To Tuck or Untuck, That is the Question

About a month ago, I received an e-mail from a woman who had a question related to her incontinence.  She had given birth to her child and since then was suffering from a little bit of incontinence. She had seen a physical therapist who had recommended doing Kegels to help with her incontinence issues. One of the things that she mentioned to me was that even after doing Kegels she did not feel any amount of relief and did not feel her pelvic floor muscles releasing or going back down. Obviously the Kegels were not providing any relief and she wanted to know what else she could do. I had asked her what she does for a living most of the day and what some of her activities consisted of.  She stated that she works as a secretary so she spends quite a few hours sitting at her desk. Our conversation was mostly through e-mail, so I had mentioned that doing too much sitting was probably on the issues and her incontinence from childbirth was just an underlying issue. I told her that I could help her by addressing some of the issues she was having and provide some whole body alignment exercises she could work on to help with her incontinence.

I waited a week…then I never heard from her again. I wondered why she would reach out to me, asking for help and obviously seemed like she wanted to treat this issue, but was unwilling to take the necessary steps to correct them. I even offered her a free consultation so if she didn’t want to commit to anything long-term, she could at least have a few new tools to help her. Was she maybe looking for a quick fix? Did she think that her issue would be resolved from just doing a few Kegels a few times a day and didn’t have the time to commit more exercises to her already busy day? Yes, in order to wholistically address her incontinence, she would need to address tight muscles in her legs, lack of mobility in her hips and learn how to relax her pelvic floor muscles.

Female pelvis and its contents, seen from above and in front. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This current culture of sitting is for sure increasing the amount of pelvic floor issues where many women may be suffering either from incontinence or even prolapse and men lower back pain and even pelvic floor and prostate issues as well.  But why do we continue to sit? And when we do sit, wouldn’t it help a little bit to at least learn how to sit correctly where you are sitting on your ischial tuberosity and not on your sacrum? I know many people, like my husband, who feel that just sitting on ergo chairs would do the trick and help create more support. We should not be relying on our chair, but maybe more so on our muscles and bones, our resilient structural system.

My teacher, Katy Bowman, does such a great job demystifying the pelvic floor. She recently posted a blog article on too tight pelvic floor which coincides greatly with this post.  You can view the blog here. Be sure to also check out the video in her posting on tucking and untucking of the pelvis and see if you are doing that right now while sitting and reading this blog.

Related articles

• The Bathroom Key: A Strong Pelvic Floor (naturalaspossiblemom.com)
• Finding and Activating the Pelvic Floor (coreconnexxions.wordpress.com)
• Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and Chronic Groin, Low Back and Lower Limb Pain. By Elizabeth Kais, M.Ed., CSCS, CHEK (gotcherback.wordpress.com)

Subtlety vs. Intensity

This past weekend, I attended the International Association of Yoga Therapists Symposium and had an enriching weekend of learning, moving and shifting my consciousness with my personal practice.

I titled this blog, Subtlety vs. Intensity because I feel that in a yoga class, we are always playing between that boundary.  Depending on the type of class, you may intentionally allow for a strong amount of intensity in your practice or the work can be so small and so subtle that it can still have such a powerful and lasting effect.  I am a student and an instructor of Yoga Tune Up® and love what the practice does for my body in re-engineering parts of me that have been so locked up.  In a way, it is a pretty intense work! it is that kind of work where you begin to sweat in places you never knew you could sweat.  You also feel muscles where you never knew there were muscles present there before either.  It is deep work and for that I am grateful, because it automatically brings you into your body, you cannot run or hide and all of your stuff, whether it is tension, ego, the negative stuff, it is all there and you get to excavate it out.

I was fortunate enough to take a wonderful class with Carrie Demers and Sheri Friedrichsen. The session I took during Labor Day weekend at the IAYT Symposium was called Stoking the Digestive Fire: The Key to Radiant Health and its focus was all about the first three chakras and keeping the agni or digestive fire healthy, glowing and contained.  Maybe becuase the chakras and learning about them have been slightly esoteric for me, I feel that I relate and and can connect with at least the first three, they are currently challenging areas for me right now and ones that I realize I may have even been avoiding and not addressing readily.

The experiential part of the session included work that was very subtle and for me in a way almost bordered on frustration.  This was not big, dynamic movements, they were somewhat static, but in such miniscule terms that the only muscles we were trying to innervate and engage were the muscles along the pelvic floor.  Now, this was different than Kegels, we didn’t just squeeze everything down there and we were not using accessory muscles, like our neck, to help us in our effort.  We slowly built up to Agni Sara, slowly adding muscles that started along the pelvic floor, moving up towards the internal obliques, the transversalis, the external obliques and then the rectus abdominus.  It was absolutely shocking and thrilling when I was able to “master” the engagement of one of the sets of muscles at a time.  As I had to work with my breath and then integrate them all, that was more challenging; but that was where the work was and where it was so subtle, but so defining.  I was thrilled as I moved my muscles and began to take the movement into Agni Sara where I was standing and feeling a huge release along my lower back.  In a strange way, it was slightly addictive, feeling what I felt and wanting to feel that release again and again.  I know you have felt that way when coming into a deep stretch that feels “oh so good”, it was the same here, even though it was subtle.

So, subtlety vs. intensity, I think they can go both ways.  A very subtle and somewhat un-intimidating pose or exercise can have the most profound effects as does an intense pose or exercise.  I have much more respect for the subtlety in life even now and continue to try to find the subtlety in even the most intense experiences in my practice and my life.