Why Yoga for Pelvic Health, and Who Do I Help?
Therapeutic yoga meets you right where you are, tailoring private (or small group) sessions to your specific needs and conditions. After a thorough intake, together we set personal goals and measurable outcomes. We plan our time together. This kind of yoga practice offers the client a pathway of care that often includes other practitioners and/or modalities of care, and I work with your providers to align goals, physical practices, and outcomes.
We find ease in the body, and we go from there.
What is the Pelvic Floor?
The pelvic floor is a web of muscles and connective tissue that sits at the base of and in the bony pelvis. Despite the centrality of the pelvic floor to the correct functioning of sex organs, for bodily waste disposal, digestion, our posture and skeletal alignment, not to mention our happiness and wellbeing, PELVIC FLOOR HEALTH is something we take for granted. Most people, men and women, begin to notice it only as an absence of what once was, as something we have lost, once it manifests signs of malfunction, weakness, or stress.
How Can Yoga Help?
Yoga can help MAINTAIN AND SUPPORT A HEALTHY PELVIC FLOOR.
Directed yoga asana, embodiment experiences, fascial release, breathing practice, and meditation all increase the flexibility, strength, and awareness in the pelvic floor. It’s never too early: we think nothing of taking steps to increase the longevity of our knee, hip, and shoulder joints. We do so because we want to continue using them! So, too, can we begin to consider both the immediate and also life-long benefits that a flexible, responsive pelvic floor provides: lifelong continence (we don’t have to leak); preparation for and recovery from pregnancy and childbirth; a defense against prolapse of pelvic or abdominal organs, and a barrier to common conditions of the pelvic floor associated with ageing, stress, and disuse (including pelvic pain conditions).
Yoga can IMPROVE AND RESTORE PELVIC FLOOR HEALTH.
Once pelvic floor health has been compromised, whether through childbirth, disease, age, or other medical conditions, it can be difficult to see and feel a way back to health. Yoga’s many practices, including our work with the breath and somatic experience, offer an excellent pathway to healing. When practiced with awareness, yoga restores health to the muscles, connective tissue, organs and circulation systems of the pelvis. It can bring us out of pain, un-ease, and disease, and helps us to mindfully and compassionately foster a pelvis we can live in.
Yoga can help PREVENT AND HEAL THE ENERGETIC LOSS that occurs with pelvic floor dysfunction.
For so many reasons, many of us carry shame and guilt around pelvic floor conditions. Clients also experience feelings of failure, a diminished sense of self, and a sense of resignation about their current condition. Many of us live with trauma, which likes to reside in the pelvis. Yogic philosophy assigns great importance to our pelvic floor as an energetic source, and when we strengthen our connection to the pelvic floor as the root of our wellbeing, we can divest ourselves of the complex feelings of fear, anger and loss that are associated with pelvic floor problems. We can come home to ourselves, our true nature, and relieve experiences of trauma and grief.
A note about trauma-sensitive instruction:
For many of us, any work we have to do in our pelvis is accompanied by trauma. Trauma can be of a sexual or violent nature; it can also be related to our jobs, our family of origin….Trauma is something we experience. PLS Yoga offers trauma-sensitive yoga, and in particular with regard to pelvic health. It is, in fact, common to hold any trauma we experience in the pelvic floor, in particular; we actually know this from research studies.
At PLS Yoga, we offer language, movement, and mindfulness practices to support trauma-recovery. We work with mental health provisions, other movement practices, and medical care to support you. Agency, empowerment, gentleness: these are all at the forefront of our care provision. Please get in touch if you’d like to have a conversation about how we serve people living with trauma.
Who Does Yoga for Pelvic Health Help?
Women living with Pelvic Dysfunction, including Incontinence and POP
Too many women live with pelvic dysfunction (including incontinence, pelvic pain conditions, and pelvic organ prolapse). We are taught to accept urine leakage and pelvic discomfort as a normal part of aging, of childbirth, of just being a woman. I help women refuse this narrative, regain healthy pelvic floor tone and recruitment, and return to their lives.
Pregnant Women and Postpartum Moms
I regularly see pregnant women who seek increased knowledge and awareness of all things pelvic as they prepare for labour and delivery. I also help women who need help to sustain movement during their pregnancy.
For postpartum moms (at any stage postpartum), I help them re-connect with themselves. We work carefully and thoroughly to focus awareness, regain energy, and build strength in a true core fired by a healthy pelvic floor.
Men (You Have Pelvic Floors Too!)
It's brave for men to come forward with pelvic dysfunction. For younger men, pelvic pain or other pelvic conditions can result from over-exertion or misalignment, and their discomfort can take them on a tiring journey of repeated tests, treatments, and multiple diagnoses. For older men, aging produces its own challenges with regard to the pelvic floor, to prostate health and for the body's systems that live in and travel through our pelvis. Dedicated yoga can help correct and alleviate symptoms of disease and dysfunction.