Overactive pelvic floor muscles are not something that’s easily noticed by people day-to-day, in fact, many people notice a lack of tension in their pelvic floor and often exercise to increase strength in the pelvic floor (think kegel exercises).
However, people with vaginismus often have an overactive and tight pelvic floor, or even trigger points or specific areas of tension within the muscle that can feel painful when pressed.
The goal with pelvic floor exercises is to combine simple stretches with mindful breathing techniques to loosen the muscles in and around the pelvis and relax the pelvic floor.
So, you probably skipped the breathing exercises topic thinking you knew everything there was to know about breathing? Go back, because you’ll need to combine these techniques with the pelvic stretches below.
Ok, now you’re all caught up on how to breathe (lol ok thanks). Below you will find a number of simple stretches that are designed to loosen the pelvic region. Follow the stretching plan and hold each stretch for 30 seconds as you breathe mindfully into your belly.
Remember to stretch both the left and right sides. These exercises will help most when done every day and most GINAs find it useful to do these in the evenings as it relaxes them before bed and loosens their bodies from a busy day.
Remember – the most important exercise is an internal one, contracting and relaxing your pelvic floor. Kinda hard to do.
TO NOTE! (aka important)
These exercises should not cause pain, if you do feel pain visit your doctor or physiotherapist, they can investigate further or give you some alternative stretches to suit your body.
If you find these hard to do based on just the images, go ahead and find a video on YouTube by searching ‘pelvic floor guided relaxation’ or search for one of the poses named above.
This will ensure you are holding and performing the stretches properly and will help you get into a routine if you have never tried this before.
Further along, we will discuss physiotherapy in more detail, but any good pelvic floor physio will teach you these stretching and breathing techniques. These are the basics baby, you gotta be able to tango before you can foxtrot!