t already read our article on ‘how the pelvic floor and lower tummy are connected‘ that is a great place to start! Nevertheless a quick recap is always good. The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that act like a sling at the base of the pelvis to support the bladder, bowel and pelvis structure as a whole. I think it’s helpful to have this image in your mind as you begin to start your practice, as a lot of what you are doing when you recruit you practice pelvic floor exercises is internal and you need to have a good mental picture of what is going on down there. I like to think of them like a sling or a draw string bag that can gently tighten as you close the draw string around the neck of the bladder and bowel.

Alright now for the good stuff, I will break these exercises down into male and female as the cuing and explanations change slightly for each. Sometimes what works for men doesn’t work for women and vice versa, it takes sense our anatomy down there is fairly different!

  1. Pelvic Floor Exercises – Visualisation for Women

When attempting to recruit your pelvic floor the following mental pictures may work for you. When practising visualisation and internal recruitment it best to be in a quiet calm place away from any interruptions. It is also helpful to make sure you are sitting or lying in a comfortable position so you won’t be distracted by any other feelings of discomfort or pain in your body.

– Imagine you are sitting on the toilet urinating and all of a sudden you need to stop the flow, what muscles would you need to use to achieve this?

– Image a rock being thrown into a pond, and the ripples that spread out after it hits the water. Now imagine what that scene looks like in reverse a the ripples draw together and the rock is pulled back up out of the water. How could you make your pelvic floor muscles feel as though they are lifting as gently, controlled and equal as that rock?

– Imagine you have a straw inserted into your vagina canal, and what it would feel like to try and suck water up through the straw, what muscles would you need to use this?

– Imagine you are (or actually do it) sitting on the floor crossed legged. On the floor is a small velvet handkerchief, what would the handkerchief look like if you used a pincer grip and gently picked it up from the centre, allowing the rest of the fabric to fall away from the middle. How would you need to use your pelvic floor muscles to mimic this gentle movement of the fabric with your pelvic floor?

  1. Pelvic Floor Exercises – Visualisation for Men

When attempting to recruit your pelvic floor the following mental pictures may work for you. When practising visualisation and internal recruitment it best to be in a quiet calm place away from any interruptions. It is also helpful to make sure you are sitting or lying in a comfortable position so you won’t be distracted by any other feelings of discomfort or pain in your body.

– Imagine you are standing at the toilet bowel urinating and all of a sudden you need to stop the flow, what muscles would you need to use to achieve this?

– Imagine you were wading out into freezing water, what would it feel like as your testes started to lift, what muscles would be doing this movement?

– Imagine you were retracting your penis, what muscles would make this movement? 

You might have found that one or two of those imagery cues made sense or worked well for you. Use your favorite cue, or try them all and see which one your prefer for the next stage of pelvic floor recruitment,which is … actually practicing it in your own body!

Thank you for listening to episode 005 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

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