"What’s a pelvic floor?”

It’s that area of our body that we tend to refer to as “down there”, that part of our body that doesn’t get talked about very much.  Yet the pelvic floor is critical to our physical well-being and quality of life.

“The pelvic floor is one of the most neglected parts of the human body, largely because its function is unseen and unappreciated.” writes Dr. Magnus Murphy in Pelvic Health & Childbirth.

Basically, your pelvic floor is a set of muscles that forms a hammock from your pubic bone in front to your tailbone in the back.  Really, we should call our pelvic floor muscles our happy muscles.  Here’s why:

• They stop our organs – like our bladder, uterus and rectum –
  from falling out
• They support our hips and lower back so we can move comfortably
• They keep our pee and poo inside us
• They help us enjoy sex

Your pelvic floor is truly an amazing feat of anatomical engineering, according to Dr. Roger Goldberg, author of Ever Since I Had My Baby.  The pelvic floor muscles are strong enough to withstand the constant pressure of our own weight, plus the weight of a baby.  And they are flexible enough to allow a full-term baby to pass through!  It’s unfortunate that such a dynamic and crucial set of muscles gets so little attention.