Hi, I'm Michelle, and today I'm going to be talking you through Kegel exercises for prolapse
so that you can better manage your prolapse problem at home. I'm going to go through first
of all the exercises, and then we're going to go through some special tips to help you do your
exercises really well if you've got prolapse problems, but bear with me just for a moment,
I need to show you where the pelvic floor muscles are so that you do your exercises really well at
home, and that you don't make your prolapse any worse. So, some of you already know this. So only
just take a moment. If we look at where the pelvic floor muscles are, this is the pelvis,
female pelvis, the sit bones that you sit on, the front bone, and the pubic bone, and the tailbone,
and our pelvic floor muscles, sling in between these bones, like a hammock at the base of the
pelvis. So they're closing off that opening. When we strengthen our muscles. When we're looking at
strengthening our muscles here, we're going to be exercising these muscles and just briefly on
screen, you can see that in this diagram that the pelvic floor muscles actually encircle the three
pelvic opening so the vagina, the urethra, or the urine passage, and also to the back
passage or the anus, and that's where we're exercising. All right, so let's get started.
Four steps, we're going to do these exercises. So let's start in and around the back passage, I want
you to feel the circular muscles, the sphincter muscles in and around the anus and imagine you're
stopping passing gas and you want to squeeze that area, tighten that sphincter, and lift inwards.
So, you're trying to stop a bowel movement as well draw it inwards, and relax. Okay, now we're going
to try the same thing using the muscles around the vagina. So again, squeezing and contracting,
if you can feel that contraction there, and try to lift inwards, and relax it downwards,
and you may or may not have felt that and that's okay. And now, let's try in and around the urethra
where the urine comes out, try again to squeezing with as if you're stopping the flow of urine, lift
and squeeze inwards, and relax it down, and let it go. And again, you may or may not have felt that.
Now, our fourth step is to put all those things together. So we've done back package,
middle and front, three steps, four, step, lifting up and down, all the muscles together,
set your posture at home, relax the breath, and ready and draw up all those passages back,
middle and front, lift and squeeze, squeeze and lift, keep lifting up inside, lift, lift, lift,
lift, lift, and relax down slowly, and let it go. Now it might already have relaxed if
the muscles are weak, you might not have felt the muscles relax, or you might have felt that
you could actually lower those muscles down and that's a Kegel exercise to do for strengthen the
pelvic floor muscles that support that prolapse, thicken them and make those muscles stronger.
Now, I have videos on how many of these exercises to do linked above. So you can refer to those
and also to a beginner's exercise program that you might have to follow through too.
Now, let's talk about some special tips about how to do these exercises if you've got a prolapse,
the first one is and we've briefly mentioned it, do your exercises lying down. So you might
find that the tissues are less likely to bulge when you're lying down. Again, find that ideal
position for you where you best feel your pelvic floor muscles lifting and lowering.
The second tip is to try to do your exercises first thing in the morning. By the end of the day,
you're much more likely to feel the prolapse tissues dragging and it's going to be heavier
and harder for those pelvic floor muscles to work to lift the pelvic floor and to
lift the prolapse tissues and relax them back down again, control that exercise. So,
doing your exercises first thing in the morning is another useful strategy.
The third strategy is can be use a pessary and you may have heard of pessary devices. Now have
one here, this is the little sample pessary. These devices can be fitted by your gynecologist or by
some physiotherapist as well and they basically squeezed together, circumcised the vagina,
and they support the prolapse tissues so they can be really useful devices. Unfortunately,
they've been used in the past for mature women and they've got a stigma associated with that and it's
unfortunate that more younger women actually aren't encouraged to use these devices because
they can be grateful holding up the prolapse and also to maybe assisting you to do your pelvic
floor exercises or your Kegel exercises more effectively and reducing those prolapse symptoms.
Now finally, if you feel bulging when you're doing your exercises, you might be doing the
technique incorrectly. You don't want to feel a bulging down during your exercises
and if that's the case, stop your exercises and see your pelvic floor physiotherapist to
help you with the correct technique so that you don't worsen your prolapse symptoms.
So I really hope this video helps you better manage your prolapse condition at home. If
you'd like more exercise videos from me on and information on Kegel exercises,
please feel welcome to subscribe below. Thanks so much for watching today,
and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now.