Protect your perineum in everyday life

Protect your perineum in everyday life

Anatomy & postures

I am speaking here of situations in which the perineum receives too much pressure. Once it is ok, it is the repetition that can become problematic: the strong pressure repetitively received by the muscles and tissues of the perineum from the organs that are suspended above can with time distort them and make them ineffective.

Some situations causing this kind of pressure? Sneezing, laughing, talking loudly, shouting, hailing, singing, hiccupping, blocking breathing and “pushing” … but “what to do”?

Yoga leads us to refine our consciousness of our own body. Learn to recognize and feel the different muscles of the perineum and their action in you, exercise them on the mat, but also daily to find the right effort of tonic and muscular response to the events of every moment, but also relaxation because elasticity is just as important as the reactivity for this particular zone.

For example, imagine a rope connecting the bottom of your pubis bone (the bone in front of the pelvis) to the tip of your coccyx (our remaining tail?) and try to bring them closer together. Release gradually then completely, before restarting quietly again.

Then find your “sitting bones”, the ischiums, on which you may be now seating, and seek to bring them closer together. Release gradually then completely before resuming, then alternate.

And finally combine this with the previous action.

Below you will find a recording to practice this exercice. You can do it several times a day, it takes about 3 minutes. With practice you will stop making a funny face during the exercise and you will be able to train anywhere, anytime, even in the metro 😉

 

An exercise for your perineum

by La Minute Yoga

Download on iTunes

Protect your perineum in everyday life

What is the perineum?

Anatomy & postures

Physically, it is a kind of muscular hammock that forms the floor of our pelvis, and therefore of the trunk. It contains the viscera. Contrary to preconceived ideas, the perineum is not the prerogative of women, men also are endowed with this muscular set. But since it is open to the outside in women, it is a zone of frequent prolapse that makes more often talk about it.

Biomechanically, it acts in synergy with the diaphragm during breathing, responding to its lowering action on inhalation and return on exhalation.

This is also where mulabandha (the tendinous center of the perineum) can be activated.

Energetically, according to yogic tradition, it is the seat of the first chakra, muladara, linked to our grounding, our survival, our security.

Emotionally, it is a place « charged» especially for the woman, in which many tensions and traumas can be stored. Too much or not enough tonicity can disrupt pregnancy or childbirth.

It is important to take care of it, to protect it against chronic hyperpressure, but also against hyper or hypotonicity and therefore to work both its strength and its flexibility, in coordination with the muscles of the body that are synergistic (Who work together).

INHALE…….EXHALE…… Maybe you feel the effect of your breathing in your perineum? Try for a few breaths to feel this “hammock” receive light pressure from your organs, without forcing naturally 🙂