Differentiating the Pelvic Floor Part 2 (25 min, Patrons)

For the end of this recording you’ll need a firm, level, non-rolling chair and a bath towel or hand towel. You’ll be rolling or folding the towel up to sit on in a peculiar way, so a few different sizes may be helpful to figure out what’s comfortable.

When you develop the “bell hand” and lips movements, I could have said more explicitly that you can experiment with gently drawing up the pelvic floor as you close your fingertips together and purse your lips, and letting it down gradually with letting your fingers and lips soften. You might pause the recording to play with this.

Here’s a brief reminder about the final movements of Part 1, if you wish to review before continuing on with Part 2.

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent, breathing easily. Gently and gradually draw up your pelvic floor as you tip your pelvis back, pubic bone coming closer to chin, lumbar flattening, abdomen shortening, ribs coming closer to pubic bone, tips of shoulders perhaps lifting, neck arching, head/eyes nodding upward a little. Relax all of that gradually, wait a breath or two, and repeat, perhaps experimenting with gathering up the whole pelvic floor, or the front or back of it.
2. Same position, opposite kind of movement: Think of spilling out your pelvic floor, relaxing the sphincters as you tip your pelvis forward, pubic bone away from chin, lumbar and waist lift a little, belly lengthens and pushes forward, ribs move away from pubic bone, neck flattens, head and eyes look down a little. Relax all of that gradually, wait a breath or two, and repeat.
3. Gently, slowly alternate.

About the pelvic floor, and Kegels

After doing pelvic floor lessons you may begin to notice in your regular life that your pelvic floor is often more contracted than you find necessary or desirable. Noticing these moments is normal and useful: it’s a necessary step toward reducing excess effort and learning better function of the pelvic floor in all your activities.

When you do notice unnecessary pelvic floor tension, don’t immediately let it go. Instead take a moment to sense it, and then experiment with gradually relaxing the tension, while noticing changes throughout yourself.

In addition to being related to issues of continence, digestion and elimination, and sexual function, pelvic floor muscle tone is connected to all other human function. Ideally it is dynamically changing moment to moment as we breathe, balance, and walk, adapting to everything we do!

Often when we think our pelvic floor is “weak” it actually just lacks variability in muscle tone. If we’re always holding it at a 9 out of 10, then there’s not much room to tighten it more when we need to! And “strength training” (like traditional Kegels) is usually not very fruitful because brute force doesn’t get applied accurately or efficiently if we can’t sense and feel the details because things are always tight.

So one intention in these lessons is to learn to sense and use the minimum necessary tone for the moment. We’re more interested in lowering the bottom of your pelvic floor tone variability than raising the top.

This actually gives us a faster, stronger, and more thorough ability to increase pelvic floor tone precisely as needed, where needed, and only when needed.

This lesson is found in Patrons Monthly, our collection of lessons exclusively for Feldenkrais Project Patron-level donors.

It also appears in our Pelvic Floor: Less Is More course.

It was recorded in a FP Weekly Zoom class on May 17, 2022, then split into Part 1 and Part 2, and edited to improve flow, clarity, and audio quality.

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

The original hour-long class recording is in our Legacy and Alternate Lessons collection, under the title Improving Pelvic Floor Control and Ease (Patrons).

Splitting it into Part 1 and Part 2, and taking a break between them, is a better way for most people to study this lesson.