Are you looking for pelvic floor strengthening exercises? Maybe you're a woman postpartum and
your pelvic floor just isn't what it used to be. Maybe you're a man and you're struggling
with ejaculatory control. Or maybe you're a man or a woman and you're struggling with incontinence,
you're having trouble controlling your urine or your bowels. Maybe you even have prolapse. If so,
this video is for you. Hey, my name is Lucas. I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a teacher trainer. In
the yoga tradition we have a practice called mula bandha, or root lock, which refers directly to
this pelvic floor strength coordination practice, and it dates back hundreds, maybe even thousands
of years. In this video I'll share with you: number one, the anatomy of the pelvic floor,
which muscles are involved. Number two, we'll talk about dysfunction, why things go wrong. And
lastly, probably most importantly, we'll look at some exercises you can do at home to strengthen,
coordinate, and bring awareness back to your pelvic floor. A quick disclaimer here:
I'm a yoga teacher, not a medical doctor. If you have a major pelvic floor dysfunction,
please check with a healthcare provider before you do anything. Let's start off by talking about
the anatomy. Your pelvic floor, if you look at the base of your pelvis you can see there's a big hole
there, there's nothing there. So what supports my pelvic floor? There's a group of muscles called
your levator ani muscles and there's three primary muscles on the pelvic floor. You probably notice
if you've looked at a spine before that there is our coccyx, our tailbone, and you probably
thought "That's pretty silly, haven't we evolved away from having tails?". And the answer is yes,
we don't really need a tail, but our tailbone, our coccyx, plays a very important role as an
attachment site for the muscles of your pelvic floor. These three muscles we can look at
separately, and the first one is called your puborectalis. Pubo refers to your pubis bone,
your pubis bone here, and rectalis refers to your rectum. So the muscle starts at your pubis and it
wraps around your rectum. This one of the three muscles controls your anal sphincter. The next
muscle that we'll look at is your pubococcygeal muscle, going from your pubis to your coccyx, your
tailbone. This is the larger and the more powerful of these three muscles. And then the last one
we'll look at is your iliococcygeal muscle, and that goes from your ischial crest to your coccyx.
Why is it called your iliococcygeal instead of your ischiococcygeal? It's just poorly named.
Sometimes anatomists confuse us. The reality is, all these terms are less important than
the concept of levator ani muscular diaphragm, muscular net, the webbing, three muscles right at
the base of your pelvis. And what do they do? They control your urine, your ejaculation, they control
your bowels. If you're a woman, it supports your uterus. It also affects your posture, really,
really important. The reason these muscles are so important is because if, when you laugh, you pee
yourself, that can really disrupt your quality of life. Okay, so now we know what these muscles are,
why do they get weak? Why do they get flaccid? Why do they have problems? The number one cause,
of course, is childbirth. During childbirth these muscles can get strained, they can even get torn,
and very, very damaged. The second most common reason is simply with age and atrophy. I think
it's helpful to think about someone who's older, who might have like a flabby underarm,
their muscles have atrophied, and they're no longer in use. When it's your underarm, that's
really just aesthetic. But when it's your pelvic floor and you're unable to control your bowels,
or you're peeing yourself, that's really a big, big impact. And so childbirth, age and atrophy,
and lack of use from sitting in a car, sitting in a chair all day, can all lead to a really weak
pelvic floor. Okay, so what do we do about it? I'll show you some exercises, but before we do the
exercises we need to first learn how to feel, to engage those muscles. What I mean by that is if I
told you "Hey, contract your bicep muscle" almost all of you would be able able to do that. But if
I said "Hey, can you contract your puborectalis muscle?" you'd go "What?". You don't know how to
do that, right? So I'll walk you through some eyes closed exercises to feel this. One thing
to remember is that our pelvic floor diaphragm and our breathing diaphragm they work together,
and they really have a paradoxical relationship. What that means is when my breathing diaphragm is
relaxed on an exhale, that's when it's in a dome shape, that's when I can squeeze here much better
my pelvic floor, because when I breathe in my diaphragm contracts and all my guts, everything
gets pushed down and it's much more difficult to squeeze my pelvic floor. For this reason,
both now and in our exercises, we'll work at the bottom of the exhale. At the bottom of the
exhale your breathing diaphragm is relaxed up, there's more space, and it's easier to
squeeze the base of that flower pot. Sitting in a chair, or sitting on the floor, wherever you are,
place your hands on top of your legs, relax your shoulders, close your eyes. I'd like you
to imagine for a moment that you're sitting on the toilet. Sorry for the visualization, it's the only
way to do it, and you're urinating and I need you to stop the flow of urine. We'll do it at
the bottom of the exhale. I'll close my fist, so that you know you're meant to squeeze, and I'll
count up to the count of five. Let's inhale gently through our nose, exhale gently through our nose,
all the way out. Now squeeze, stop the flow of urine for one, two, three, four, five. Release,
relax, and breathe normally. Some of you were able to hold those muscles throughout the practice,
many of you your muscle contract-release it kind of pulsed. Totally normal, don't worry. It takes
some time to coordinate these muscles. That was exercise one. Exercise two, I'd like you
to imagine that you're defecating. Again, sorry for the visualization, it's the only way to do it,
and you need to stop the flow. You need to squeeze your anus. Let's inhale, exhale everything out,
squeeze, hold, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release, and breathe normally. Again,
it might have pulsed, pulsed, pulsed. That's okay, maybe it pulsed and held, also okay.
So now we've contracted our urethra, where the pee comes out. We contracted our anus,
defecation. Right in between there's a third area that we can contract. For men,
if you visualize like lifting your testicles, for women, if you visualize like contracting
your vaginal opening, that can usually help you to access that area. So again, front,
back, now we'll contract in the middle. Let's practice together. Inhale, exhale everything out,
good. Lift that middle area, hold, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release, and breathe
normally. Now that we've isolated these three areas, some people, some pelvic floor therapists,
will work on these areas individually. There's really great benefit to that and sometimes that
subtle practice can be really helpful. For the sake of our practice, we'll grab all three areas
at the same time. Front, so your urethra, back, your anus and then right in the middle - we'll
lift everything. If you imagine like a webbing or a net, I'd like you to lift and squeeze.
Let's practice all three areas together now. Let's inhale, exhale everything out, good, contract and
squeeze everything, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release, and breathe normally. Already
we're starting to bring awareness to this area. Already we're starting to develop coordination of
these muscles and this is really important. Next I'd like to show you some formal strengthening
exercises you can do with one big caveat, it's not as easy to strengthen our pelvic floor muscles
as it might be to strengthen our biceps. What I mean by that is if you decided you want bigger,
stronger biceps, you'd put a weight in your hand and with resistance you could create muscle
hypertrophy and strength very, very quickly. Since we can't really do weight lifting with our pelvic
floor, what we're really trying to do with these exercises is we're trying to bring awareness and
coordination there, so that our pelvic floor starts to fire and engage naturally throughout
our day, when we get up and down from the ground, when we get up and down from the toilet, when
we're using the toilet. When we're moving around in our daily life, instead of our pelvic floor
being flaccid and loose it'll start to contract and naturally support our spine, our bladder,
our anus, and all all the organs of your pelvic floor as well. Let's get into the exercises.
For this first exercise we'll sit in a chair. We just need a towel. Roll up your towel into a tube
like this and then we'll sit on it lengthwise, so it's going quite literally touching your perineum,
the base of your spine. When you sit on this, what it allows you to do is get more awareness to those
levator ani muscles, because you can feel them pressing against the actual towel. That helps you
with that proprioception, just understanding what's going on. Here's what we'll do,
just like we did before we'll engage both one, two, and three muscles all at the same time.
So imagine stopping the flow of urine, stopping defecation, and then the muscle in the middle as
well. So we lift all at once. Remember, we'll do it at the bottom of the exhale. I'll make
a fist to show that you should squeeze and I'll count to five. Let's practice together. Inhale,
exhale everything out,
good. Lift everything in, squeeze, one, two, three, four, five. Relax,
release, and breathe normally. Could you do this without the towel? Sure, you could,
but it helps. You probably already felt that there's greater proprioception awareness down
there. Let's practice again. We'll do three sets in total. Inhale, exhale everything out,
good. Contract and squeeze, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release,
and breathe normally. We're trying to bring awareness to this area,
we're trying to increase coordination, increase strength, and hopefully, that'll play out in
the rest of our life as we're moving through our day. Let's do one more set here. Inhale,
exhale everything out, good. Squeeze and hold, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release,
and breathe normally. Remember, don't overdo it with these practices. A few sets, a few times a
day, and that's it. Otherwise you can cause constipation, you get a little bit anxious.
That's not what we're looking for. For the second exercise we'll move down to the floor. The final
exercise we'll do is lying down. I've specifically shown you a seated practice and a lying down
practice because your assignment is three rounds, three times per day. So you can do two of them in
a chair, and probably this one you'll do right before bed at night. It's up to you how you mix
and match, but the idea is you could do it in a chair, you could do it lying down, the exercise
is the same. Now I'm using a yoga block between my knees here, but if you're in bed you can simply
use a pillow. But it is helpful if you can squeeze something. Do you have to squeeze something? No,
but by proxy it helps you to get that contraction running down to your pelvic floor. It's just a
little trick. Lie down on your back, feet about as wide as your hips. Place the block or your
pillow between your knees and relax. Don't do anything with your core, don't flatten your back,
just let your back do whatever it would naturally do on your bed, or on the floor. I want to remind
you about those three areas we looked at before - stopping urination, stopping defecation, and then
right in the middle. We'll lift all three. Your pelvis might shift just a little bit when you
press into the block and when you lift your pelvic floor, that's okay. But I don't want your glutes
to fire and I don't want you to be contracted in your core. Instead, try to move deep, deep,
deep, into that pelvic floor diaphragm. Let's practice together. Inhale, exhale everything out,
squeeze the block, lift your pelvic floor, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release,
and breathe normally. When we squeeze the block, your adductors on your groin they'll contract.
Those are not your pelvic floor muscles obviously, but it can help you sometimes by
proxy to bring awareness to your pelvic floor. Let's do another round. Inhale,
exhale,
squeeze the blocks, squeeze your pelvic floor, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release,
and breathe normally. We'll do one more round. Inhale, exhale,
squeeze the block, squeeze your pelvic floor, one, two, three, four, five. Relax, release,
and breathe normally. I hope you found those exercises helpful. Remember,
your assignment is three rounds, three times per day. You could do seated, seated,
lying down. You could do all of them seated, all of them lying down. You choose. Remember, what
we're trying to do here is increase your strength and coordination, but also just your awareness of
this area. The reason this is important is because if I told you "Engage, contract your biceps
three times per day" you'd go "Lucas, I don't think that's gonna make my bicep
bigger or stronger" and you're right. But what it will do is bring awareness and coordination,
and when we bring awareness and coordination down there your pelvic floor diaphragm will
all by itself naturally start to contract, when you squat, when you tie your shoes,
when you get up and down from the floor, when you get up and down from a chair, and that's
what we're looking for, pelvic floor tone. If you'd like more science-based yoga videos,
hit subscribe down below. If you have questions about this video or anything we've covered,
please drop down in the comments below. I always like to hear from you. You can find
my teaching schedule online at yogabody.com, and there's a full PDF of all the practices
we just did down below as well. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.