Do you suffer from painful period cramps or chronic pelvic floor pain or urinary urgency or incontinence? It could be that you need to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. 

The pelvic floor refers to the muscles and ligaments that support the organs in your pelvic area, including your reproductive organs, bladder, and bowel. Many people find this area of the body difficult to discuss, but it still needs to be strengthened and cared for.

Yoga is a unique approach to fitness, blending strength and flexibility work with breathing and meditation. It tends to take a whole-body approach to wellness, meaning that a typical yoga session will strive to work the entire body, including your pelvic floor. Yoga for the pelvic floor focuses on bringing mobility to muscles in and around your pelvic floor; pelvic floor Yoga can help relieve pain resulting from pelvic floor dysfunction and improve the strength and coordination of pelvic floor muscle contractions.

Because the pelvic floor muscles are typically out of sight and out of mind when most people work out, yoga is a fantastic way to work them without even thinking about it! When you strengthen and stabilize your pelvic floor muscles, you’ll see various benefits: reduced menstrual pain, reduced pelvic floor pain, and even improved sexual satisfaction. Yoga has also helped women to gain control over their bladder or bowels and treat pain across the pelvic area.

Tension in any part of your body can easily cause a domino effect if not treated promptly. If one muscle is tight, it can tug on structures all around it. Pelvic floor tightness may be related with pain in thehips, low back, knees, even all the way down to the feet and up to the jaw!

If you have pain in any part of your body, it’s common to “guard” or tense nearby muscles to minimize discomfort or protect yourself from further irritation. People who suffer from urinary incontinence sometimes guard because they are anxious about leaking. Someone with pelvic floor muscles dysfunction may guard by over activating their pelvic floor muscles or the nearby muscles in their hips and thighs.

If you spend too much time tensing any muscle, the muscle won’t be able to relax enough to perform a proper contraction. This means that tension can actually make your muscles weaker. Other muscles may try to do the job of the muscle that isn’t functioning poorly. This creates imbalances in the body, and the cycle of pain and guarding can spread.

Benefits of Yoga for Pelvic Floor

Yoga for Pelvic Floor incorporates mindful breathing, stretching and strengthening exercises. These are just some of the conditions that may benefit from practicing pelvic floor yoga 2 times per week.

• • Leaking when coughing or sneezing (urinary incontinence)

• • Urge to run to the bathroom (urinary urgency)

• • Multiple trips to the bathroom at night (nocturia)

• • Trouble controlling gas

• • Chronic pelvic/vaginal pain

• • Constipation

• • Difficulty with bowel movements

• • Difficulty with urination

• • Discomfort in the lower back, groin, abdomen, hips, and legs

• • Painful intercourse (sometimes after giving birth)

Yoga consists of moving through different postures. Depending on your approach, you may hold the posture for a set amount of time, or you may flow through several, one after another.

The following yoga poses have been shown to strengthen and stretch the pelvic floor:

• • Warrior pose

• • Happy baby or half-happy baby pose

• • Bridge pose

• • Cat-cow pose

These exercises are so simple and easy to do. Take your time with them, breathe correctly while doing them, so the pelvic floor can fully relax: