Stressed? So is your pelvic floor!
Relaxing and lengthening the pelvic floor is just as important as strengthening!
A lot of women feel their pelvic floor is weak and they need to strengthen it. However, I often find that they have tightness of the pelvic floor which doesn’t allow the muscles to fully contract, leading to weakness. If we only focus on strengthening, we’re not going to get the benefit we’re hoping for.
Symptoms of possible tightness of the pelvic floor:
- constipation
- difficulty emptying the bladder completely
- straining or pushing to empty the bladder
- having to urinate more than 8 times per day and/or waking at night to urinate
- sudden urinary urgency and having to rush to the toilet
- bladder leakage
- painful urination or UTI like symptoms
- frequent UTIs
- difficulty starting a stream of urine and/or slow flow
- pelvic pain
- pain with sex
- low back/coccyx/hip/abdominal pain
*And if you often feel stressed (like many moms I work with), you’re holding tension in your pelvic floor. When we work on reducing pelvic floor tension, we have to address the nervous system and help calm it.
