Hi, I'm Michelle, and welcome to Pelvic Exercises. This is the second episode in our series to
help you strengthen your pelvic floor. And today we're looking at how to feel Kegel exercises,
and I'm going to give you some nice little tips you can try at home, before next week
look at how to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles most effectively.
So, remember last time I talked to you about how to feel your pelvic floor muscles working.
And we talked about that correct Kegel action being a lift and a squeezing action, in and
around the pelvic floor muscles, in and around your pelvic openings. So it's a definite lift
and squeeze inside, and it's a definite lowering down of those pelvic floor muscles. And remember
we talked about the muscles being positioned between the sit bones and the pubic bone and
the tail bone. So that's the action that you feel inside your body. It's not an external
exercise at all. All the action takes place inside your body.
So, some things you can do at home to help you feel your Kegels: The first thing you
can try, is to try and stop the flow of urine once it's started. So, next time you visit
the bathroom, you might like to see if you can actually slow the flow, or better still,
even stop the flow. Now that can help you to know how strong your pelvic floor muscles
are, and it also can be a great little measure, or a little test over time to see if your
pelvic floor muscle strength is improving with your Kegel exercises. Always remember
that that's not an exercise to practice regularly. Once a week at most as a test, and if you
have problems emptying your bladder fully, that's not something that we recommend that
anyone do at all. So, just a little, lift and squeeze in and around your pelvic openings see
if you can slow that flow next time you go to the bathroom.
The second technique you can try is to imagine you've got to pass gas in a room, and you
really want to stop that embarrassing wind from passing, and so again you're drawing
up through the anal area, lifting and squeezing inside and lowering down. And perhaps you
can imagine that at home or even feel that tightening and lifting in and around that
area, and then a relaxing back and down. So these are just little techniques, little,
little cues to help you find those muscles and to feel what should be happening.
The third thing you can do, is use a hand towel. I've got a hand towel here you can
see, and you can use a rolled up hand towel or a small bath towel, and if you were to
sit on that bath towel, astride, so that your pelvic floor muscles and that pelvic floor
area is actually positioned I'll just show you there you sit over the hand towel like
that, then you can actually feel your pelvic floor muscles working. Often you can feel
the exercises most effectively and I think it's because you've got a reference point
to lift away from. You can see today that I'm actually sitting on a fit-ball here. So
when you sit on a fit-ball or an exercise ball, and particularly if you lean forward
on the exercise ball, if you try to lift and lower through your pelvic floor, through those
pelvic floor muscles with your Kegel exercises, often that helps you to sense where those
muscles are. Again, it's the shape of the ball against your pelvis and your pelvic floor
that helps you give a reference point to lift and lower away from and towards.
Now, if you feel comfortable feeling your pelvic floor, there's another two nice little
techniques you can try at home. The first is to feel your perineum. So remember, the
perineum is the area of tissue between(if you're a woman) the vagina and the anal area.
And when you do a Kegel exercise, that area should lift slightly. It shouldn't bulge downwards.
If it pushes downwards, well then you know that you're not performing your Kegel exercises
correctly and stop, because you can actually make things worse.
This exercise or when you feel your perineum it might be over your knickers or under your
knickers washed hands under your knickers, you feel an inward lift and a lowering down
with your Kegel exercise. And if you feel comfortable feeling inside the vagina, you
can lubricate wash your hands lubricate an index finger and use the finger against
the back wall of your vagina that's the wall that's closest to the anal area. And
you should feel that area lift slightly and lower down with your Kegel exercises. And
you might use those techniques that feeling technique for your first few exercises and
see if you can go ahead with those exercises on your own, without having to feel the muscles.
Often as you get better and as the muscles start to get stronger, there's less need to
actually feel what's actually happening. So, we've gone through some nice little techniques
there to help you, thinking back to what we actually started with, we talked about
stopping the flow of urine, we talked about stopping wind, or imagining stopping
wind from passing. We talked about using a hand towel to sit on or sitting on a fit-ball,
and we also talked about some nice little techniques to actually feel the pelvic floor
muscles working inside. So our next episode is on just how many exercises
you need to do to strengthen your pelvic floor. So, subscribe now! I'll look forward to chatting
again with you at that next session. Bye for now.