One of the most sorely neglected areas of the body is the pelvic floor. Most people don’t even know what it is and what it does, and yet it affects almost all aspects of your daily life.

Your pelvic floor gives you control over your bladder and bowel. It also allows you to have pain-free and pleasurable intercourse.

Those feats are already substantial, but the pelvic floor does so much more than that. And if anything goes haywire in that section of your body, you will feel the ripple effects—from your breathing to your mood.

Let’s go through the little-known ways the pelvic floor affects you and discuss strategies to help you maintain a healthy pelvic floor.

Anatomy of the Pelvic Floor

Throughout my practice, I’ve noticed that there is a general lack of awareness about the pelvic floor among my patients. So, before we dive into how the pelvic floor affects you, let’s establish a rudimentary understanding of its anatomy.

The pelvic floor is also called the pelvic diaphragm. The latter is a more accurate representation of its shape, which resembles a hammock.

This hammock is attached to the pubic bone in the front and the tailbone in the back. It supports all the structures above it, which includes your genitals, bladder, bowel, rectum, and anus.

It is composed of three layers of muscle and fascia. The deepest layer is the endopelvic fascia, the middle is the levator ani muscle, and the outermost is the superficial sphincters.

If you can’t remember their complicated names, it’s alright. What you do need to keep in mind is how they work together to:

• keep your pelvic organs in place,
• support, protect, and nourish your pelvic organs,
• control your urination and defecation, and
• help you achieve an orgasm.

The most well-known symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction—organ prolapse, incontinence, lack of libido—are related to these functions. But just because you don’t experience these does not mean your pelvic floor is in optimal shape.

Let’s explore the lesser-known signs of pelvic floor dysfunction in the next section.

How Pelvic Floor Dysfunction May Manifest in Your Body

Weak Arm and Leg Movements

It may surprise you that the pelvic floor is a part of your core. It’s named as such because it is the bottommost part of your abdominopelvic cavity. That means the pelvic floor is involved in everything the core does—which is a lot!

One of its functions is proximal stability for distal mobility. You need a stable core to effectively transfer force from the lower body to the upper body, and vice versa. That’s why your core stiffens up ever so slightly to keep your torso steady when you move your arms and legs.

Racquet sports are a great way to visualize this force transmission. Returning a tennis ball requires you to step back, rotate your torso, and then swing your arms to move the racquet. If you have an unstable trunk, you will lose much of the force from your lower body before it reaches your upper limbs.

Your pelvic floor contracts with abdominal muscles and fascia to prevent this from happening. Right before you move your limbs, your pelvic floor and diaphragm involuntarily contract. This automatic reaction raises intraabdominal pressure (IAP), increasing tension in your abdominal walls. Your ab muscles and glutes are also activated to stabilize your core.

If you lack power in your limbs, a dysfunctional pelvic floor may be to blame. Too little tone in the pelvic floor hampers core stability, while too much tone raises IAP to a degree that puts too much pressure on your organs.

Difficulty Breathing

You likely don’t notice it because it’s so automatic, but your entire core works in synergy to facilitate respiration. The pelvic floor, in particular, plays a significant role in this process.

When you breathe in, the diaphragm flattens and moves downward, exerting pressure on your organs. Your pelvic floor lengthens and moves downward to accommodate this pressure and protect your organs. To help you breathe out, the pelvic floor and other abdominal muscles contract (or rebound, as I call it), returning the diaphragm to its dome-like shape.

Studies show that contraction of the pelvic floor helps activate various abdominal muscles. The co-contraction of these structures increased respiratory capacity.

These findings show that a healthy pelvic floor leads to better breathing. Better breathing allows you to excel in activities requiring breath support. On the flip side, a weak or tight pelvic floor results in altered breathing patterns, detrimental to singing, dancing, all athletic endeavors, balance, and posture.

Hip and Back Problems

The fascia and ligaments of the pelvic floor are connected to many other parts of the body. My patients are often surprised to learn that pain and irregular movement patterns in distant body parts (like the jaw and neck) can stem from pelvic floor dysfunction.

The hips and back are especially susceptible to issues stemming from the pelvic floor because they are so adjacent.

The deep rotators of the hip are linked to the obturator fascia of the pelvic floor. These muscles provide secondary support to the pelvic floor and influence the position of the pelvis. Weakness or tightness in the pelvic floor alters this dynamic, leading to abnormal joint loading and, consequently, pain.

The tailbone also serves as an important attachment point for all components of the pelvic floor. Tightness in the pelvic floor can alter the position of the tailbone, causing pain and restricting mobility in the lower back. Additionally, weakness in the pelvic floor places stress on the lower back to stabilize the core and spine.

The hips and lower back also suffer from referred pain when specific muscles in the pelvic floor are overused or have excess tension. Thus, I can’t emphasize this enough: you cannot have healthy hips or a healthy spine without a healthy pelvic floor.

Decreased Vagal Tone

An aspect of the pelvic floor often overlooked is its rich innervation. So many nerves pass through and are stimulated by the pelvic floor. The list includes the following:

• glossopharyngeal nerve: controls swallowing and contributes to taste
• accessory nerve: helps you shrug your shoulders and rotate your head
• hypoglossal nerve: enables you to move your tongue

Perhaps the most consequential of the nerves branching out to the pelvic floor is the Vagus nerve (really 2 nerves). They are the major two-way channel of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body’s ‘rest and digest’ switch. It keeps your essential bodily functions—like your heartbeat, breathing, and digestion—up and running. It also regulates your mood and sleep.

The vagus nerve innervates the diaphragm and, as recently discovered, the pelvic floor. The movement of the pelvic floor and diaphragm facilitates the proper function of the vagus nerve.

That’s one of the reasons why deep, slow, full-body breathing. Recent research shows that recruiting the pelvic floor during inhalation boosts the positive effect of slow-paced breathing on cardiac vagal tone, which is a stress marker.

Treating Pelvic Floor Dysfunction through Exercise

The good news is there is much you can do to treat and prevent pelvic floor dysfunction. A regular and effective workout program is one of the ways you can help your pelvic floor bounce back.

The Rev6 Pelvic Floor Fitness program upgrades your pelvic floor through exercises that promote length and rebound. It also incorporates resonance breathing into the workouts. This powerful combination will:

• encourage fluid and powerful movement,
• increase respiratory capacity,
• eliminate pain,
• increase pleasure and
• improve mood.

Born from training male pro baseball players, the Rev6 Pelvic Floor Fitness program will also enhance your efficiency, explosiveness, and reaction time and induce the flow state.

I invite you to enjoy our Pelvic Floor Fitness classes and benefit from the power of your pelvic floor! Get started with a class pack or explore our membership options: https://rev6.fit/classes/