Relationship Between Breath and Pelvic Floor
One of the essential relationships in proper pelvic floor function is the coordination between the use of breath and breathing and pelvic floor muscle engagement.
If you have ever experienced stress in your life, you may have noticed a change in a few, many, or all of your muscles. In contrast, if you have ever used slow deep breathing to lessen stress, you may have noticed a softening of muscle tension in a few, many, or all of your muscles. This play between breathwork and muscle tension works similarly in the pelvic floor muscles.
Let's back up a smidge. For some reason, we don't think a lot about the pelvic floor as being a series of muscles similar to the chest, back, arm, or leg muscles, and culturally we avoid talk of the pelvic floor. For example, we have no problem grabbing a handful of our own neck muscles and giving it a series of pumps to release a tension headache, but we don't grab a handful of our pelvic floor muscles when they are in pain or tense. That's understandable, and to that end, we have over-avoided acknowledging the existence of the pelvic floor as an essential working part of our body's homeostasis. OK, back to the breath…
Typically when told to 'take a deep breath,' we open our mouths and gulp a bubble of breath into our chest while elevating our shoulders up to our ears. We hold for about 3 seconds, then expel with an open mouth. Unless you are a singer, swimmer, yogi, or wind-instrument player, that is the deep breath you comfortably employ. Mostly it's fine. However, if you want to use the power of breathing to your advantage, there is a vastly more effective and efficient method. This method ties in beautifully with relaxing and strengthening your pelvic floor.
I am going to explain how belly breathing, yogic breathing, or diaphragm breathing (different names=same thing) acts in coordination with pelvic floor muscle contraction. Belly breathing: Have you ever seen a baby lying on its back taking peaceful breaths? Recall how its belly gently rises up to the ceiling, then softens back to the crib mattress? That gorgeous little human being is involuntarily engaging in belly breathing. As adults, we typically require conscious effort to do this technique in order to allow maximum oxygen efficiency throughout our bodies and to allow maximum stress reductions in our psyche. This method is not the same as gulping that air bubble and raising shoulders to ears. Rather, this method requires stillness in the shoulders and movement in the belly, rib cage, and chest to allow deep, full breaths to fill the entirety of our lung space.
Jump down to the structure of the pelvic floor (if needed, review the blog, Pelvic Floor Easily, Breezily Explained, and notice its hammock-like construction. To connect breath with the movement of these muscles, imagine placing an air-filled, round balloon on the hammock, resting gently. As you inhale into your belly, picture the balloon slightly filling, and as you exhale and the navel moves towards the spine, picture the balloon getting slightly smaller. Moving further down the chain, imagining an in-breath...expanding the balloon now pressing lightly into the muscles of the pelvic floor hammock, giving them slight length, and releasing any tension or work within the muscle fibers. This is where you, the breather, connect your inhale with pelvic floor relaxation, a.k.a. pelvic floor lengthening, tension-release, softening, giving, letting-go, ahhhhh. Next, imaging an out-breath or exhale, the balloon shrinks a little, pulls away from the pelvic floor muscles, and in doing so, the pelvic floor muscles draw up and contract, tighten, squeeze, create energy, and work. This is the work of the pelvic floor. You may sometimes call it a Kegel squeeze. During the exhale, the belly button draws towards the spine with a little up-wards scoop as you also do your pelvic floor contraction.
The above technique is how the pelvic floor muscles and the breathwork coordinate. It may seem counterintuitive, as you may have pictured an in-breath sucking all of the breath up to the shoulders; therefore, the pelvic floor should lift vs. drop and slightly lengthen. That's OK if you had pictured the coordination in reverse. It may require some stillness of practice to change the pattern in your mind and body, but you will eventually learn the technique. One very nice way to work on mastery of this coordination is to do so in a meditative practice. Give yourself 10 minutes and sit in a seat or on the floor in a position that allows support of the pelvis. Take the first few minutes to connect with the belly breathing, maybe transitioning to Dirga 3-part yoga breathing (if that is in your practice). Then stop the breath practice and take a moment just to find the pelvic floor muscles and work on some isolated pelvic floor work. Finally, reconnect with the belly breathing and work in union with the pelvic floor muscle contractions until you feel the connecting of: inhale/soften and lengthen; exhale/squeeze in and up.
If you have any questions or concerns about if you are doing this correctly, contracting or releasing enough, or just don't feel as if you're getting the concepts, please reach out to me at jenn@pelvicfloorandrehab.com, and we can solve these together.
