UNDERSTANDING YOUR PELVIC FLOOR - including learning to let go 10 exercises to help relax your pelvic floor. Downloadable PDF.

Understanding Your Pelvic Floor

A practical, physiotherapy-led guide to understanding how your pelvic floor works — and how strength, coordination and relaxation all play a role.

Your pelvic floor is involved in much more than bladder control. It works with your breathing, abdominal muscles and the rest of your body as you move, exercise, lift and go about everyday life.

But pelvic floor health isn’t simply about making the muscles stronger.

This guide helps you understand what your pelvic floor does, how it responds to pressure and movement, and why it needs to be able to both contract and relax.

Inside, you’ll learn about:

• What the pelvic floor is and what it actually does
• How the pelvic floor supports your bladder, bowel and pelvic organs
• Why pelvic floor function is about more than strength
• Strength, endurance, coordination and relaxation
• How breathing and pressure changes affect the pelvic floor
• How to find and correctly contract your pelvic floor
• The Knack — using your pelvic floor during coughing, sneezing, lifting and other pressure-producing activities
• Why pelvic floor symptoms don’t always mean your muscles are weak
• What it can mean when your pelvic floor is doing too much
• How exercise, running and lifting can affect pelvic floor symptoms
• Practical ways to think about common pelvic floor symptoms
• When it may be helpful to seek an individual assessment

PLUS: Learning to Let Go

Included with the guide is a 10-exercise pelvic floor relaxation and breathing library designed to help you explore relaxation, breathing and gentle movement.

The exercises include gentle breathing and movement practices such as rib expansion, Book Openers, Cat–Cow, Child’s Pose, Happy Baby, Deep Squat, Figure-4 and Puppy Pose.

The aim isn’t to force a stretch or follow a rigid program. Instead, the library provides simple exercises you can use to practise breathing, relaxing and reducing unnecessary tension through the pelvic floor.

A simple starting point for understanding your pelvic floor

Whether you’ve been told to strengthen your pelvic floor, you’re experiencing symptoms, you’re returning to exercise, or you simply want to understand how this part of your body works, this guide provides a practical foundation.

Created by Her Body, Explained.