Am I doing it right?

If someone asked me to work on my pelvic floor 2 months ago, I'd have no idea of what to do or if I was even doing anything! And having spoken to a few people (including my physio) everyone seems to feel the same! For starters, its not really widely understood what it is, and I include myself in that. It turns out its a expanse of muscle around your pelvis that has direct contact with your bowels and urinary systems, as well as our reproductive systems, its also involved in good breathing technique.

So why touch on the pelvic floor this week? Well as I mentioned in previous posts, part of my issue is that my pelvic hasn't been working properly for many years, a fact I've only learned through being unwell this past year or so. This, as with all my issues it seems, is a result of stored trauma. I've now learned that our pelvic floors seem to be like a trauma sponge that soaks up all the tension we're holding in the body. Now this has the knock on effect, in my case, of making my pelvic floor too strong, which infact makes it weak and stops it from operating as it should. 

Now how do they know this you may ask... Well to spare too much detail, it could be seen on unrelated scans that I had back in 2020 that my bowels weren't operating properly, which was a key sign of a compromised pelvic floor, though it was not picked up on at the time. So to bring back to now, I've started pelvic floor physio to rectify this. It essentially involves me doing belly breathing and yoga exercises to try and relax my pelvic floor back to where it should be. The resting tension has actually been measured (I won't go into the gory details!) and where it should normally be around a 2-3, mine was at 20+! So that gives you an idea of what we're working with... 

So why do all this? Well the pelvic floor as I mentioned has a knock on effect on the bowels, it also impacts any sort of incontenance, which is probably what most people are familiar with as a result of what we hear of the after effects or child birth. The pelvic floor is also involved in breathing, hence my breathing homework from the physio. I'm sure there's lots of other things it's involved in too but unfortunately I'm no expert! 

Long story short, the pelvic floor is more important than we realise and far more involved in every day things than we know, so try and look after your pelvic floors! 

Ta ta for now!

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