Pelvic Floor 101

KNOW YOUR ANATOMY in order to create BALANCE in your pelvic floor!

Here's how:
☝️Feel your glutes. Do you notice the boney points in the middle of each glute? Yay! You've found your "sits bones!"
✌️ Start to massage and palpate around those boney points. Between the sits bones is your pelvic floor!

Now reflect!
🤔 What's going on down there? What sensations do you feel? Is it tender? Soft? Tense? Tight?
🤔 Can you consciously relax those muscles now that you know where the pelvic floor is?
🤔 Can you engage and gather those muscles? Does it feel difficult to engage? Does one side feel different than the other?

Be patient and compassionate with yourself as your pelvis and pelvic floor can hold a lot of emotions, memories, and experiences. ♥️

Consider this 🪼visualization🪼 to aid pelvic floor work: The pelvic floor naturally stretches on the inhalation and draws back up on the exhalation. Imagine the movements of a jellyfish; the fluid motions of dropping and spreading and then gathering and doming as they float through the ocean can help you connect to the synchronicity between breath and your pelvic floor.

🪼 Learn to ENGAGE & RELEASE:

🫁 INHALE - relax and spread the sits bones to release the pelvic floor

🫁 EXHALE - engage the pelvic floor muscles, anal sphincter, and draw the sits bones closer together to engage the pelvic floor

Now, what can you do with this information? 😳
Build body literacy to invite balance!
📚 Are you overly TENSE, or hypertonic, in your pelvic floor?
📚 Or are you LACKING TONE or WEAK (hypotonic) in your pelvic floor?

Practice deep breathing into your pelvis to invite balance! Spend five minutes belly breathing to relax and then gather the pelvic floor - in the car, on the toilet, at your computer - and build that muscle memory!

Curious to learn more about your pelvic floor? Join us for ANY of our series for evidence-based education and practices to support your pelvic floor health, or visit your pelvic floor therapist for direct support!