How To Find Your Pelvic Floor

This is part 1 of Fantastic Pelvic Floors & Where to Find Them.

The pelvic floor. It’s kegels, right?

In my beginner’s Pilates classes we often spend time learning how to find your pelvic floor. This part of the class usually results in scrunched faces and eyes rolling upwards as people try to connect with the elusive muscles. And how do you know if you’re doing it right, anyway? You can’t SEE the instructor’s demonstration, and she can’t see your effort to check it! So, I decided to write this “how to find your pelvic floor” guide to solve that problem.

Both men and women have a pelvic floor and benefit from using it. This blog includes information relevant to both genders.

This guide uses a combination of anatomical terms and informal language. This is to help you identify and understand your own pelvic floor through the jargon.

So, let’s look closer at the pelvic floor.

It’s a collection of up to 18 muscles (depending how you count them) that line the base of the pelvis.

Their most important role is to support the organs that sit within the pelvis (e.g. bladder, rectum and others). When we cough, sneeze, lift heavy objects, or vomit, that intra-abdominal pressure increases, and pushes the pelvic organs down. The pelvic floor’s job is to stop the organs from being pushed out during strain (prolapse).

The pelvic floor is also key to maintaining continence, so you can move through life without wetting yourself. Lastly, they support the presenting part of a baby during natural birth, and help the baby maintain a birthing position.

It’s normal not to know how to find your pelvic floor.

Here’s 3 reasons why the pelvic floor is not discussed enough:

1. It’s a bit embarrassing. The pelvic floor is all to do with continence, wee, and wind. Not exactly dinnertime conversation!

2. When it’s working well, it works automatically. You don’t HAVE to think about lifting your pelvic floor when you cough, it just happens.

3. You can’t see it. The pelvic floor is out of sight and out of mind.

But here’s the thing. Even though it’s normal not to know, you’re missing out on a whole range of benefits if you don’t learn to connect with your pelvic floor.

• The pelvic floor weakens over time, with some injuries, and during menopause. It’s never too late to learn how to use it though! Like any other muscle, the pelvic floor muscles strengthen with use.
• Strengthening your pelvic floor contributes to an easier birth and postpartum recovery.
• The pelvic floor is key in sexual function, so knowing how to control it makes for fun and pleasurable sex. If you experience pain during sex, you should consult a women’s health physiotherapist.

Are you ready to try something practical?

Here’s how to find your pelvic floor.

Take a seat, somewhere you can sit upright. Make sure you’re sitting tall, with your feet firmly on the ground, and can feel your sit bones against the chair.

Now, bring your finger to your belly button. Trace downwards as if along the fly of your jeans until you reach your clitoris or the base of your penis.

This is the front of your pelvic floor.

Next, trace further still.

Women: trace from your clitoris, past your vagina, to your tailbone, just above your anus (bumhole). Notice you’ve traced a hammock shape from the front to the back of your body.

Men: trace from the base of your penis (underneath), along your perineum (gooch), to your tailbone, just above your anus (bumhole). Notice you’ve traced a hammock shape from the front to the back of your body.

This is the base of the pelvic floor.

Now, men and women, notice the base of your sit bones as they rest on the chair.

These are the sides of the pelvic floor.

See how these three points create a diamond shape in your undercarriage area. The whole area that you have drawn is your pelvic floor.

Notice that the pelvic floor encompasses the urethra (wee hole), rectum (bum hole), and vagina for women.

Controlling the pelvic floor gives you control over the hole!

Visual Prompts

Here are some great videos and diagrams to help you visualise the pelvic floor.

For Women: click here and scroll to the second image. This shows you a bird’s eye view of the pelvic floor oriented with the spine at the bottom of the picture.

I hope this article has helped you understand how to find your pelvic floor. It’s important to keep the pelvic floor strong to support the body for daily life as well as during special life events such as pregnancy and menopause. 

See you on the mat soon!

Jennie