Hi, I’m Michelle, and welcome to pelvic exercises. Well, today we're looking at four great positions
to do your Kegel exercises at home, and these are really great positions if you're a beginner. Now,
just remembering, just a quick review, your pelvic floor muscles, that's your pelvis,
pelvic floor muscles are underneath the pelvis here, and if you are sitting up,
the pelvic floor muscles have to lift and squeeze against gravity. So I’m going to
show you positions that are lined down where the pelvic floor doesn't have to work quite
as hard. So you can imagine the pelvic floor muscles are like that, rather than like that,
working quite as hard. So let's take a look at four nice positions you might like to try at
home. First position, and it's a classic position for your pelvic floor exercises, it's lying down.
So let's move into lying down. You can lie down at home, you can do this on your bed or on a mat
on the ground. So I’m going to lie down with my knees bent. Now, some important things about this
position are that when you're lying down, you have the inward curve in your lower back. So
you don't want to be pressing your back down flat, you want that inward curve. You can have your legs
bent and your feet flat. I’m going to lie down flat from this exercise or you could be lying
down with your legs straight if you chose to. I prefer to have my legs bent for this exercise,
and so, remembering that at home when you do this exercise, you lift and squeeze through your pelvic
openings, try and drawing up and in, so you can lift and squeeze, feel those pelvic floor
muscles lifting up, and then lowering down. Now, that's the first position you can try at home.
Second position, you might like to try is lying on your side. So side
lying is another position that some women like to use, in this version and again,
key things are to have the inward curve in your lower back, not your back slumped. You can have
your legs bent comfortably and you might use a pillow, I’m just using my forearm here
to support my neck. And again, doing the same action of lifting and squeezing up
inside my pelvic floor in and around my pelvic floor openings, and lowering them down slowly.
The third position you can try, and this is a really nice position for trying to
activate around the front of the pelvic floor, around the urethra or urine tube,
and that's lying prone. So lying prone, in this position, lying down like this,
and then you can actually try to lift and squeeze and try and feel your pelvic floor
muscles lifting and squeezing in that position, in the prone position. So you can see that there's
a variety of positions that you can try to use, and you can use the position at home
that you can actually best feel your pelvic floor muscles working, whether it's lying on your back,
on your side or lying prone, and they're really nice positions for beginners starting out.
Now, I’m also going to show you a couple of positions in sitting that might help you if
you're a beginner as well. Let's take a look at those now. So if you can visualize if the pelvis
is in sitting, the pelvic floor muscles have to lift and squeeze inside, and they're lifting up
in through this area here, and they're lifting up against gravity. Okay? So this makes the
muscles have to work a little bit harder, but sometimes women can feel this position better
than they can lying down. So let's try the first position and I’m sitting on an exercise ball here,
you can see at home. So key points for when you sitting on your exercise ball,
take your feet apart, all right, lift your chest and make sure that you've got your normal inward
curve in your back. If you're slumped, your pelvic floor muscles won't work nearly as well,
so you need to be sitting tall, inward curve in the back. And again, in that position,
you can feel in and around your pelvic floor that lift and squeeze action, and the
pelvic floor muscles working quite effectively actually. So if you're going to do the action,
you're going to lift and squeeze inside, you're going to hold the contraction, and then you're
going to lower it down slowly, and relax. So that's one of the sitting positions that you
can try for your seated pelvic floor exercises. The final one I want to show you is on a chair.
Okay, so sitting on a chair or a stool at home, again, the same principle that I use sitting on
the ball, legs slightly apart, leaning forward, so that you can actually feel what your pelvic
floor muscles are doing on the chair, you can lift and squeeze in that position, and if you're
having trouble feeling the muscles, a nice way of modifying this is to use a little towel
roll. So I’m just going to make like a little towel roll saddle, and there's much our roll,
I’m actually going to sit on that like I’m sitting on a little saddle, and again, leaning forward,
now, try to do your contraction on the towel roll and lifting and squeezing the muscles
inside and lowering down. And that's another really nice way of feeling your pelvic floor
muscles working at home. If you're a beginner at home, there's a number of positions you know that
you can now use, either lying on your back, lying on your side or lying on your tummy,
and all those positions can help you better feel your pelvic floor muscles working. Alternatively,
you can use an exercise ball or you can use a chair and you can do those exercises,
your Kegel exercises sitting on the chair, maybe even using a towel roll that we've talked about.
So I hope that if those exercises help you at home better feel your pelvic floor muscles working,
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you could subscribe down below. I look forward to exercising with you again soon. Bye for now.