Everyone has a pelvic floor.

What is a Pelvic Floor?

Everyone has a pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor is essential to your bowel, bladder and sexual function. It supports the organs inside your body and keeps urine, feces and gas inside until you're ready to let them go. It allows for penetration during sex and the passage of a baby during childbirth. It allows you to achieve and maintain an erection. The contractions of the pelvic floor produce orgasms. Your pelvic floor is the gatekeeper of your most basic human functions.

The pelvic floor is also very misunderstood and poorly examined. Until recently, people only thought of the pelvic floor in relation to having babies and doing kegels. The pelvic floor was not considered a contributor to pain, incontinence, constipation, sexual dysfunctions and related ailments which were solely treated with medicine and surgery. Eventually, therapists and other healers began to recognize that many common bowel, bladder and sexual dysfunction may be due to musculoskeletal issues rather than impairments of the organs involved. Many people have never heard of the pelvic floor or considered all the ways it impacts urinary, bowel, and sexual function. Because it is not taught in school or discussed in your doctors office, it can be a bit of a mystery. The field of pelvic floor therapy itself is relatively young and developing quickly as we continue to learn more about how the pelvic floor affects people’s function. Understanding the pelvic floor can unlock solutions to stubborn problems that are often left untreated or poorly managed.

Anatomy of the Pelvic Floor

Your pelvis is made of three bones and connects your spine to your legs. It is shaped like a bowl with a hole in it. When you put your hands on your hips, they are resting on the top of the bowl. The pelvic floor is a hammock-shaped group of muscles and fascia (connective tissue) that creates the bottom of the bowl. The muscles connect to the pubic bone in the front, the tail bone in the back, and the “sits” bones (two pointy bones that you can feel when you sit on a chair) on either side. The pelvic floor muscles have a number of functions.

  • Support your organs

  • Keep urine, feces, and gas from leaking out when you don’t want them to and allow them to escape when you do

  • Stretch to allow for penetration during intercourse and the passage of a baby during child birth

  • Engage to achieve and maintain an erection

  • Rhythmically contract to produce an orgasm

  • Important part of your “core canister” or the muscles that support and stabilize your trunk.

When treating issues related to pelvic floor dysfunction, everything from the rib cage to the knees must be considered and assessed. This includes the ribs, spine, pelvic bones, hips, and knees, the diaphragm, the abdominal, hip, and back muscles, genitals, bladder, urethra, rectum, uterus, ovaries/testicles, and the nerves that innervate these structures.

Image used with permission from Pelvic Guru®, LLC as a member of the Global Pelvic Health Alliance Membership (GPHAM)