Yoga for Pelvic Floor Balance – Strengthen the Female Pelvic Floor

WELLNESS YOGA

This 3 part series of yoga videos, Yoga to Strengthen the Pelvic Floor is for women who have attended Leslie Howard’s workshop or online course on The Female Pelvic Floor – Keys to Lifelong Health. Leslie has designed these follow up videos classes to help women have their own routine to heal their pelvis.

Most people know the importance of core strengthening, but the pelvic floor is an important group of core muscles, which tend to get ignored. Proper work of strengthening, stabilizing, stretching and softening the pelvic floor is essential to create the correct foundation of each movement in the body. A strong pelvic floor helps keep the pelvic and abdominal organs healthy as we age.

But “strong” also means flexible. Think of your torso as “a tote bag” for your organs. The pelvic floor is the bottom of the tote bag. Someone with a weak pelvic floor (which means either too loose or too tight) has a tote bag that is about to have the bottom fall out!

Prolapsed organs, incontinence and pelvic pain are common to over fifty percent of women, and it is linked to weakness of the pelvic floor, again with the pelvic floor muscles being too loose or so tight that they lose their natural suppleness and resilience.  Other common problems often related to the health of the pelvic floor are lumbar spinal problems, sacroiliac, hip or sciatic pain, bladder weakness, prolapse of the uterus or the bladder, and digestive, menstrual and sexual difficulties.

Kegel exercises are generally prescribed as a catch all cure for pelvic floor imbalances. However, getting a healthy pelvic floor involves more than doing Kegels. Kegel exercises are undertaught, misunderstood and they can sometimes lead to more problems.

The pelvic floor can be too gripped, or too weak and sometimes both. Many women have a lack of tone due to age, life style, bearing children or hereditary tendencies. What is less commonly known is that about 20-25 percent of all women have a chronic holding and tightening of the muscles of the pelvic floor. Sometimes an unhealthy holding pattern can start in early age or perhaps develop as a result of a fall, an accident or sexual abuse.

This series is a continuation of the workshop with Leslie or the Yoga U online course offered by Leslie. In the workshop or online course, you will have learned how to distinguish if you are lacking tone or have too much tone in the pelvic floor muscles. If you have not yet taken any of Leslie’s courses, the best place to start is to enroll in her online yoga course: The Female Pelvic Floor – Keys to Lifelong Health.

Strengthening the Pelvic Floor – 3 Part Yoga Practice for a Hypotonic Pelvic Floor
Hypotonic means the muscles are lacking tone. They may be in a slackened state and unable to make a contraction.  In the hypotonic (lack of tone) series you will learn breathing techniques to bring blood flow and oxygen into the pelvic region to make it more responsive.  You will learn specific techniques to find the layers of the pelvic floor and how to engage them without confusing them with buttock or thigh muscles. There is an introductory video, plus three practice videos, approximately 30 minutes each. Each practice ends with a different savasana (relaxation).

For more information on Leslie’s online yoga course, see here:
The Female Pelvic Floor: Keys to Lifelong Health

 

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Leslie Howard C-IAYT, E-RYT500, LMT is an Oakland-based yoga teacher, specializing in all things pelvic. She leads workshops and trainings worldwide and has written a book about caring for the female pelvis, Pelvic Liberation.

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