Surprising Truths about Pelvic Floor Disorders - And How Yoga Can Help

Everyone loses muscle strength as they get older, and because our daily activities (and fitness programs) don’t usually strengthen the pelvic floor, this part of the body is particularly vulnerable to problems. As a result, many women develop pelvic issues as they get older, including incontinence, prolapse, sexual dysfunction, and other issues rooted in the musculature of the pelvis.

Prolapsed organs, incontinence and pelvic pain affect over fifty percent of women as they get older. Other problems that may be related to the health of the pelvic floor include lumbar spinal problems, sacroiliac, hip or sciatic pain, bladder weakness, and digestive, menstrual and sexual difficulties.

The common solution to pelvic floor issues, i.e. to keep the pelvic floor taut, rarely has the desired effect. Indeed, it may even result in a hypertonic (too tense) pelvic floor, which causes a host of issues in and of itself.

Learning how to both strengthen, stabilize and stretch and soften the pelvic floor is essential to create the correct foundation for each movement in the body. It is also a basic tool to avoid loss of energy from this important area.

Pelvic floor issues often stem from poor alignment and poor movement habits that we maintain unconsciously year after year. Strengthening and stabilizing the pelvic floor can help create the correct foundation of each movement in the body. We are all familiar with the importance of "working from our core,” however, this is only really valuable if we know what the "core" is. The pelvic floor muscles are an essential part of our foundational core, and true core work must involve learning to both tone and balance the pelvic floor.

In this 5 hour online course, yoga therapist Leslie Howard guides us in an exploration of the female pelvic floor and shows how to access and engage the pelvic floor muscles in our own body to create a holistic, balancing effect. Leslie shows specific asanas that are important for maintaining the health of the pelvic floor  and how to get to the root cause of pelvic floor issues by correcting the movement and alignment issues commonly involved in pelvic floor issues.

What You Will Learn

• Why it is so important to keep the pelvic and abdominal organs healthy as we age

• How to locate and distinguish the three layers of the pelvic floor 

• Key ways to develop a strong and balanced pelvic floor 

• Why Kegel exercises often don’t work as intended and why they may even lead to more problems

• Why loss of pelvic floor strength isn’t the whole problem, and why chronic holding and tightening of the muscles of the pelvic floor is counterproductive as well 

• How to distinguish whether you are lacking tone or have too much tone in the pelvic muscles and what to do to start the road to recovery.