How to Assess Your Own Pelvic Floor
In Tokyo, pelvic health care is not common. I can count on one hand the practitioners that treat pelvic health conditions (including myself). To say it makes me angry is an understatement. For a country that offers exceptional healthcare, and for a country that desperately wants more women to have more children, there is almost zero support for pelvic health. How can you ask women to have more children when they're in pain, leaking or have fear and trauma around their pelvic floors?
Now, as I step off of my soapbox, I'll say that while I always recommend getting professional support for pelvic problems, I want to put pelvic health awareness and power in as many hands as possible. So here is a quick and easy way to assess your own pelvic floor.
First of all, do you have any symptoms? Leaking, pain, urgency, not emptying urine with ease, heaviness, numbness, to name a few. These are all symptoms so if you can pin down a few symptoms you may be able to follow a bit of a road map to whether your pelvic sypmtoms are caused by high tone, low tone, mal positioned organs, or even a combination of all of them.
After you’ve honestly considered if you have symptoms, try doing what I call a Three Lines Kegell or “making a pelvic floor salad”.
It’s easiest to try this on your back, but after you’ve practiced and feel connected to all the areas, try it kneeling, sitting, and finally standing.
Three Lines Kegel:
Take a few breaths and try to dissolve tension in the pelvic floor (we often hold a LOT of tension there and though it may not be the entire pelvic floor that is holding tension, try to listen deeply to any areas that are holding on too much).
Front line: Bring you awareness to you clitoris or vuvla (lips) and the next time you exhale visualize picking up a grain of rice with your clitoris (or lifiting it with your lips). The next time you inhale, slowly put the grain of rice back down (don’t bear down, just gradually lower the grain of rice.
Middle line: Repeat with the vaginal opening. I like to visualize a blueberry here.
Back line: Repeat with the anal opening. I like to visualize a large bean here.
Which line is easiest to lift? Which line is easiest to descend? Which lines are the most challenging or disconnected for you? Does the contraction feel smooth or glitchy?
What SHOULD it feel like?
Ideally, it should feel like you narrow and pick up each line nice and high, and then slowly and with control bring the object back down.
Some things to note:
It’s not only about controlling the lift, it’s also about controlling the descent (putting the visualized object back down with control vs just dropping it) - this is especially true if you have prolapse symptoms.
The EXHALE is the lifting, the INHALE is the lowering.
And now, voila, you have given yourself a little pelvic floor assessment. With the information you gathered, you can continue to practice these contractions and relaxations with more detail and in more positions and places in your life.