Your Pelvic Floor plays a vital role in your well-being. It’s often something that isn’t thought about until it’s not working as well as it should. Because of the sensitive nature of the issues it causes - with bottoms and what they do in general being quite taboo, I have found many of my clients have put up with Pelvic Floor issues for years before doing anything about them.

What’s the function of the Pelvic Floor?

Your Pelvic floor supports your internal organs - the Bladder, Uterus and Intestines.
It also creates resistance through intra-abdominal pressure when you cough, sneeze, lift heavy objects so you don’t pee or poo yourself, when it’s functioning correctly. It’s responsible for Urinary and Fecal continence – to stop bladder and bowel leakage. Plus facilitate bowel and bladder evacuation when you want it to. It also has the miraculous job of being able to expand to allow for child birth.

Your breath and the Pelvic Floor

The Pelvic Floor is on the same neurological loop as the Diaphragm, the Abdominals and the Multifidus. A muscle that runs in triangular bundles the length of the spinal column.

When you breath in and out the Pelvic Floor moves with the Diaphragm. People that cough a lot may find the suffer with Pelvic Floor issues due to the pressure it’t put under.

Other important muscles in Pelvic Floor function

Another very important muscle in the function of your Pelvic Floor is the Psoas. It runs from the lower part of the Lumbar spine through the Pelvis and joins to the femur. It’s the muscle that draws your legs up towards the abdominals or contracts as you do a sit up for example. For many people that sit a lot for work this muscle can become tight and impair Pelvic Floor function.

The Psoas also plays a big role in your posture alongside your Glutes, and Piriformis in a balancing act with keeping the Spine on top of the Pelvis. This alignment is important because areas of tightness are as problematic as areas of weakness.

Do you slouch?

As I mentioned above your Diaphragm works with your Pelvic Floor. What this means is that the Pelvic Floor function is directly related to your breath and your posture.

If you slouch over when on the computer, driving, feeding a baby, on your phone etc you aren’t in an optimal position but importantly over time you’ll create imbalances in the body.

Connective tissues

There’s a group of tissues in the body called Fascia. All your bones organs, muscles tendons and ligaments are suspended within the Fascia like a connective web. This allows your body to move in all different ways.

Your whole body is connected this. In terms of what that means for your Pelvic Floor is that everything needs to be aligned and balanced. If you have any surgery or injures to anywhere from the chest down or the feet up it will likely impact the function of your Pelvic Floor.

Sounds like a pretty big deal hey!

Thankfully with the right exercises and guidance if you are struggling with Stress Incontinence, Urge, Prolapse or Overflow, you can get the Pelvic Floor functioning optimally again in many cases without surgery.

I also highly recommend everyone to learn how to look after the Pelvic Floor correctly before problems arise.

My next Pelvic Enlightenment course starts November 2nd 2020 at 7pm. Its 7 sessions over 6 weeks and will teach you everything you need to know. You can book the course here.

Big Love
Nikki xx