Two Sitbones, Two Sides of the Pelvic Floor (31 min, Patrons)

Chair-seated. Get to know your sitbones (illustration in the Curiosities tab), then sense that you have two diaphragms, and discover more awareness and control of your pelvic floor through gentle weight shifting experiments. Feldenkrais lessons for the pelvic floor can be very helpful if you have concerns about continence, digestion and elimination, or sexual function. They also typically benefit breath, balance, and walking, and more.

31m

Before you begin read this for practical tips and your responsibilities, and check out Comfort & Configuration below.

Recorded live in a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) class, this lesson is copyright Nick Strauss-Klein, for personal use only.

Tip 3 – Head Support

Study tip: It helps to have a large bath towel nearby when you start a lesson. You can fold it differently for comfortable head support in any configuration.

Tip – Comments

Project tip: Leave a lesson comment below! It’s a great way to give feedback or ask a question, and it helps google find us so we can achieve The Feldenkrais Project’s vision!

Tip – Pause the recording

Study tip: If you’re really enjoying a movement and want to explore longer, or you just need a break for a while, pause the recording!

Tip – Technical Difficulties

Tech tip: If you have any trouble with the audio player, reboot your browser. That solves most issues. If not, please contact Nick.

Browser/device size and audio player

Tech tip: On mobile? Depending on screen size, the audio player appears differently. Try landscape mode or start playback then use your phone’s audio controls.

Tip – Complete the Movement

Study tip: Complete one movement before beginning the next. You’ll improve faster if there’s enough time between movements that you feel fully at rest.

Tip 1 – Interrupted?

Study tip: Interrupted or don’t have enough time? You can return to the lesson later today or tomorrow. Read how best to continue your learning on our FAQ page.

Tip 4 – Padding

Study tip: Comfort first! Carpeted floors usually work well, but it’s great to have an extra mat or blanket nearby in case you need a softer surface in some configurations.

Tip 5 – Discomfort

Study tip: If a configuration or movement causes any increase in discomfort, or you feel you just don’t want to do it, don’t! Make it smaller and slower, adapt it, or rest and imagine.

Tip – LESSS is more

LESSS is more: Light, Easy, Small, Slow, & Smooth movements will ease pains and improve your underlying neuromuscular habits faster than any other kind of movement, no matter who you are or what your training is!

While we offer 52 free lessons, this one's just for our Patron-level donors. You can preview the lesson notes and comments below, but to access the audio you’ll need to join The FP as a Patron. Learn more

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You’ll need a hand towel and a firm, level, non-rolling chair. Kitchen or dining room chairs often fit the bill. If your chair is solid wood you may want to cover it with a bath towel folded once or twice, to make it more comfortable to press your sitbones into.

Many movements of this lesson resemble a Kegel exercise, but they are intended to be far gentler and slower than how Kegels are usually taught.

It’s common to need a bathroom break in pelvic floor lessons, and to feel emotional responses as the pelvic floor changes. Pause and take breaks as needed.

Check the Curiosities tab for illustrations of sitbones and the breathing diaphragm, and to learn more about healthy pelvic floor function.

Sometimes people are surprised by how relatively close to their midline the sitbones are:

 

sit bones sitting

Here’s an illustration from Alexander Technique London to help you find your sitbones.

 

Regarding the “two diaphragms” mentioned early on, check out this gif animation of the breathing diaphragm. It’s vaulted when relaxed, then flattens down as it contracts when we inhale. This increases the pressure inside your abdomen, that in turn can create sense that the pelvic floor swells downward as you inhale, if we’re soft and sensitive enough to feel it.

After doing this lesson or others like it (see the Related Lessons tab) 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.

 

About the pelvic floor, and Kegels

In addition to being related to issues of continence, digestion and elimination, and sexual function, the pelvic floor is connected to all other actions. Ideally it is dynamically changing every moment, adapting to and assisting everything we do, just like breathing and balancing.

As discussed in the lesson, 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. When the efforts are intense, and/or we’re already chronically tight, we can’t sense and control our muscles clearly.

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 the variability of your pelvic floor tone 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.

We recommend studying the lesson with the audio version above if you’re a Patron-level donor. It’s been edited and reordered for significantly better clarity.

Member-level donors can access the original Zoom lesson recording as part of our May 2022 Free Your Pelvis Zoom event replay.

The Zoom discussion afterwards is worth a listen for all donors!

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

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3 Comments

  1. joan davis on May 5, 2023 at 1:37 am

    Shorter lessons for the pelvic floor really works for me. I love the slower pace and the ’less’ of it.
    More of this please. Thanks so much

    • Nick Strauss-Klein on May 5, 2023 at 9:19 am

      Glad you liked this! I agree. I felt the same sense as I reviewed our full-length pelvic floor lesson recently. Shorter options coming soon!

  2. Geri Destasio on May 13, 2023 at 8:59 am

    Great lesson! Thanks! So important to tune into the tension in our pelvic floor that we do not know we have!

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