There have been several questions lately in our “Ask Tasha” section that highlight the importance of maximizing blood flow to the muscles of our pelvic basket. I tend to be in a “Go, Go, Go!” mind set most of the time and my blogs and workouts reflect that. However, a recent E Book called FemFusion Fitness for Intimacy made me take a deep breath and realize the importance of “letting go.”
Brianne Grogan, a fellow Women’s Health PT, has done a great job in this book to highlight the importance of releasing the tension within your pelvic floor muscles. She talks about her own personal journey and this book highlights her focus and plan that helped her restore control over her pelvic floor. Similar to my story, she brings personal and professional experience to pelvic floor rehabilitation that can be so powerful.
She talks about how “chronic tensing or clenching of any muscle does not allow the muscle to rest and recover from exercise or activation. This can lead to muscle fatigue, and in some cases, muscle spasm and pain.” She stresses that we all must “learn how to relax muscles so you can effectively and efficiently control them.”
Maximizing blood flow to your pelvic floor by learning how to not only contract the right muscles, but also to allow them to relax, can help to improve incontinence symptoms, prolapse symptoms, low libido, and pain with intercourse.
If you want further evidence of the power of increased blood flow to the area, simply try Briannes’s Core Breathing and her Pelvic Rocking paired with this breathing technique. Feel for yourself the difference this increased relaxation and increased blood flow to your pelvic basket makes. Just try it lying down since you are completely relaxing your pelvic floor. This is my favorite section of her book because I felt like it added something more to the exercises I was already doing!
Her book highlights three sections: Relaxation, Fitness, and Intimacy. I love how Brianne addresses intimacy and sex in a way that allows you to visualize the muscles involved. She takes a topic that can be hard for some women to discuss and helps you to recognize healthy activation of the pelvic floor muscles. She talks about the importance of your inner core (TA, pelvic floor, multifidi) and not just the outer core (rectus abdominus and obliques) that everyone can see.
When I read the book, I immediately recognized the added benefit of her relaxation section to a thorough pelvic rehab program and I very much appreciate her professional angle on sex and intimacy that even the most bashful reader can digest and work with.
Although Brianne and I differ slightly on core strengthening moves, I respect that she has seen great success with her program as a whole and she is now sharing it for the benefit of all women. I appreciate Brianne’s professional commitment to progressing the general public’s knowledge of women’s health and I highly recommend her Ebook, Lady Bits. It is a great read. One that you can revisit over and over to remind yourself to snap out of the “to-do list” mentality. You can find Brianne’s book at http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Bits-Understand-Elevate-Naturally/dp/0692464514/
It’s available in paperback and ebook form. In the paperback version of Lady Bits, the relaxation section is in Chapter 21. Specific pelvic floor release visualizations and exercises are described from page 264 through page 273 (including the “pelvic drop” practice).
Thank you so much for your review, Tasha!
I just came across your website and am excited to pass it on as a resource for some of my patients. I was at a conference a few months ago where a physician who specializes in pelvic pain said “A 10% increase in pelvic floor muscle tone will cause a 50% decrease in blood flow to the pelvic floor muscles. As a result there is a decrease in oxygen to the mucosa and nerves and a build up in lactic acid.” Unfortunately, I did not write down where he was quoting this info from.