The pelvic floor is literally the foundation for our whole body: it sits at the bottom of our torso and forms the floor for all our organs. It serves as the base for our core musculature and plays a crucial role in our overall postural and functional health.
Because of this, when the pelvic floor is not functioning correctly, your body’s foundation can’t support you in your day-to-day-movements. This lack of support can manifest as incontinence, pelvic pain, prolapse (for women), prostate problems (for men), and even low back pain.
In addition to its crucial physical role, the pelvic floor is also the basis for our root chakra: it is the foundation upon which we build our lives. Imbalance in this area can leave us with not only physical side effects, but psycho-emotional ones as well.
With age, pelvic floor issues become increasingly common. Lack of exercise, weight issues, or poor movement habits often start to catch up to us as we get older in the form of pelvic pain, prolapse, prostate problems, or incontinence.
The additional loss of muscle tone that comes with age can compound these issues: we lose 5% of our muscle tone with every decade of our life as part of the natural aging process. In addition, poor posture, excess stress, sexual abuse, disease, and trauma can lead to pelvic health deterioration for both women and men. For women, childbearing and childbirth can overstretch ligaments, prolapse organs, or create muscular imbalances.
Fortunately, yoga offers a uniquely beneficial way to work with the pelvic floor through attention to the subtle movements that occur in asana and specific breathing practices. Unfortunately, approaching yoga with ignorance of the pelvic floor and an overemphasis on strength can make pelvic floor problems worse.
In this online course, yoga therapist Donna Brooks will discuss how we can use yoga to restore the health of the pelvic floor and prevent common problems. You will learn natural gentle and sequential movements and targeted yoga asanas to develop pelvic floor health in a balanced way.
If you are prone to pelvic pain, weakness, prolapse, injury, or just want to keep your pelvis and the force of grounded root energy that comes with a healthy pelvic floor, this course will help you discover natural, gentle and sequential movements to balance and heal the pelvic floor. Learn the facts behind common pelvic-floor health myths that can ultimately weaken your pelvic floor (often under the guise of strengthening it). Learn how to build pelvic floor health and restore function to prevent or improve common issues.
What You Will Learn
- How to determine if the muscles and fascial layers of your pelvic floor are too tense, even if you are prolapsing
- Proper diaphragmatic and pelvic floor breathing to promote strength, elasticity, and support for Kegels and Mula Bhanda
- Balanced, safe, and pleasant asana that encourages the natural pelvic slings of your body to support your organs and balanced muscle use
- The importance of non-pelvic floor muscles such as the obturator, glutes and psoas in pelvic floor health
- How to isolate and understand the three layers of pelvic floor muscles and use the different sections of the diamond shaped quadrant in asana to balance your pelvic floor
- Integrated pelvic movement and posture support your pelvic floor
- What the rhythms of your pelvic bones are and how they support healthy elasticity of the pelvic floor
- How and why pelvic floor function and tone is crucial for us to understand as yoga practitioners
This Course also Includes:
- Yoga practice video: Enjoy a yoga practice that Donna designed specifically for this course!
- Recordings of All Webinar Sessions: It’s generally acknowledged that many people only retain 10-20 percent of what they learn in a workshop. You will get access to the recordings of all webinar sessions – both MP3 (downloadable) and MP4 (streaming online), enabling you to go back and listen to the workshop as many times as you like.
- Transcripts of All Sessions: Ever wanted to refer to a certain part of a course? Even the best note takers miss a point every so often. With the transcripts of the webinar sessions, you can go back and refer to particularly important passages or clarify sections you were in doubt about.
This course qualifies for 3 CEs with Yoga Alliance.
