#7: How to improve your pelvic floor and enjoy better sex

Posted by kathryn on September 17, 2010

#7: How to improve your pelvic floor and enjoy better sex [ 19:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I recently interviewed Susan Gala who specialises in strengthenening the pelvic floor. What a find! She is already helping women avoid leakage and improve your sex life! This subject is so embarrassing and Susan handles it beautifully. Listen to the podcast – I am sure this will help you.

Susan Gala Interview – The Pelvic Floor

Hello, it’s Kathryn Colas here from SimplyHormones.com and today I’m talking to Susan Gala from pelvicfloorexercise.net about incontinence and how pelvic floor exercises can improve not only this much forgotten area of the body but how it can have a beneficial effect on your sex life too.

Susan is a lifestyle fitness and wellness professional, which includes being a Certified Stott Pilates practitioner and a licensed massage therapist and she’s been involved in the industry for over 25 years, so she knows what she’s talking about. Susan’s enthusiasm for maintaining healthy lifestyles and wellness is contagious! She’s devoted some time and expertise to a new website called http://www.pelvicfloorexercise.net as she understands the problems that can develop when we don’t look after this particular area of the body.

So, let’s talk to Susan, now. Hello, Susan and welcome.

Susan Gala: Hello Kathryn, it’s a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for having me.

KC: You’re most welcome it was a joy when I first found your details. I must say that, first of all I am most glad I found your website, I think it was through Twitter, one of those because what you’re doing is actually supporting what I’m trying to do.. In my professional life, of course, with simplyhormones.com, I’m always standing on my soapbox talking to women about incontinence and even vaginal dryness and what they can do about it. As you know it’s an area that’s acutely embarrassing for women to discuss with anyone, so to be able to interview you today is just brilliant and I hope all our listeners think so, too.

So, let’s start with some questions. We’ll go on and talk about your new specialist feminine fitness regime called Sexercise(R), in a little while but first of all can you tell us something about the pelvic floor and how it gets into such a bad state?

SG: The pelvic floor muscles can become very weak from life specific events which we need to be very aware of, such as pre and post-natal, menopause, the natural ageing process, obesity and oral nutrition, drinking excessive caffeinated fluids that irritates the bladder, the bowel and the nervous system; some medications can increase bladder dysfunction and, believe it or not, inactivity and what I mean by that is not being physically or sexually active.

The pelvic floor muscles form a balance or a foundation that supports the bladder, uterus and rectum and just like other muscles in our body, such as the biceps and triceps in our arms, the quadriceps and ham strings in our legs, that need to keep strong for flexibility and balance, the pelvic floor muscles also need to be strong.

KC: That’s quite interesting what you were saying, it’s not just an ageing process, it’s about diet and exercise and medication and all sorts of other things, too that you mentioned. So can you say why do we need to make sure it stays healthy and strong?

SG: We need to make sure that the pelvic floor muscles stay strong because it insures us from incontinence, it protects us from infection and also I think that while we’re looking at the big picture, most women have babies and that is the foundation or the bowl of the pelvic floor muscles that hold up the bladder, uterus and rectum, that forms the birthing canal and also it is a very sexual epicentre which enhances our sexual desire and if we don’t keep those muscles very strong and active during life specific events, they become weak but also as we age or experience menopause, the area can become very dry. So the pelvic floor is your foundation for all movement, all balance, all flexibility and alignment and what I mean by alignment, is posture. Think of it like a building. If we were an architect and were going to build a building, we have to first place it with a foundation; the same thing with the pelvic floor. The pelvic floor is our foundation it is our support system for the entire body and captures the problem.

KC: I think those women who maybe listening who have perhaps done some Pilates will understand about the central core and strengthening the central core but I must admit I never considered the pelvic floor to be at the very heart of it. So that’s very interesting.

SG: If you think of it, the pelvic floor begins at the base, which is basically the top of our thigh, in between our legs and it’s intertwined like also bungi-chords and muscles and ligaments and nerves – all in between the pelvic girdle so muscles forming all around the pelvic girdle in the lower part of the abdominal wall and the lower part of the back is intertwined with the pelvic floor muscles. In fact the lowest part of the abdominal wall the transversive abdominus muscle which I refer to as the TA muscle is right behind your belly button and it wraps around your torso in a horizontal way. It’s a very important muscle bed, connected to your pelvic floor muscles and the pelvic girdle along with a deep, deep, lower back muscle which is called the multipidus muscle. So those muscles also work in conjunction with pelvic floor muscles which are all connected to the pelvic girdle.

If you go over to my website, http://www.pelvicfloorexercise.net you can download a free e-book called ‘7 Secrets to a Sexier You’. There are illustrations in that downloadable booklet of the pelvic floor muscles and if you also go to my Fan Page on Facebook which is http://www.facebook.com/sexhercise, in my blog you will also see illustrations that you can download of the pelvic floor muscles.

KC: I’m going to put all these contact details in the transcription, Susan, so that will be great for women to find out more about that.

I also wonder if I could just move on a bit. It’s so interesting all this. I certainly find it so, that it’s an area of our body that we totally ignore on a daily basis except that we know we need to pee and that we might be giving birth and of course, you don’t realise til you get older that it starts drying out as well. Can you tell us what prompted you to get started on helping women in this particular area?

SG: That’s very interesting because in the past five years I’ve had a lot of clients and patients that have been in their fifty’s and they have experienced menopause, in a normal way that most women go through menopause and I didn’t have the experience that they’re having so they wanted to reveal a lot of their secrets to me and I spent time listening to them. We’ve had lunch, we’ve talked about different situations but all the time there was one area that I kept on hearing from all of them which would be a leakage problem. A leakage if they were laughing or giggling; a leakage if they were having sex; a leakage if they were going to a gym class and so it was quite obvious that these muscles they weren’t in touch with and quite frankly they didn’t realise that they had pelvic floor muscles. They didn’t realise they had them or where they are located.

KC: And it’s so embarrassing. It happened to me and straight away you think oh, my god I’m turning into my mother and that means I’m ageing and I’m not, I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t see, well I do see my mother but I don’t look as old as I think I should be if I’m experiencing incontinence. It’s such an awful stage to get to and not understanding it but you don’t have to be menopausal, either, as you’ve already said. It can happen following child-birth and other different times in people’s lives, perhaps following an operation of some kind but it’s just not knowing how you can deal with it and thinking that you’ve got to spend the rest of your life wearing special incontinence knickers and that’s just dreadful, so it’s so good that you’re talking about it in such a detailed way to us all.

SG: Thank you. Part of my programme is the anti-aging side too; it’s not jus creating a physical fitness pelvic floor programme but I want to educate women on where these muscles are; how to palpate certain muscles that we can palpate and to realise that during our daily activities, sitting, standing, walking, we use these muscles. We don’t realise it but if we’re seated right now, we’re sitting on those muscles! So how important is that to keep those muscles strong where a lot of people nowadays sit at their computer working…

KC: You could do these exercises without anybody else knowing, can’t you, really.

SG: Absolutely, yes.

KC: That’s the brilliant thing about it. Susan I understand that you’ve got your programme coming out on cassette and it’s also going to be downloadable. Tell us a bit more about that, what people can expect to see on that.

SG: Yes, this is very exciting: Sexhercise, which is my pelvic floor exercise programme is now world-wide and what I mean by that is that I offer a Virtual Studio on the website where I will guide you through the Sexhercise programme to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles. It’s offered as a membership programme so that will be a monthly investment of $19.99 with other bonuses. (American Dollars)

You could also purchase my audio programme which is my audio guide to Sexhercise Essentially, two c.d.’s with a colour booklet for $29.99 or it’s a downloadable programme for only $19.99.

KC: It sounds just what people need because it’s been said to me before that some people, some women don’t know where their pelvic floor is and they almost need 1:1 contact with a teacher to show them how to do it. Would you agree with that?

SG: Yes I do agree. In my Sexhercise basics programme, the entire programme is dedicated to learning where the pelvic floor muscles are, how to palpate certain muscles; how to breathe properly because breathing properly will help you activate these muscles. If you don’t breathe properly it is very difficult to activate these muscles and keep them strong, to restore them. I always suggest to everybody, whether you visit my website and I will be your guide throughout the basic process or if you see me in a live workshop, I reckon then that everybody spends a long time, at least a month or two understanding the basics because you understand how your body functions.

KC: I’ve also heard from the medical profession that sometimes it can take up to eight weeks for women to get their pelvic floor muscles back into good shape so they shouldn’t expect results straight away.

SG: No. And I say, eight to twelve weeks. I suggest just doing one programme at a time, eight to twelve weeks, two times a week. However, we should never stop, though, because this is now lifestyle. It needs to be integrated into your lifestyle. If you look at any recent research now, the baby-boomer generation is huge. It is the largest population right now. We are living longer and we want an alternative. Now what I mean by that is a holistic awareness; an holistic awareness of our lifestyle so that we can live a healthier lifestyle as we age.

KC: Yes. And it seems to me that we’ve got to go out and find it ourselves. It’s not being promoted within the medical industry. We’ve got to find it.

SG: Absolutely, I understand that and it’s going to be one of my challenges which in a way is very exciting to me because I am going to, as soon as my promotional video is finished, I’ve just produced a 10-minute promotional video, to send out to the medical community.

KC: Some of them are listening but most of them wear blinkers, don’t they. They just keep on writing prescriptions and just pass you by, don’t they but I think the tide is turning and I think women are letting the medical profession know that they want to know more about what is available to them to stay healthy and doesn’t necessarily cost a huge amount of money and it certainly doesn’t need a prescription being written does it?

SG: No. Absolutely. As soon as my promotional video is finished, I will upload it to my website. I have interviewed an acupuncturist and a physical therapist regarding incontinence and I highly suggest that women try and experience with this fitness programme dedicated to pelvic floor fitness; an acupuncturist or even a physical therapist who specialises only in women’s health.

KC: I think it’s almost worth not necessarily interviewing prospective therapists but at least finding out a lot about all the different people and what they specialise in before you start paying out your money because you may find that that person doesn’t really know how your body ticks or how you want to make it tick better, so you’ve always got to put some homework in there, haven’t you.

SG: Absolutely and we don’t have to be shy about doing that. This is our body. We only have one body but we have many parts to this body, so we’ve gotta make sure that it all works together as one unit.

KC: Yes. And I just think it is superb what you are doing, Susan and it really doesn’t matter anymore where you are based, anywhere in the world, that anybody can access this information and it doesn’t take weeks to be delivered to you. It’s instant, isn’t it, so I think that’s just fantastic.

I’m going to put all your information at the end of the transcript, Susan so that people can read more about how to contact you, about the cassettes and videos that you’re doing, so that they can get better access and certainly learn more, on a personal basis, in their own time, 24/7 about how to make their pelvic floor more healthier and as women are ageing, how to have a healthier sex life, because it’s all involved, isn’t it.

SG: Yes it is.

KC: OK. That’s brilliant. Thank you so much for talking with us today, Susan. We’ve covered a lot of information here and I can’t wait to send this out to everybody so that they can hear it.

SG: Thank you for having me.

KC: You’re most welcome.

Here are all those contact details, as promised: Susan Gala: Susan’s website has full details of her pelvic floor programme – http://www.pelvicfloorexercise.net and her Sexhercise programme and Kathryn Colas: You’ll find lots of information on menopause, including my own personal journey at http://www.simplyhormones.com and do watch ‘Menopause: The Movie’ highlighting how relationships are affected at menopause; here’s the link: http://www.simplyhormones.com/video.asp and do join me on my blog for my own views on what’s going on in the world: http://www.simplyhormones.com/mainpage.asp?pid=52 and feel free to comment on my ramblings and podcasts. Last but not least, do feel free to email me: kathryn@simplyhormones.com and follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/simplyhormones