MMLM Ep 22: Pelvic Floor with Kerry Picken

So the conversation that we had that I really wanted to talk about, I've told you before that in occupational therapy and in developmental pediatric psychology, we focus a lot on posture, core, balance, weight shift, and you brought up pelvic floor.

And so first I want to start with what is the pelvic floor and what are some misconceptions about it?

So I'm going to show you a picture because I think that a lot of people have no idea what the pelvic floor really is.

And this is something that I think is absolutely not taught enough to, I would say, 95% of women.

Sometimes it's discussed when you're having babies.

But a lot of the time, it's not really discussed at all.

And so basically, pelvic floor is a group of muscle at the bottom of your pelvis.

So if you think of your pelvis bones, you've got your two hip bones that everybody can feel.

And you've got your seat bones and your pubic bones.

So if you think of those bones, there's a group of muscle at the bottom.

And so here's a picture.

Those muscles, there's a lot of them.

That's a lot.

Right.

And so we can actually engage them separate from the rest of our body.

And those muscles are a huge part of the core.

And in my world, that is your abdominal muscles, your pelvic floor, your glute muscles, so your butt, and also your upper inner thighs, all that goes together.

Right.

And one way you described it to me one time is that it's a diamond, right? Nobody can see me, but it's a diamond like this and then down to your pubic bone, right? Yeah.

I mean, the pelvic floor is a large group of muscles, really, but the pelvic floor is also a large group of muscle just in a specific part of your body.

And we've talked about that somebody hit me November 18th last year, and it resulted in really bad back problems.

And I found that I didn't know women had loins.

And I thought

you read about them in like romance books, right? Here's the other misconception.

I'm glad you brought that up is that people think that men don't have pelvic floors.