Can Yoga Help Your Pelvic Floor as You Age?
As estrogen levels drop during menopause, many women experience changes in their health—particularly with their pelvic floor. If you’ve noticed increased urination, leaking when sneezing or running, or discomfort during sex, pelvic floor issues may be the cause.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to strengthen your pelvic floor. Yoga can be beneficial when practiced correctly, with attention to your age and the exercises best suited for menopausal health.
What is Yoga?
Yoga is an ancient practice that comes from India, where it was a spiritual practice for thousands of years. However, it has long since become mainstream. It's considered a "meditative movement" practice because it combines meditation with physical movement.
Yoga has been shown to improve general wellness, help lose weight, and, yes, relieve menopause symptoms. Because it contains a variety of different movements and poses, yoga can be easily adapted for any health goal and for any level of fitness, even if you are mostly sedentary.
What is the Pelvic Floor?
The pelvic floor is a group of muscles and ligaments supporting your bladder, bowel, and uterus. These muscles extend from your pubic bone to the base of your spine. When functioning properly, they prevent issues like urinary and fecal incontinence and support your organs.
Pelvic floor issues are typically caused by childbirth, obesity, persistent constipation, lifting heavy weights, age and, yes, hormonal changes during menopause. These changes can weaken your pelvic floor. and cause issues with include:
- Stress incontinence - leaking urine when you jump, run, sneeze, or cough. This can also happen during sex.
- Frequent urination or urge incontinence - suddenly needing to urinate without warning.
- Pain during sex or itching and soreness of the vulva. This is associated with vagina dryness.
- Organ prolapse, which can be expressed as constipation or a heavy feeling in your vagina like you are sitting on an egg.
Pelvic floor dysfunction is more common as we age and it becomes more important to take good care of your pelvic floor.
The Importance of Pelvic Floor Strength as We Age
Menopause can cause an overall weakening of your pelvic floor muscles, leading to incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. If you have other risk factors, such as being overweight, having had multiple children, or occupational lifting, it's particularly important to work on pelvic floor strength.
Pelvic floor exercises can help maintain pelvic strength as you age, especially through targeted practices like yoga for incontinence. A strong pelvic floor reduces pain during vaginal intercourse and lowers the risk of stress incontinence during sex, which can be embarrassing and reduce desire. You may also want to use lube as many women produce less vaginal lubrication during and after menopause.
How Yoga Helps Strengthen the Pelvic Floor
Certain yoga poses target your pelvic floor muscles. They allow you to have more conscious control over your pelvic floor, intentionally contracting and relaxing it and coordinating it with your breath. This releases pelvic floor tension and strengthens them...like any muscle, they benefit from exercise!
Yoga can't fix pelvic floor dysfunction on its own, but it can help. The five poses that are best for pelvic floor are child's pose, reclining bound angle pose, happy baby pose, cat and cow pose (which are generally done alternating) and reclining twist. All of these help stretch and strengthen your pelvic floor.
If you don't have pelvic floor problems, doing these poses can help keep you from developing them. But you should practice safely, listen to your body, and consult with a teacher who knows how to help with pelvic floor dysfunction.
Implementing Yoga Into Your Routine for Pelvic Health
Before implementing yoga, talk to a pelvic floor specialist. They can give you other tips on how to strengthen your pelvic floor, which might include kegels, other pelvic floor exercises such as wall squats, and lifestyle changes. Talk to them about yoga and ask their advice on how to find the right instructor. Look for a studio that caters specifically to people with pelvic floor issues and/or has classes intended for menopausal women. Yoga has many different purposes, and you want an instructor who understands your issues and is knowledgeable about menopausal wellness in general.
These classes might also include techniques intended to help you lose weight and reduce stress. Always set realistic goals. You can't expect to regain your flexibility from your twenties overnight and, again, on its own yoga won't fix your pelvic floor problems—it needs to be part of an overall menopausal health regimen.
Incorporate appropriate poses into your daily routine, consulting with your therapist and your instructor. Your instructor will help you design a routine to help you keep things up between classes.
Remember that you can't stop when you get results. If you stop exercising your pelvic floor, it will start to get weak again. You want to make this practice sustainable, something you can keep doing for as long as possible.
Whether you're starting to experience pelvic floor dysfunction or looking for other yoga benefits for women in menopause, consider adding specific pelvic floor exercises to your routine for better pelvic wellness. Seek out an instructor who is familiar with menopausal health issues, especially if you are a beginner. It's never too late to start learning yoga, either!
However, especially if you are already experiencing significant issues, you should consult with your doctor or, even better, a pelvic floor specialist before starting a new exercise regimen. The same goes for anything active you want to add to your routine. You may be advised to do or avoid certain poses, especially if you have stress incontinence or similar symptoms.
