THE PROBLEM WASN’T THAT I NEEDED TO TRY HARDER

In the years that followed, my body was giving me plenty of signs that something wasn’t right. I dealt with debilitating low back and tailbone pain, constipation that didn’t make sense despite doing all the “right” things with my diet, frequent UTI-like symptoms my doctor couldn’t get to the bottom of, painful sex, a significant diastasis and a grade 2 rectocele prolapse.

Because I was a Pilates instructor, I did what came naturally to me. I worked harder. I did more core work, more strengthening, more trying to fix the problem.

Eventually, through further pelvic health education, I learned about pelvic floor hypertonicity and suddenly so much of my own experience started making sense.

My pelvic floor wasn’t simply weak. It was too tight

I had spent years thinking strength was the goal without understanding that a healthy pelvic floor also has to be able to fully release. That realization completely changed the way I thought about my own body and, eventually, the way I taught.

Sometimes stronger isn’t what your body needs.

That's when I started asking a different question:

That question changed my work because I stopped looking at the pelvic floor as an isolated group of muscles that simply needed to be strengthened. I started looking at the bigger picture.

How is she breathing? What is her ribcage doing? What is happening at her hips and with the way she holds herself throughout the day? Is her pelvic floor actually able to lengthen and release, or is her nervous system constantly keeping her body braced and guarded?

Most importantly, what else might we be missing because everyone has been so focused on making her stronger?

YOUR PELVIC FLOOR DOES NOT EXIST IN ISOLATION.

Giving an already tight pelvic floor more Kegels can be a little like telling someone who walks around with her shoulders permanently shrugged up to her ears that what she really needs is more shoulder shrugs. There are times when the body needs to learn how to let go before asking it to work harder.

THEN I STARTED SEEING THE SAME STORY IN OTHER WOMEN

This was when I realized my experience wasn’t just about me.

Women started coming to me after doing everything they thought they were supposed to do. They’d been doing Pilates for years. They had strong cores, they exercised, ate well, did their Kegels, and some had seen multiple specialists.

Yet they were still dealing with painful sex, tailbone pain, urinary urgency, constipation, leaking, low back pain or that persistent feeling that something in their pelvis just wasn’t right.

Again and again, I heard some version of “I’ve tried everything.”

And underneath that was often the fear that maybe there was no hope for them.

But trying everything doesn’t necessarily mean your body has been given what it actually needs. Sometimes we’ve spent years trying to solve the wrong problem, and that is the work I became obsessed with: looking for the connections that may have been missed rather than giving a woman one more random exercise to try.

I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE BODY, NOT JUST YOUR PELVIC FLOOR

The deeper I went into this work, the clearer it became that pelvic floor rehabilitation involves far more than a list of exercises.

Breathing, hip mobility, posture, movement patterns, core coordination and the nervous system can all be part of the picture. So can learning how to release before asking the body to strengthen again.

I also began hearing something from women that went far beyond physical symptoms. Women would finish release sessions and tell me they’d unexpectedly become emotional. Some described crying afterward or feeling as though their bodies had finally let go of something they’d been holding for a very long time.

Those experiences made me even more interested in the relationship between our physical bodies, our nervous systems and what we’ve lived through. I don’t believe every emotional experience needs to be turned into a diagnosis or given a neat explanation, but I do believe women deserve to be treated as whole human beings rather than a collection of disconnected body parts.

Because ultimately, I care about what becomes possible in a woman’s life when her body is no longer dictating what she can and cannot do.

Over two weeks, I teach women how to begin releasing and retraining their pelvic floor while looking at the wider system around it, including breathing, ribcage mobility, hip mobility, movement patterns, core coordination and nervous system down regulation.

The goal isn’t to keep your pelvic floor permanently relaxed. It needs to be able to contract when contraction is appropriate, release when release is needed, and work as part of your whole system rather than constantly fighting against it.

Today, more than 3,500 women have joined the Tight Pelvic Floor Fix.

The messages are what stay with me, though. The woman who realizes for the first time that she can actually feel her pelvic floor moving differently. The woman whose urgency starts changing. The woman who can sit more comfortably. The woman who has spent years thinking something is wrong with her and finally has another way of understanding what she’s experiencing.

BECAUSE I DON’T WANT YOUR PELVIC FLOOR TO RUN YOUR LIFE

I care about the symptom that brought you here, but I care even more about what that symptom has been taking away from you.

I want you to be able to sit through dinner without constantly thinking about your tailbone, go somewhere without immediately locating the nearest bathroom, get back into the gym without wondering whether you’re making things worse, and have sex with your partner without bracing for pain.

I want you to be able to move, lift, travel, play with your kids, laugh and live in your body without constantly monitoring it.

I DON’T JUST WANT YOU TO DO BETTER PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES. I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR BODY IS ACTUALLY ASKING FOR.

That’s the bigger picture I’ve spent years learning to see.

“SHE’S THE ONE PERSON WHO GETS IT”

If there’s one reputation I want to earn with every woman who finds me, it’s that.

Not because I have a magical exercise nobody else knows, or because I believe one online program replaces individualized medical care or the right specialist when you need one. I want that reputation because I’m going to keep looking at the connections, asking why and challenging the assumption that every pelvic floor problem needs more strengthening.

I want women who have been told they’ve done everything right to know that persistent symptoms don’t automatically mean they’ve reached the end of the road. There may simply be more of the picture left to understand.

SOMETIMES STRONGER ISN’T WHAT YOUR BODY NEEDS.

If you’ve spent years strengthening, stretching, changing your diet, seeing specialists or trying to ignore symptoms that aren’t going away, I created the Tight Pelvic Floor Fix for you.