Episode #06: To Kegel or Not to Kegel
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In this episode, Dayna and Rhonda discuss all things Kegels! Many people are led to believe that Kegels are the answer to all their pelvic floor issues. We’re here to discuss why that may not necessarily be true and some tips to try other than non-stop Kegels! This is a great discussion that you will learn a lot from!
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Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast Episode #06 - To Kegel or Not to Kegel
We're excited to have you join us for this episode of Pelvic Health and Fitness. I'm Dayna Morellato, Mom, Orthopedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. And I'm Rhonda Chamberlain, Mom, Orthopedic Physiotherapist and Pre Postnatal Fitness Coach. On this show, we have open and honest conversations about all phases of motherhood, including fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, menopause, and everything in between.
We also provide helpful education and information on fitness. The pelvic floor and many aspects of women's health, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Please remember as you listen to this podcast that this is not meant to treat or diagnose any medical conditions. Please contact your medical provider if you have specific questions or concerns.
Thanks so much for joining us. Grab a cup of coffee. Or wine. And enjoy!
Welcome to episode six of the pelvic health and fitness podcast. Dayna and Rhonda here and we are going to talk about Kegels today. So Kegels is a topic that often comes up when people think about pelvic floor and we are here to discuss Kegels and the fact that it's not the be all end all.
And perhaps not all of us should be doing Kegels, which might be mind blowing to some of you. To Kegel or not to Kegel? Yes. That is the question. Thank Yeah, very common question. Yeah. So I don't know about you, Dayna, but when, so we said in earlier episodes that even you and I as physiotherapists, um, were pretty clueless when it came to the pelvic floor until we got into this world.
So truthfully, even, you know, it's for me still new getting into this world. It's been, I guess, over a year of learning, but when I was trying to recover postpartum and learning about. connecting my breath to my pelvic floor, I realized that I think I was always kegeling wrong. And so do you want to talk about, so I also want to preface that by saying there's no right or wrong way to breathe.
And I have, you know, our, one of our mentors, Anthony low in my head, where no perfect or right or wrong way to breathe, but there's an easier way to sort of access. contracting and relaxing the pelvic floor with breathing. Is that right? Yeah, I would say that's right. Yeah, it's so tricky. And I think sometimes just starting to connect to your breath is just an easy thing to do postpartum.
And a lot of us, you know, and I always preface my Uh, you know, appointments with clients and I say things like we're going to talk a lot about breath and breathing and they look at me like, what do you mean? I am alive. I am upright. I am breathing. And when we start to chat about the actual mechanics and what is happening and with your breath and when you breathe, they're pretty blown away.
Right. So first and foremost, the first thing that I always start with. With almost everybody who comes to see me is my pelvic model, which I need to name her, but for a future contest or something. Um, because a lot of us don't know what we even look like in our pelvis, right? So I will, you know, go through this idea of a core canister.
So we've got a can in the middle of our body with our abdominal wall in the front, our back muscles in the back, our pelvic floor on the bottom and our diaphragm on the top. When you take a nice big breath in your diaphragm, your breathing muscle will move down. So you get air into your lungs and your pelvic floor will follow suit.
So it will actually lower and lengthen and relax. And in an ideal situation for this, for this purpose, anyways, your belly will soften, relax, and move outwards. When we breathe out, that diaphragm pushes the air up and out of the lungs and it draws the pelvic floor up. with it into a Kegel like motion and your belly and your abdominal wall will actually come gently up and in as well.
Right. So I think a lot of people think of it the opposite way, right? So that, that was me when I was, you know, learning this breathing paired with my pelvic floor. To me, that seemed counterintuitive when I was first learning it. 100%. And I, I kind of always, I work with a lot of new moms, as I know you do.
And I will tell them like, watch your babies. They breathe so beautifully into their tummies. And some of us keep that ability a little bit better than others. A lot of us, myself included, become very Uh, apical breathers, meaning we breathe mainly into our upper rib cage and our chest. So to bring that breath down into the lower part of your torso is an exercise in and of itself.
Yeah. Yeah. I talk about, I don't know if you call it this, but I talk about umbrella breathing. Yes. So I tell my clients like, put your hands on your rib cage. And feel as you breathe in, feel everything expanding through your belly, through your rib cage, and through your back muscles, all at the same time as if an umbrella is opening.
And I know for me, when I learned that, I had a lightbulb moment because I was not moving my rib cage early for this part, which I think, is common because after when you're pregnant, our rib cage probably doesn't move a whole lot because baby and everything else is taking up so much space. And I was getting a lot of rib pain and surprise, surprise, as I learned to breathe into my ribs, that pain started to get better because I think it just wasn't getting enough movement and love in that area.
I noticed that with a lot of my clients too. They're just a little bit. Stiff and it's not uncommon to have some of that rib pain kind of linger Postpartum and again, I'll say we're gonna treat it with breathing and people look at me like I have three heads and it works In combination, of course, with other things, but just starting to mobilize that whole rib cage.
So I, yes, umbrella breathing is something that you'll hear it called. You'll hear it called diaphragmatic breath. Belly breathing is one that I use a lot. I don't generally. Tell my patients that we're doing Kegels, I will kind of reference that exhale lift as what a Kegel is usually described as right. I call them core breaths or Kegel breaths because that inhale relax.
in my opinion, is the most important piece. Because a lot of us don't do that. Exactly. And we are only ever going to be as strong as we are flexible, really. So we have to let go of tension in order to be able to then generate full tension. Yes. And I, I always use the example with my clients. I feel like you do too.
That say I'm trying to strengthen and build muscle in my bicep muscle, which is my arm muscle. And all I do all day is keep my elbow bent and just keep flexing, flexing, flexing, flexing, and never fully straightening. That muscle is going to get pretty tired and I'm not using it to its. full capacity, right?
So then when I go to lift something up, the muscles are already so fatigued because I've just been flexing it all day long. So if we think of that, because the pelvic floor, we said in a previous episode, they're muscles, but we don't see them. So we have a hard time thinking that that's what they are. So if we're just constantly tensing, tensing, all day long, which is a lot.
of people think that that's what you're supposed to do postpartum, no wonder we have tightness, no wonder we have pain, no wonder we have pain with intercourse, right? Like all of these things, leaking, leaking, yeah, prolapse symptoms, right? Like all can be tied into that constant Tension without learning to relax and release, right?
100%. And I will say, and I don't know if you find this, uh, with, with your clients too, that it's a little bit of a hard sell for me, right? People will come in and they're leaking or they have tension, which are very common symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction, which we're going to touch on in a little bit.
But, Those are often treated with letting go of tension because of exactly what you just said. Pelvic floor has many jobs. It has to hold up our pelvic organs. So, you know, bladder, uterus, rectum, or some combination of those things. Um, it has to relax to let us go to the bathroom. It stays contracted in order to keep in urine and stool, hopefully in that order.
It has a circulatory function. It has a sexual function. So it's doing a lot for us. So in your example, if you're holding up and you're keeping those muscles tense all the time, then something is going to start to lack in one of its other jobs. It's going to get tired and one of those other jobs will suffer.
Right. That makes so much sense. So how do you, as a pelvic floor physio, first of all, so I know again, kegeling is, is a skill essentially, right? How do you assess that and how, so do women come into knowing how to do that automatically? Good question. Yeah. So Kegels, um, I feel like a lot of us have been told at some point or, and I know previous generations, I will say, I think it's getting a little bit better and not the referral to pelvic physio is becoming more common, but I know I've talked to a few, like my mom and like my women of that generation will, will say to me, we were just told to do Kegels.
Like we weren't even given a pamphlet. Right. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Yeah, just squeeze. Lift and squeeze. Which is so funny to me as a physio or like a movement person, like I don't even give somebody a bicep curl without showing them how to do it. True. Yeah. So when someone comes in and they've got X, Y, or Z in terms of pelvic dysfunction, one of the first things I'm looking at is posture.
I'm looking at, you know, where does your rib cage sit relative to your, to your pelvis? Some of us sit quite a bit lean forward or swayed back or off to one side where, you know, all postures are okay, but maybe we need to change something there. But then I'm looking at how this person is breathing in front of me.
Are they breathing more into their chest? Are they breathing more into their belly? Because some of us do just continue on with that pattern. Um, I generally will lie people down on the table and I'm checking many things. If it's a postpartum person, I'm looking at their abdominal wall, of course. I'm checking for diastasis and all that good stuff.
But then I just ask them, take a nice big breath and try to inflate your belly. Exhale, gently pull your belly button up and in. So I'm just kind of seeing how that connects for them. Yeah. And then I will often just say to them. Do a Kegel. Do a Kegel. And remember at this point, I'm just looking externally.
Yeah. And I'm just trying to see like, what happens? Do they squeeze their bum? Do they squeeze their legs? Does it look like they're holding their breath? Um, or does their tummy really puff out? Or do they get this really kind of nice up and in drawing of their tummy? Yeah. Which is in general of what we want to see that indicates that we've got a nice connection and up and inward move motion there.
Yep. So if I'm looking externally and someone who is not at all comfortable with an internal assessment, I can make some inferences based on those things about what's happening in their pelvic floor, of course, always with a good subjective. So we've already had a good conversation. If I'm doing an internal exam, I'm essentially inserting a finger.
There's no speculum, nothing fancy here. Um, and I'm just seeing when they do that Kegel, do I feel Do I feel anything? Do I feel any lift? Do I feel a squeeze? Do I feel kind of a squeeze and a lift? And so we're grading that muscle contraction, right? Making sure that there's no bearing down I would say that's one of the most common things that I see is that people feel like they're lifting and they're actually bearing down And so what does bearing down feel like for you?
Like a pushing down like they're pushing down all of them pushing into your finger. Yeah. So maybe it feels like a lowering of the bladder or the, the cervix or something. It just is a definite down and out tight motion as opposed to an up and in. Right. And that's the thing when we, you know, I am not an internal therapist, but I get feedback from therapists that I, um, yeah, work with and bearing down is not in itself.
A bad, terrible thing. But if that's the habit that you're doing with every movement of life, that can contribute to symptoms. Right? A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. So, um, yeah, I, there's better strategies for certain every situation, of course. And I think again, it hit me low in my head, be comfortable with a whole bunch of different ways.
Right. But if somebody is coming to me with like, let's say every time they sneeze. They leak, and their Kegel is bearing down, then that tells me there's just like this general downward pressure into their brain, where we probably just need a little bit of support. A little bit of a lift. So same question for you, doing what you do, you see people virtually and online platform.
How are you explaining your Kegels or assessing for what you think they're doing? Yeah, so very similar to you, I take a very thorough, uh, subjective intake, ask them about their story. Um, I find I get a lot of information from that in the sense of people's, like, stress and anxiety levels, right? So I think that is an important component too, where you and I, you know, experience this, where if you're a naturally go go go, type A person.
Hold a lot of stress and anxiety in your body and you know that usually people that do know it. Yes. Yes. I always, you know, clench my jaw, my neck and my shoulders and my, you know, everything up here is always so tight and sore, you know, that often I'm, I'm sure I'd love to see studies that prove this, but I think there are studies relating even like jaw clenching to pelvic floor tightness, right?
So if they're telling me, yeah, they live a high stress life, yeah. My sort of then thought process is likely you're someone that holds tension in your pelvic floor and you're, you know, holding tension in your belly, holding tension in your glutes. Like those kind of things seem to go together. So again, typically I love to have them see an internal therapist to, you know, make sure that that is what's happening and have them assess.
But I, I think you and I've said this, I think everyone and anyone. can benefit from a little bit more relaxation in all the ways, right? Our lives, you know, especially we're still in the midst of COVID times. There's so many things. There's so many reasons for us to be holding tension in our body. So I, yes, start with the breathing, same as you.
And I teach that umbrella breath. I teach the, again, I don't really call it a Kegel either. I call it usually core connection breath. And so I'll get them usually in line, first of all, and I'll say, do you mind if I kind of feel what's happening and I'll kind of like feel for their rib cage expanding, feel their belly.
And then, yeah, I, I, same thing. I watched for that, um, kind of up and lift with the belly on the exhale. Um, I really focus on letting them know too, and I'm sure you do this too, that it's not meant to be. A 100% contraction, right? So again, I think when we work with these type A people, myself included, when I first learned about this, my tendency would be, yeah, inhale, relax, exhale, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and hold everything so tight and holding my breath and all that, right?
And then, so I tell my clients it should be on a scale of one to 10, like a two, right? And people are surprised to hear that. Really? Like literally, it's like barely noticeable. Because same as you, like you said, you watch if they're, you know, squeezing their bum, like it should be very Minor. It should just look like breathing.
Right. It should just look like breathing. It's funny you say that. So what I, I often will say to people, I give the visualization of pick up a blueberry with your vagina. Yup. But don't make jam. Oh, I love that. So you're picking it up nice and gently. You're going to put that blueberry down, but we're not making jam today.
I love that. That's so cute. Don't squish the blueberry. Don't squish it. Yeah. Just nice and lift. Put it back down. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. That's so cool. And then do you assess, so like you assess the grade, which is basically if they can, um, squeeze and lift, right? Do you assess how long they can hold it?
So like the endurance factor? Good question. I often will assess just for baseline, but then also depending on their symptoms, I will assess, okay, let's play around with this contraction. Can we kind of isolate it towards the front around the urethra? Yep. Can you isolate it? In the back towards the rectum, and then I'll have them do holds.
Can you hold it, but take a breath in between and still hold that? Because those are all different ways we measure strength, right? Again, these are muscles, they're no different than anywhere else. So we want to know, can your bicep go from straight to bent? We want to know what your strength is in the upper range, the lower range, and Can you hold a stack of books?
Right? Same thing. Pelvic floor is the same. And in that kind of idea of matching tension to task, different things that we do in a day require that. So are we picking baby up in the car seat and putting them in? Are we carrying that car seat in somewhere? We need to know what that pelvic floor does. And then even then, further from that, and, and I do this mainly with my prolapse clients and You know, I'm open to suggestions on whether this should be with everybody, but I'll assess in standing.
Yeah, I was I was gonna say that like I think yeah, so after I do breathing with uh, my clients I right away because I'm very much the exercise based person, right? So I'll right away move into like a glute bridge or a side bridge and I teach sort of like Again, I, I don't focus on this for a long time.
Like maybe the first couple of weeks that I'm working with them, like inhale, relax, exhale, lift your bum into a blue bridge, right? And work on that. And then right away on that first appointment, I'm doing squats with them, right? So inhale, relax, exhale, squat. And there's many ways you can do that, right? So you can.
Inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up, inhale at the top, exhale throughout the squat, right? There's so many ways to teach that. But I would say, yeah, like I say to them, if you're seeing a pelvic floor physio, get them to test, even as you're squatting, right. To see if you're bearing down as you're squatting.
Cause I think again, it's like, You can do one thing when you're lying down, but real life is not lying down all the time. Absolutely. Yeah, so that's interesting. Which is another great thing too, and I'm sure, I, I'm interested to your take. I have, people will say, well, what position should I do these in?
Right. What position should I do my core breast or my Kegel breast in? And remember when we say that, we're thinking that nice big inhale, exhale, pick up the blueberry and don't make jam. Um, I start them in, if it's someone who's really struggling to connect with that, I'll start them in lying. Yeah. But I'm quickly moving out of that.
If I have a new mom, I even have her doing it and sitting right away because what position is she in for many hours a day? She's breastfeeding. So, or bottle feeding, whatever feeding looks like, so do it during feeding sessions. Yeah, I teach that a lot too, because again, for me, my biggest focus for myself postpartum was that relaxation piece.
So I, yeah, every time I didn't breastfeed, but when I was bottle feeding every feed, which happens a gajillion times when you're early postpartum, um, I would focus on the breathing and I honestly didn't really do Kegels. Because I was finding my prolapse symptoms were made worse when I was trying to Kegel.
So when I focused on pure relaxation, my symptoms felt better. Yes. I'm glad you said that. Do you call that breathing anything like do you call that? So, so I actually, so I think, do you call that reverse Kegel? I do, yeah. Yeah. So I, um, it was actually listening to, uh, To Birth and Beyond podcast, Anita always talked about like the flower bloom breath.
Yes. Where she pictures, you know, inhale flower blooming. exhale, keep the flower blooming. So that's what the visual I used. And that really helped me. Yeah. So I think it's so, so important in this coming back to one of the first things we said is to Kegel or not to Kegel. And I guess it really depends on what you consider a Kegel.
Right. So for us, it's that inhale, relax, exhale, engage, and Everybody should be doing some portion of that breath, right? If you are someone who is truly in a heightened tension tightness state, maybe that's just your sense of where your pelvic floor is. Or if you're someone and you're listening and you're like, how do I know?
And I'm not really cool with, or I can't make it to a pelvic floor internal therapist. And you've been doing Kegels and your symptoms aren't getting worse. Get rid of the lift part. Yeah. Just do that inhale, relax for a little bit. That's so true. Yeah, because I think, that's so true. Because I think I was pretty much living in a constant Kegel.
Mhm. 100% Right? Right. So, and that's the interesting thing too. It's like, Maybe my pelvic floor could have still been weak, but the driver of my symptoms was that constant tension. Yes. Yeah. So, which I think kind of leads into what we want to talk about is, When do we Kegel? When do we use this reverse Kegel or Anita's reverse flower bloom breath?
Flower bloom breath. Yeah, which is a beautiful visualization if, especially if you like that kind of mental imagery. So what are some, what are common symptoms of the pelvic floor that you'll hear from your clients? Yeah. So heaviness. So, you know, feeling like a tampons falling out, which is sort of that typical prolapse symptom, uh, leaking.
So whether it's the urge leaking where you feel the urge to pee and it's like an emergency right that second or stress incontinence where, you know, you jump or you run or you jump on the trampoline, you feel or you do pee. Um, those are the big ones. That I see, I would say, do you get a lot of people reporting pain with intercourse?
I don't a lot. And I do ask that question on the intake. I do find though a lot, my early, early postpartum just say not applicable. Right. So they're not, they're not at that point yet. So yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. And so let's leave pain with intercourse kind of, um, yeah. Would you agree that that sense of urgency, leaking, whether it's because of urgency or, uh, like you said, running, jumping, laughing, trampolines.
Yes. I mean, people are living in fear of trampolines. Yes. Heaviness. Yeah. That those symptoms could be caused just as equally from a tight pelvic floor as they could be from a weak pelvic floor. Yeah. So I feel like initially I would have said no way. Like to me, all of those things mean a super weak pelvic floor that you need to strengthen.
Right. Knowing what I know now, I know that it's some, most often the opposite, right? A hundred percent. I feel like it could go either way. Yes. Um, and so certainly I know even some clients I'll be, I'll have a pretty good idea. And then you do that internal piece and you're like, well, okay, I wasn't correct.
Okay. In general. I would say it could go either way with those symptoms and that's something that's really tricky. Yes. You know, so, and this is why I say if you were someone who has been doing Kegels and you're listening and you're pretty sure you're doing your Kegel correctly or you leave the listening to this and you're picking up that blueberry and not making jam and you're putting it to You know, and it's not getting any better.
Just try the inhale piece. Try the opposite, yeah. Let go of some tension for a little while. It doesn't always have to be forever. You can always come back to that full breath, but it might be, especially like you said, living in a global pandemic, I'm treating way more tension in pelvic floors now than I think I ever have.
Yeah. Than true weakness. Well, because I learned too, that it's a very primal protective response. 100%. It makes sense, right? Like those are very needed organs that we're trying to keep protected. So when we're living in a state of anxiety, our body will naturally clench in that area to keep things safe.
100%. And now add birthing in a pandemic onto that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So what are some strategies? So if that client, you know, you find that tension is sort of their common problem. What are some strategies that you give them to work on that relaxation piece? Well, the breath. Yep. We're going to talk about breathing a lot here people.
So if you don't know, relax, let go. For sure. I try to give techniques about just throughout their day. Cause I kind of believe like, yeah, you can do your home exercises, but it's the habits day to day and the things in between that generally make more of a difference. So when you were picking up said small child, 80 times a day.
Try to think about maybe exhaling a little bit more than that breath holder brace so that we are getting this nice lift of our pelvic floor. I have people, um, tune into their jaws. Are you clenching your jaws? Because like you said, there is good research to support that that jaw tension is directly related to the pelvic floor.
In fact, I teach my birthing moms to let go of their jaw during labor. Yeah, so fascinating. Yeah, it's much easier to think about that when you're about to push than it is to relax. True, true. Unclench your tummy. Yes. So many of us are walking around with these really, really tight tension bellies and whether that is coming from a sport background or a dance background or maybe this desire to be smaller in our tummies, it is shooting a lot of tension into pelvic floors.
Yeah. Yeah. When you're walking, I mean, I would, I would even encourage my runners to let go of their tummies. Um, check in there. People are often really surprised by that. So that's a way to let go of your tension in your pelvic floor, your bum. You mentioned your bum, unclench your bum. Yeah, those are all different strategies that I use throughout the day.
I love it. Yeah, anything else that you yeah So similar to you I try to pair it with something routine that they're gonna do in their day. So My clients often will I'll give them workouts three days a week and always at the end of every workout session I give some type of pelvic floor relaxation pose.
I like to call it So I'll give them zed lying, so laying on their back with their legs up on the couch. I'll give them legs up on the wall, so laying on your back with your legs directly up the wall. I'll give them prone lying, I find prone, so laying on your tummy. I actually loved that one early postpartum because the feedback of, because I would hold, I did hold a lot of tension in my belly, which then translated to pelvic floor.
So the feedback of feeling my belly expand into the floor was so great for me that really gave me a lot of information. So I'll give that, um, yeah, basically whatever position. Is allowing you to relax and release the most is what I'll get them to do. So always after a workout, try to finish with that.
And then I'm a big fan of meditation. So I say, if I would love for you to get into just even like a five minute everyday meditation routine, and that's obviously a wonderful time. To work on that relaxed release. Um, I also do a lot of like hip mobility. So just working on, again, breathing and relaxing into those.
So like a child's pose. Um, I call it like a half frog or like an adductor stretch. those types of positions and really focus on relaxation. Absolutely. I love that you're talking about those stretches too, because coming back to my anatomy model that I start everybody with, I tell them what muscles we have.
So many massive muscle movers that attach onto our bony pelvis, right? That are responsible for shooting tension into the pelvic floor too. If you're If they, you know, if they're tight or Tony or whatever. So your groin muscles, your glute muscles, your belly, some of the ones we've already talked about. So doing cat cows, another one I really love.
I love it too. Yeah. I really, really love cat cow if it's comfortable for you. Yeah. That's so good. Yeah. So when you are working with someone and yeah, so they've, you know, done all this early stage stuff. How long do you, this is a question I get all the time and I'm curious what you say. How long do you keep working on the Kegel, right?
So like, is that something we need to do for the rest of our life, amen? Or what does that look like? I think it, I think the focus just changes. Yeah. Personally, I don't think. I would love to have women, men, everybody checking into that pelvic floor tension regularly. Yeah. Tension and movement. Let's just say movement.
Like connecting. Movement in general. Yeah. Can you feel that pelvic floor relax? Can you feel it lift? Even if it's only five a day or, you know, most days of the week you're doing a handful of them. I think that there is benefit to keeping that brain muscle connection. Very active. I agree. Yeah. Do I think we need to be doing it with every rep of every exercise?
No, no. Yeah, I generally I sorry. I generally I generally will say to people breathe over breath hold Breathe over breath hold. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That's I say that too. I'm like when in doubt, don't stress about how to breathe, just breathe, just breathe, breathe. Yeah. And because, and I will say to the clients, you know, you're doing this beautiful work in the background.
Remember you're inhaling, relaxing your exhale, engaging. And that's. some level that brain muscle connection, that automaticity just takes over. So now when you're exhaling during whatever activity you're doing, you're likely getting this beautiful lift of your pelvic floor. So you don't necessarily have to be thinking, okay, pick up that blueberry.
Don't make jam, but I'm also squatting and I need to keep my, like, that seems ridiculous. So we just want it to be squatting and breathing. Lifting our kids and breathing. Um, and maybe for, you know, if you're a weightlifter and you're like, nope, I'm a Valsalva, great. Do your big breath, hold, do your lift, but then let it go.
Take that nice big inhale. Let it off, let off that tension. For sure. Yeah. And not similar, similar. So I usually, again, like the first couple of weeks, we'll kind of use that as our warmup. So warm up, we'll work on a glute bridge. We'll work on that type of foundational movement with the breathing. But then, yeah, I'm quickly getting them into movement.
And then basically drop that thinking side of things, right? Because I know for me, if I got hyper focused on what my pelvic floor was doing, I would get symptoms because what you focus on, you feel, I think, right? So if I focused on feeling my pelvic floor, all I would feel was my prolapse heaviness. Right?
Yes. That's a whole topic. That's a whole other thing. Yes. That's a whole, that's a whole episode is about prolapse, but, um, for sure we want to get to the point where this pelvic floor is just moving in a relaxed, um, and strong fashion automatically. Yes, automaticity. I love that word. Yeah, I love it. So good.
Anything that we missed? I think we covered everything. I hope that's a good conversation on Kegel. So it's so much more than just that lift and squeeze. Yes, we need to. Yes, we need to contract as we do with any muscle, but we also need to relax. To relax. Yeah. Yeah. We can all use a little more relaxation in our lives.
Yes. Beautiful. Love it.
