I’ve recently been thinking about what having confidence in your pelvic floor means. It’s something you might not have ever thought of and in my opinion, that is exactly what confidence in the pelvic floor is about.
Having confidence in your pelvic floor allows you to go out and enjoy your life, without being held back or your mind being elsewhere. You can work, exercises and socialise if you are confident in your pelvic floors function.
I’ll explain this a little more – If you are experiencing no pelvic floor dysfunction and your pelvic floor is working as it should, then you should only ever think of your pelvic area when you need a wee, need a poo, are menstruating or are having sex. If it’s not working very well then, this area might be on your mind more frequently, due to the symptoms you are experiencing. This is not only time consuming and exhausting but also reduces our confidence in our pelvic floor and pelvic area.
So how can we increase our confidence in your pelvic floor? I have a few hints and tips for you in how you might do this:
Learn
Learning how to do your pelvic floor exercises correctly and addressing this before you develop symptoms is a great way for you to understand where this muscle is, how it works and how to strengthen it, before you lose confidence in the muscle. The ‘Pelvic Floor 101’ course has been designed and developed exactly for this. It is a comprehensive 5 part video course that takes you through the pelvic floor, how it works, why its important and gives you the confidence and time to work out exactly how to do yours in all the postures and positions you need to work it in.
It has gained some great reviews already from women of all ages. It has helped to improve their confidence in what they are doing and give them an understanding of how to move forward with their pelvic floor exercises.
Click on the link here if you want to increase your confidence with your pelvic floor with the use of this course.
Practice
Practicing your pelvic floor exercises helps to create a habit, the more you practice something, often the more confident you become with something. In my clinical practice, I often see women who are ‘over working’ or over recruiting their pelvic floor. It’s such a small, subtle movement but if we are used to physical activity or exercise we often thrive off big movements or contractions. The pelvic floor is a very small movement and therefore becoming confident with your doing the right movement will really help with your ability to stick with your habit.
Understand what your symptoms are telling you
If you are suffering with pelvic floor dysfunction, it can feel like quite a strange feeling. It’s hard to know what your body is telling you and what is wrong or right to do for your body. The pelvic floor is a group of muscles, and we know that with other muscles if you want them to get better or stronger, we often need to strengthen or rehabilitate them. So, stopping or reducing exercise completely isn’t always the right thing. This is different person to person and it’s always best to seek the help of a pelvic health physiotherapist to know what’s right for you. Sometimes symptoms might be telling you that you need to do a bit more to get the benefits of strength, sometimes it’s a sign that you’re doing too much and sometimes you need to relax and release. It’s so dependent on what’s going on with you and your body.
Seek help if you need
This leads nicely onto the advice that help is there and it’s so worth getting pelvic floor symptoms checked out and addressed if you are suffering with them. It’s nothing to worry about and a pelvic health physiotherapist can often give you the confidence to know what your road to improvement will look like and all the tools you need to make this happen. The Squeezy App has a great directory of physiotherapists if you want to find someone in your area.