If you're looking to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles to combat incontinence, or prolapse,
premature ejaculation, or simply to improve your posture, this video is for you. Hey, my name is
Lucas. I'm a yoga teacher and a teacher trainer. This is part two of a series about the pelvic
floor. In part number one we took a very, very nuanced view of all of the different muscles down
here at the base of your spine and we worked on engaging and isolating each of them individually.
That's a really great practice. In this video we'll zoom out, take a more global view,
we'll understand and learn how to incorporate pelvic floor engagement in common exercises and
throughout your day. If you're new here you'll find a PDF to all the exercises that we'll cover
down below. A quick disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor, so if you have a pelvic floor dysfunction,
please go get checked out, err on the side of caution. This is for educational purposes. Let's
do a quick review of the anatomy. Secondly, I would like to show you why in yoga we often
breathe backwards compared to traditional forms of exercise. And then lastly we'll look at two
poses that will very quickly translate into other movements in your daily life. Let's do a quick
anatomy review. At the base of your pelvis, as you can see, there is well, a big hole, there's
nothing. We have our ischial tuberosity, our sits bones here, and our coccyx, our tailbone, then we
have a big hole in order to hold everything in, quite literally, your organs, and your colon.
Prolapse, for example, is the other way. We need that pelvic floor to be strong. A simple analogy
that I like to think about with your pelvis is to think about a flower pot and if you think about
your pelvic floor, the soft tissue floor of your pelvis, like the soil of a flower pot. Your spine
comes out like a flower and the stronger the soil, the stronger those soft tissues. The more
coordinated and activated they are, the better your posture, the less you suffer from these
conditions of pelvic floor dysfunction. A quick anatomy review. We have a group of muscles called
your levator ani. There are three muscles, they will control things like urination, defecation,
to a lesser extent ejaculation, and then on the posterior side you have your coccygeous muscle.
There are other muscles we could talk about, but we're really talking about four muscles that can
work independently, but that often work in tandem. So, the entire basket or floor works together. In
fact, sometimes it's helpful to use an analogy of an upside down dome, or in this case a colander,
and think about that group of four muscles, when they engage, as lifting in and up. So, in and up,
creating a strong base for your posture, for your pelvis, and holding everything in. OK, so why is
pelvic floor dysfunction so common? The number one reason for sure is our sedentary lives. When you
spend most of your day sitting, you don't get up and down from the ground, you don't lift things
like we would in a natural setting. Like all muscles, they will atrophy. Your pelvic floor is
no different. The second common reason, very, very common, is postpartum damage to the pelvic floor.
When women give birth, very often these muscles, this pelvic floor diaphragm, can get damaged,
these muscles can be strained, they can become lax and lose innervation. This can absolutely be
recovered from, but some training, some practice is often needed and a period of rehab is pretty
normal. The third reason that's very common and perhaps the most common, is simply age.
As you know, when we get older our skin, our muscles, they lose strength and elasticity.
In the case of our muscles, our muscles sarcopenia, the progressive loss of muscle,
this of course affects our pelvic floor diaphragm as well. All of that sounds very doom and gloom,
the good news is muscles respond very well and very quickly to training. But training this area
feels a little bit challenging, that's what we'll get into today. Before we look at some exercises,
I'd like to talk about yoga breathing and why we often breathe in reverse. At least once a week
someone either emails me or comes up to me after class and says: "Lucas, that class was great,
but I think you got the breathing thing all wrong. When we go down on a squat, you're supposed to
inhale. Why are you exhaling Lucas? When we lower in a push-up position, we should be inhaling, not
exhaling. Why do you do everything backwards? The breathing is all backwards in yoga." No, it isn't.
In yoga, this is very rarely explained, but the breathing is very often in service of engaging
our pelvic floor. In yoga, we refer to the pelvic floor diaphragm as mula bandha and
mula bandha is very important in many poses because we're only using our body weight,
we're not lifting heavy weights off the ground. It's perfectly safe to reverse the breathing
and the benefit is you can engage your pelvic floor more thoroughly. In a traditional exercise
class or weight lifting we often think about our torso like a carbonated can and when you inhale
that's like bracing your spine, you create more intra-thoracic pressure to stabilize and stiffen,
make your spine more rigid, so that we don't do damage when you lift a barbell off the ground. In
yoga, we often reverse this. Instead of inhaling to squat, we would exhale to squat. The reason
being is when you exhale it's easier to engage your pelvic floor. Your breathing diaphragm and
your pelvic floor diaphragm they work in tandem and they work in opposite. While it's entirely
possible to squeeze both at the same time, it's much easier to squeeze one at a time. It's also
more natural to squeeze one at a time, which means when I inhale, that's my breathing diaphragm,
my pelvic floor diaphragm tends to relax. When I exhale, that's my breathing diaphragm, it goes up,
my pelvic floor diaphragm can engage more thoroughly. Let me show you how this works, then
we'll put it into action in a couple of poses. Let's inhale together, now exhale everything out.
Hold your breath. Now, imagine you're stopping the flow of urine and stopping defecation, lift in and
up, three, two, one, release, relax, and breathe normally. At the bottom of the exhale I'd like you
to imagine that you're stopping the flow of urine, stopping defecation, you should feel a lift,
a muscular lift, engage at your pelvic floor and at the bottom of your exhale you'll feel a little
lot stronger than at the top of your inhale. Let's do it one more time and then we'll put
it into action in some poses which will be most relevant for you. Inhale, exhale everything out,
hold your breath, engage, imagine you're stopping the flow of urine, stopping the flow
of defecation, three, two, one, relax, release, and breathe normally. When you've exhaled you'll
naturally engage your pelvic floor. We can put that into use with body weight movements in yoga
practices and in daily movements, like getting up and down from the floor. Let's take a look at two
poses now where we can put this into action. The first exercise we'll work with is a traditional
squat. I'll show you a supported version as well. Our goal here is not to work on the strength or
flexibility, our goal in this movement today is simply to learn how to engage our pelvic floor at
the bottom of our exhale. We'll exhale and then we'll hold the breath deliberately for a five
count, and then release. I'll show you an option using a chair, if you need support, and I'll show
you an option with your hands steepled if you don't. Stand in front of a chair if you need it,
position your feet a little bit wider than your hips. Let's inhale and now exhale everything out.
Option one: fingertips on the chair. Option two: hands steepled. Hold your breath, close your eyes,
and lift your pelvic floor by engaging your anus, and engaging, imagine that you're stopping the
flow of urine for three, two, one. Stand all the way up, relax, release, and shake it out. Now,
again, to engage your pelvic floor the simplest thing, I know it's a strange visualization,
but imagine you have to go to the bathroom, either number one and/or number two, and stop. So, you
should feel a squeeze and a lift of that pelvic floor. Again, imagine that colander we looked at
earlier. With a muscular contraction in and up, we'll exhale, and we'll hold for a five count,
either hands on the stool, or hands steepled at your chest. Don't try to go down very deeply. Our
goal is simply to learn how to utilize our pelvic floor as we're doing common movements in exercise,
but that will translate into your daily movements, which is when your pelvic floor starts to become
activated all the time. Let's get started. Feet a little bit wider than your hips, let's inhale,
exhale everything out. Option one, option two, and we'll lift and hold at the bottom,
three, two, one. Stand all the way up, release, relax, and shake it out. We'll
do this one more time. Remember, we hold the breath at the bottom, engage and lift,
and then we'll release. Now, in your daily exercise as you wouldn't hold at the bottom,
we're doing this for the sake of learning, but when you learn how to exhale, engage, lift, this
type of pattern will translate into your daily movements. One more time, feet a little bit wider
than your hips, let's inhale, exhale everything out, option one, option two, and we lift,
and three, two, one. Stand all the way up, relax, release, and shake it out. For the next pose I
will get rid of the stool and I'll lie down on my back. We'll be working with a modified bridge
pose. This is a pose you've no doubt seen in a yoga class, a fitness, or a pilates class. The
difference here is that instead of focusing on the back bend, instead of focusing on my legs,
I'll focus my attention down into my pelvic floor. We will lift just a little bit,
this will simply help us to engage our pelvic floor. But the action that I'm looking for is
exhale everything out just like we've talked about, lift your hips just a little bit,
and then imagine you're stopping defecation, imagine you're stopping urination very strongly,
like there's a string at your tailbone lifting all the way up to your chin, and will hold, three,
two, one, and we'll release down onto our back. Let's begin together. Inhale through your nose,
exhale everything out, lift your hips just a little bit, now squeeze, engage, hold here, three,
two, one. Slowly lower down, relax, release, and breathe normally. If it's too much to lift your
hips, you certainly don't have to. You can do this with your hips on the ground. Sometimes just that
little lift helps you to engage. Again, think about a string on your tailbone, all the way up
to your chin, like everything's getting zipped up through the middle. Let's inhale together.
And exhale,
lift, squeeze, hold, three, two, one. Relax, release, and breathe normally.
Let's try one more time. Inhale together and exhale everything out,
lift a little bit, squeeze, zip everything up, and hold here, three,
two, one. Relax, release, and breathe normally. OK, so how do we incorporate those two poses into
our exercise routine, or our movements? The first thing is to remember these are body weight only,
we're not lifting or moving any weight, we're not lifting things off the ground. However,
when you get up and down from the ground, when you're moving throughout your day,
when you're tying your shoes, you can begin to lift, you can begin to lift,
you don't need to hold the breath, you don't need to pause, but when we train that pause, lift,
engagement, you can start to find your pelvic floor getting triggered in daily activities.
This is the way we're meant to move. Hope you found this video helpful. Remember to grab the
PDF in the description down below. Hit subscribe for more science-based yoga videos. If you haven't
yet seen part one in this series, I'll drop a link down below as well. Lastly, you can always find my
teaching calendar at yogabody.com. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you in the next video.