Improving Pelvic Floor Control and Ease (Patrons)

This lesson can be used to introduce pelvic floor study, but  Pelvic Floor Connections (37 min, Patrons) may be better to start with.

Many movements of this lesson include something that resembles a Kegel exercise. In Feldenkrais our movements are far gentler and slower than how Kegels are usually taught.

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

Think LESSS is more: Light, Easy, Soft, Slow, Smooth movements of your pelvic floor give your brain sensory data it can learn and improve with, so you can refine your control. In addition to raising your sensitivity, doing continually LESSS will also help you avoid getting tired, since you’ll be doing this movement a lot.

It’s common to need to pause and take a bathroom break in this lesson.

Many people find sensing and moving the pelvic floor very emotional. In the after-class discussion when this lesson was recorded students talked about the wisdom of just being present for those feelings. Again, take breaks as needed.

Check the Curiosities tab to learn more about what healthy pelvic floor function is connected to, and to learn how to break this lesson up into smaller sections to review it.

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.

Timestamps are below, for reviewing sections of this lesson.

After doing this lesson 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 this lesson is 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.

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After going through the whole lesson at least once, it can be reviewed in shorter segments.

Timestamps (approximate):

0:00 – Intro and pelvic floor skeletal anatomy lesson

3:00 Scan and movements in the sagittal plane (back/front of pelvic floor).

35:00 – Scan and movements in the frontal plane (two sides of pelvic floor)

48:00 – Chair-seated frontal plane exploration, and then all planes (circling on sitbones).

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Here’s a brief reminder about the final movements of the first section, to guide improvisation or review after you’ve done the whole lesson. This doesn’t include some of the differentiation steps that may be most important for your learning, but it’s still a useful brief review.

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. Can be done in a chair, but the movement of the head is different (chin and pubic bone come toward each other as you roll back on sitbones to “slump” and look down).
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. Can also be done in a chair, but the head will nod up instead of down.
3. Gently, slowly alternate.

NOTE: Short descriptions of movements and body parts like this aren’t a Feldenkrais lesson on their own. Your ability to learn and benefit from them relies entirely on your playful curiosity, the slow, smooth and easy quality of your movements, and the clarity of your attention and rests.

This audio recording is found in Legacy and Alternate Lessons, which features other versions of some of our recordings, available exclusively to our Patrons.

It’s also listed as an alternate lesson in our Pelvic Floor: Less Is More course

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

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Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

After review and requests from listeners for shorter Pelvic Floor lessons I decided to rename, re-edit, and split this lesson and into Differentiating the Pelvic Floor Part 1 (35 min, Patrons) and Part 2 (25 min, Patrons).

Taking a break between these two halves is a better way for most people to study this lesson.