I have heard from three mums in the last three days, the ‘yay’ of back to school days. While we love having the school holidays and the freedom of the unstructured days, there is a new level of freedom again that comes from having some child free hours in the day to think, focus and create.
For one mum it’s running a fitness class session, for another it’s writing a sermon, and for another it’s making the work phone calls uninterrupted. For me today, it’s getting back into writing some blogs.
Yesterday at school pick up, I wrote a Facebook post to say that sitting and waiting for children may be a good time for some mums to think of connecting back into their pelvic floor.
Often, although it’s the base of our core and fundamental to our well being, our pelvic floor is easily ignored. And when a little person over the holidays is saying “Mum”, a lot of the time, your pelvic floor may not have had the attention that you would like to have given it.
So, let’s go back to our A, B, C’s as the kids in Australia go back to school this week.
A – I call our Awareness of our Pelvic Floor.
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We need to know it’s there (that helps)
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We can learn what it does and what happens when it doesn’t work so well (not fun when it’s not working well)
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We need to know how to Find, Feel and Focus on it
B – is for Breathing
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Good technique when lifting the pelvic floor includes being able to breathe normally (and it’s ok to allow yourself to build up to this, as it doesn’t always come easily)
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Breathing means that you are not holding your breath – as holding your breath may in fact turn into bearing down on your pelvic floor, which research has shown can happen
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Breathing means you are learning to be more coordinated with your pelvic floor, as you build up your hold time you can build from one breath to two, then three while you hold
C – is for Contractions
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Strength training of your pelvic floor is where you are heading, when good technique from Awareness (A) and Breathing (B) are mastered first.
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As you start to master A & B you can build in more strength to your pelvic floor lift and squeeze, being sure not to switch to breath holding
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This is where your awareness comes back in – making sure that as you tighten more strongly that your pelvic floor lift holds, and doesn’t turn into a bearing down on your pelvic floor.
As we build and learn our A, B, C’s we can then start, like our children, to add more variation and skill to that base level. Children need to learn their letters in Kindy and Pre Primary first, as they begin to build words and then sentences. We don’t send them to Year 6 when they first start school.
The same stands for our pelvic floor – and how it fits into core exercise. We start at the bottom and build up. Over the coming months we’ll be exploring how to build these levels up, rather than starting with a Grade 6 exercise for which we have no foundation yet.
So, start again with your A, B, C’s – have fun and refocus, so that you can build up your pelvic floor and core with Firm Foundations TM in 2014.
For more information about your pelvic floor read about The Pelvic Floor on our website.