Did you know that stress can affect the Pelvic floor?

When something that we perceive as a stressor triggers us, a response cascades throughout our system, we move into a ‘fight or flight’ nervous system and adrenaline acts on our pelvic floor causing the muscle to tighten.

Historically stress meant we needed to run from predators, so a tighter pelvic floor acted to keep the bladder neck sealed, but modern-day stressors, such as kids, work, family worries, traffic, … anything can trigger us, and cause a physiological increase in tone.

Over time, if stressors keep bombarding us, the pelvic floor can remain ‘on’ with this increase in tone, and needs reminding to return to its normal resting state.

Birth can be a major stressor for our pelvic floor muscles, recently, a patient of mine declared that her vagina had PTSD!

This is why in TMP, we often include a well-being workout in our weekly lineup. It offers stretching of the pelvic floor and other key areas that become tight due to the demands of motherhood, and above all, it allows time to calm the mind, switching the nervous system back into the ‘rest and digest’ and allowing the pelvic floor some important downtime.