PELVIC FLOOR LIFT DURING AN APNEA

Feeling the pelvic floor lift during an apnea depends on a few things…..

➡️ How long you’ve been practicing: the longer you practice the more you’re likely to feel a lift in certain positions. It took 8 weeks of daily practice for a pelvic floor physiotherapist to feel a lift in their clients pelvic floor. So don’t be disheartened if it takes 8 weeks or longer to feel your pelvic floor lift. It takes longer to train slow twitch muscles fibres than fast twitch and guess what? The pelvic floor is 70% slow twitch muscle fibres.

➡️ How often you practice will affect how well the pelvic floor lifts: The more you practice, the better your apnea will be, the more lift you’re likely to notice. If you’re practicing just once a week it’s not really enough time to see changes in the tone and mobility of the muscles. Aim for 20 minutes 3 times a week or 10 minutes 6 times a week.

➡️ Tension could be affecting your lift: pelvic floor, diaphragm, abdominal tension could be affecting how well the pelvic floor lifts during an apnea which is why we always work on releasing tension using exercises and lateral breathing before doing our practice. Don’t skip the warm ups- they are great at calming the nervous system and bringing optimal tone into the muscles ready for the apnea.

➡️ You may notice more lift in certain parts of the pelvic floor than others: Maybe you’ve favoured postures where you can really feel the lift of certain parts the pelvic floor but it’s important to do those postures you don’t feel that lift. Making sure that we’re training all areas using different postures/positions will really influence how well the practice works for different conditions.

➡️ Pelvic floor awareness: increasing your awareness of the pelvic floor and strengthening that neurological pathway can be really benefical for feeling what’s going on with the pelvic floor during an apnea. I find simple exercises to isolate movements of different parts of the pelvic floor and vulva really helpful. This isn’t the same as doing 10 sets of kegels a day- I wouldn’t advise that! Once a day, in a calm environment try isolating the movement of the different sphincters and layers of the pelvic floor. Injury and birth trauma can really affect how we relate and sense into this area of our body. Start building that connection with your pelvic floor again.

➡️ Don’t worry if you never feel the pelvic floor lift during an apnea: this doesn’t mean the apnea isn’t working.

I share lots of information and tips like this in my group programme. You’ll not only learn how to do the practice but you’ll learn how the practice works and what to expect. Before every session we spend time asking questions, discussing observations and sharing wins or woes. Nothing is TMI- in fact the more sharing the better!

Check out all of my programmes here and feel free to book in for a free chat to discuss the options further.