Healing Pelvic Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and today I'm excited to introduce you to Jana Danielson. She's the founder and creator of the Cooch Ball, which she designed to help people with pelvic pain and pelvic floor issues. She's a master Pilates instructor as well, and she's going to be sharing with us how that Pilates inspired her to design the Kuchbah and help people around the world and to solve pain issues, specifically pelvic floor pain. Thank you so much for joining me today, Jana.

Dr. Donnie, thanks for having me.

Of course. And I think my listeners know how much I'm wanting to spread awareness to help women with all different health issues, including the pelvic floor. This is not something that we hear about very often, and I think it's one of those areas where people sort of like, don't talk about it. Is that what you find, like this sort of like, you know, this secret conversation that we need to open it up?

Exactly. I truly believe that women are really muted when it comes to pelvic floor health. I mean, the stat used to be one in three women deal with some sort of pelvic floor health issue. That stat is now one in two women. And yet when we talk about it, it feels very clinical or, you know, only for women in, in menopause. And, and I, I found this happening at my studio. I would do pelvic floor workshops and these are women. I mean, they would sell out all the time. It would be a packed house. I would be teaching, we would be, you know, doing Pilates based work. And then I would start talking about the pelvic floor. And there got this weird energy. Like no one would make eye contact with me. And I was like. And it happened over and over and over again. And I couldn't really understand why. You know, we can talk about so many other aspects of our health and wellness with our girlfriends. And yet when it comes to the pelvic floor, we're not sharing with our moms, with our sisters, or our best friends because it has this taboo kind of frequency around it. And so that's what I want to do is I want to start the conversation. Because like any other muscle in our body, the pelvic floor is exactly the same when it functions. It knows when to work, it knows when to rest, it has healthy blood flow, and there's some really simple things that we can be doing in a day that take minutes to support the pelvic floor and its health.

I love It. That's so wonderful. I'm so glad we're going to get to talk about that today. And let's start even just in, just to be really clear, what do we mean about the pelvic floor? Because that involves the bladder, the uterus, the whole pelvic area. How do you describe that when you, when someone says, what do you mean by pelvic floor?

So if you put your hands on your hips, all right, that is your pelvis. So there is a bony structure in our body called the pelvis, and it's like a bowl, all right? There's three bones that make up the pelvis. Inside the pelvis sits 14 muscles that make up the pelvic floor. And it looks like a hammock. All right? And functionally, this hammock holds up our pelvic organs, like you mentioned, the uterus, the bladder, the rectum. And also that muscle group works when we walk or jump or pee or poop or have sex or deliver a baby. Like Rid really is involved in many, many actions during our day. Now, what a lot of people don't realize is that the pelvic floor is actually a part of our core. So when you hear someone say, I need to Strengthen my core, 9 out of 10 people would think about getting on a mat and doing some, you know, some sit ups or some crunches or maybe some planks. But not many people would think about their pelvic floor as part of their core. And so what I like to, you know how I like to talk about the pelvic floor as part of the core is that if you had an apple, the top of the apple, the stem, let's say that's the top part. That's your diaphragm muscle. So the diaphragm is the main muscle of respiration. It sits here in the ribs. And when we watch a newborn baby breathe, their belly rises and falls with every breath. That is the most pure form of diaphragmatic breathing geographically. Located below that is the pelvic floor. All right? So that makes up the top and the bottom of the core. And then the cylinder of the core to complete the apple is made up of four abdominal muscles, those rectus abs, also known as the six pack, that live under the skin, that most of us chase, chase and chase, because we've been told that that means we're fit, that means we're healthy. If you can see those muscles. And, and I'm here to say that's actually furthest from the truth, because functionally, those rectus abs don't do a lot, okay? They sit us up out of bed, they stand us up when we're tying our shoes. And then deeper to that muscle are two oblique muscles, an internal and an external oblique, which together make like an X shape, like how you see on the front of, like a construction, those fluorescent vests, right? These muscles turn us. When we do a shoulder check, they help us reach for our purse from the floor. They, they side bend us and they rotate us deepest to that is a muscle called the transverse abdominis. This is the queen of the abdominals. She starts in our low back and wraps our entire body like a corset. This is the muscle that gives us posture, it protects our spine, it holds our organs, and it has a direct relationship with the pelvic floor. So when we are breathing diaphragmatically in through our nose and out through our mouth, not only are we taking in 600% more oxygen into our cells, not only are we giving a hug to that parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest, but we are also, through diaphragmatic breathing, waking up the pelvic floor. Because when the diaphragm is functioning, the pelvic floor that lives just below it is also going to start functioning. So that's how I like to talk about the pelvis, the pelvic floor, and how that muscle group relates. So many guys don't even know they have pelvic floors. They think women have pelvic floors because we can push babies out of our body. But every single beating heart on this planet has a pelvic floor.

That's amazing. And thank you so much for explaining that so well, you know, to just gain this awareness, because it's also to say that there's. There's no bones to hold our organs up. And so here we are functioning as humans under gravity, and as we age or if we're not exercising our pelvic floor and our core, that the gravity, of course, is going to have things dropping down. And I think this is why we hear so much about lately. Patients are saying to Me, oh, please, Dr. Donnie, how do I make sure that I don't have a prolapse. Prolapse bladder, prolapse uterus? They're hearing about prolapse out there a lot. I know. And that's a fear after age 50. So tell us more about that, like what's going on with this prolapse lab situation. And, and, and I know you're going to tell us more about what you do to help people prevent that sort of thing.

Yeah, well, you, I mean, you, you framed it beautifully. I mean, the simplicity of it all is we live on a planet with gravity, right? We throw a ball in the air, that ball is going to come back down to earth. And so over time, especially when we're not breathing like we should, and even just the fashion we wear, like, you know, we might wear a belt or a tighter pair of pants, the fancy shoes we like wearing, those impact our posture. And as soon as our posture is impacted by a high heel shoe, even a running shoe has a little bit of an incline to it. It shifts the weight of our body so that the pelvis isn't lined up beautifully between the feet and the head. We don't notice this. We don't get this alert, or we don't get a text from our body saying, hey, you're putting too much weight in your toes, which are turning off your glutes, turning on your quads, putting, putting your back in a, in an awkward position and putting unnecessary stress and tension on your pelvic floor. We don't get that text from our body, right? So over time.

Our high heels, our, you know, our fancy clothes, our slumpy posture when we sit, our tech neck, that actually all plays in to almost like the premature descending of those organs because they don't have the support of. All right, imagine having, you know, a house with, with not a strong foundation, right? I mean, the, the house is going to sink eventually if you don't have the foundation. You might live in a place where the soil is really like clay, or you might live in a, you know, place where it's a rocky foundation. You need to make sure that the base of that home is strong so that whatever happens over the next 10, 20, 30 years, that house is still going to stay still standing with its integrity. It's exactly the same thing with our body. So posture plays a huge role in, you know, supporting that hammock to make sure our organs stay up inside of us. Now, one thing that people sometimes forget or don't understand is that a strong pelvic floor is not a tight pelvic floor. And I want to touch on this a little bit because I think, and I'm sure many of your patients have come to you and, and said, like, Kegels. Aren't Kegels the answer? Because that's what we hear, right? Do your Kegels. You won't cough and sneeze and pee your pants a little bit. You won't have to wake up at night to go to the bathroom. But again, this is a bit of a myth for many women that we need to bust, because.

I heard a stat a couple months ago that said 70% of pelvic floor dysfunction is a hypertonic pelvic floor. Now let's learn what that means. All right, so if you give your kids sugar, they get hyper. Too much action, right? So in a hypertonic pelvic floor, there's too much tone, it's tight, it's tense. That muscle can't respond to a slip or it can't respond to a cough or a sneeze or laughing out loud. Right? So that muscle is essentially tight. The fibers don't move when the body needs it to.

Then we think, well, I got to do my Kegels, because that's what I need to do. I've been, you know, I've been told to do that to strengthen my pelvic floor. And the way most of us were taught Kegels were to, you know, hold and then let go or stop the flow of urine and start the flow of urine. Lots of different, know, metaphors we could use. And if you're one of those 70% of women that already have a too tight pelvic floor, it's like a rock wall. You're adding more rock to your wall, so you're actually making the issue worse. And then that becomes constipation, that becomes bloating, that becomes chronically tight hips and low back and cold, tingly feet, because the blood flow, like pelvic floor. I mean, maybe some of these things that I just mentioned, constipation, bloating, tight hips, low back, people would be like, what? That's. That's pelvic floor. And it very well could be rooted in pelvic floor dysfunction. Yeah.

Yeah, I see. I completely agree. And even what you're mentioning in terms of circulation to the legs and the feet, I see this where sometimes patients start to get swelling in their feet or swelling in their legs or tingling, and it comes back to, wow, there's got to be tightness in the pelvic floor that's preventing blood flow, preventing the nerves from functioning well. And so you start seeing symptoms in a different location that's actually related to the pelvic floor. So it might surprise you.

Exactly. And, you know, while we're talking about that, for men.

Erectile dysfunction is largely caused by a pelvic floor that's too tight. It's a pelvic floor issue. It's not an issue. That is like there's something wrong with that man's brain or, you know, that his body isn't working for him. It's simply if you had a tight shoulder, well, you wouldn't be able to, you know, throw a football to your kid or, you know, a ball to your dog. It's the exact same way. That muscle is not going to function. And because we can't see it or we forget it's there, it often just gets dismissed.

And a lot of women actually experience pelvic pain. So sometimes it is in the vulva area or pain with sex, as you mentioned before, where it's like it starts to become very painful and then you start to go, what am I going to do about this? Because it really can start affecting your life when you're in constant pelvic pain. And it is something again, where women and men who might be experiencing this feel like, how am I going to talk about this? Where's, where am I going to find someone to help me with this? Right?

Yeah. And you know, talking about pain, the, the main nerve that runs from the brain to the pelvic floor is called the pudendal nerve. And it has two big jobs, right? Its first big job, it's a motor nerve. So it's a communication highway. It sends messages to and from the pelvic floor. And it's also a sensory nerve. So it's the experience of everything from pleasure to pain and.

You know, going back to posture and hydration and movement.

Right.

You mentioned in the intro that, you know, this really stemmed from me becoming a Pilates instructor and, and trying to, to educate about this part of health and wellness. And it just kind of like being stopped in my tracks. There are, you know, the simplicity of how we come to. Yes, sometimes there's trauma, right. We have, we deliver a very large baby or we have, you know, even a motor vehicle accident or a big fall, right. Can create a lot of pain. Even something sometimes, you know, cycling or horseback riding or the way we work out at the gym, right. Can create nerve pain. And we, and we, we, we don't understand why, why it's happening. It's starting the conversation and realizing that in my opinion, I think a major factor in pelvic floor health, and we'll get into this with the Kuch bulb is blood flow, right? When we have a lack of oxygen rich, nutrient rich blood to any part of our body, any muscle, you know, nerve tissue, it needs to be nurtured, it needs to be healthy. Well, it needs, it needs our Blood flow. And that's where the idea for the cooch ball came from.

I love it. I definitely. I want to get into that. So, just to summarize, what's often happening that people don't realize is posture issues that are leading to, for at least 70% of people, tightness in the pelvic floor, and for others, weakness in the pelvic floor. But either way, it makes it so that the pelvic floor is not being as supportive, and. And then the blood flow is not as good as it should be. And so it just compounds into more and more, and it could show up as different health issues for different people. And. And I love. Yeah. That you're emphasizing that. You started really identifying this as an area that you could help with from being a Pilates instructor. And I. I always love to say that I love Pilates, too. I. I came to Pilates. I don't know. I think it's been over seven years ago because I was dealing with. With pain, myself, more joint pain and neck pain and headaches, and. And I really believe that Pilates has made such a huge difference in my life. I love it. I have another episode on how humans heal with a Pilates instructor as well, because I just feel like it's so important for people to understand that this is a. The thing with Pilates, as. As listeners are hearing from you, Jana, is that Pilates instructors learn anatomy and physiology. Pilates instructors learn how our bodies connected and interconnected and about our posture and how it affects our health. And I really think you've been demonstrating that from what you've been describing, like, that comes. That's what I experience as. As a Pilates instructor. And so you have this unique way of being able to see the human body and see the human experience and say, oh, this makes sense why people are having an issue here. Maybe just share with us this before we go into talking about the Kuch Bali. You're like, what. What made you inspired about Pilates and figuring all of this out?

Yeah. You know, I. So I did have my own pain journey in my early 20s, and for about two years was like a baton relay race, getting passed from doctor to specialist, doctor to specialist. And my pain.

Really encompassed all of me at some point. Right. Like, I could not get out of bed. I wanted to be a mom. I kept thinking, how will my body, first of all, be able to conceive and that, let alone carry a baby? And then how do I care for this baby when I can't even care for myself? Right. I was newly engaged to my high school sweetheart, and same thing. I thought, why? Why would I give this man a lifetime of, you know, of pain and suffering? And.

I love this story because I was in line at the grocery store and I saw Madonna on the COVID of. Of a fitness magazine, and it had the word Pilates on it. And I had no idea what this form of movement was. And I bought the magazine and I read it many, many times that night.

And what resonated for me was the simplicity of this movement.

That the health of your spine dictates the health of your body. And that was important to me because.

I was teaching fitness when I was going through university.

And that was, like, in the early to mid-90s. And it was in that era where it was like, no pain, no gain, right? You would do a spin class or a step class, and if you didn't leave a puddle of sweat on the floor, you'd better work down harder the next time. And I found myself with a body that looked healthy. But yet, when I went to my first Pilates class and these, I walked in and my ego was checking everybody out. I was like, I'm going to be the best. I'm going to be the best student in this class. I went to the front of the studio, set my mat down, and, you know.

It makes me giggle because, you know, Dr. Donnie, I. In about less than a minute into that class, I was like, I can't even breathe. Like, these people, I can't. They were doing a bridge, but their body looked like it was, like, just flowing, and I looked like rusty tin. And I was like, what is not happening in my body right now? So it was extremely humbling for me. And from that moment on, I realized that as I was searching for healing outside of me, that it was actually in me waiting to be tapped into, to trust my body again, to know my body again, to treat it in this beautiful way that Pilates taught me. So, you know, I went twice a week for 16 weeks and was off all my medications. And it just. There was this curiosity, like, I needed to know more. I was hungry to know more about the body and how Pilates works at. It's like those old Etch A Sketch. Do you remember, like, from the 80s, those Etch A sketches? Right, those. Yeah, yeah, I do. Like, Pilates takes your Etch A Sketch and it gently just shakes it and gets rid of the picture and allows you to start something new. And as, you know, as movement, as medicine, and. And as healing as it can be, those of you who know Pilates know that it can also kick your butt in a really major way. If that's what you, if that's what you want or what you need. But this beautiful simplistic movement of moving your spine by flexing it and extending it and rotating it and side bending it and inverting it, you know, if you're, if it's safe for you to do so.

It is just, you know, ingenious. And the work that Joseph Plotties did, you know, he, he said one of my favorite quotes from him is, you know, breath is the first and the last, last act of life, and somewhere in the middle, you know, we forget how to do it.

And that's what Pilates was for me, is it was a healing modality that made me realize that there are other people like me that may have fallen through the cracks of the medical system, that maybe, you know, maybe, maybe phys ed class or fitness has never been something that they connected with. But we're designed to move right? These bones, these muscles, there's joy and movement. And that's why, you know, I chose to get certified as an instructor and then certified as a master instructor so I could inspire new new instructors. And, you know, the studio that started in my basement with my friends and family turned into a 2000 square foot Pilates studio, which turned into a 9000 square foot Pilates studio, an integrated wellness clinic where I had clinicians, 60 clinicians and instructors that work together to help people heal. That's, that's what we did. And.

You know, that, I mean, my reformer is, is just a little, you know, a stone's throw away from me because it's, it's given me so much confidence. And.

That'S what I love about it, is that really it doesn't discriminate between age or gender or ability. It just, it just supports the human body in a beautiful way.

I know how scary it is to test positive for HPV virus. And I know it's even more concerning when your gynecologist tells you that all you can do is wait and see if it continues and if it causes abnormal cells. That's exactly why, as a naturopathic doctor and midwife, that I feel so passionate about helping women to be proactive about protecting themselves from HPV virus. I've been helping thousands of women for the past 23 years to do exactly that and to get HPV to negative and stay negative. And that's why I developed the say Goodbye to HPV online program where you can get access to My proven protocol from wherever you are in the world. So I hope you will come check out the say goodbye to HPV program, review the success cases and see if this is going to be a good fit to help you get your life back from hpv. Thank you for that description. I. I feel, I feel re. Inspired about it too. And I, and I, I love it too. I just see what a difference it makes. And yeah, you're right. Of all different ages. And I can see completely how it would have inspired you to think of the Kuch ball, like, as a way to extend the benefit of Pilates for something people can do at home and that then helps with this hypertonic muscles and lack of blood flow. So talk us through that connection. Talk us through the Kuch Ball and the. And it's sister ball and, and how people can, you know, what people can do to benefit from this.

Okay. So I was at a Pilates conference actually in 2015, and I went to a pre conference workshop that was all about the pelvic floor. Because again, I was just hungry for this knowledge.

You're like, this is perfect. This is exactly what I'm doing.

Right up my alley. Yeah. And so the urogynecologist who was teaching the pre conference workshop was talking about his research, and he did research, um, that showed first of all, that the pelvic floor doesn't work on its own. The pelvic floor works with three other muscles that he called the co recruiters, the inner thigh muscles known as the adductors, the transverse abdominis, which we already talked about. That deepest set of abs, it's like the corset, and then a part of the glute muscles called the glute me. So that was the first, like, aha for me. Right. The second aha from that research.

Was that he concluded that 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is not rooted in some sort of medical diagnosis. That 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is actually rooted in posture, movement and fitness. And in that moment, Dr. Donney, it like, it was like the heavens opened up and these angels were just singing like, ta da, right?

You're like, this makes sense, right?

It. And it made, it made so much sense. And right away my, my next thought was, I can wait. I can help nine out of 10 people with pelvic floor dysfunction because I teach posture, I teach movement, I teach fitness. And that totally shifted, you know, the, my intended impact, right? Because at my clinic I did have pelvic floor physical therapists that I worked closely with. And so I was like, okay, wait a minute. If I can bring this into my studio, if I can find some way to have women and men learn about their pelvic floor, have a tool that we can use in class, then when they go and see their pelvic floor, physical therapist, that therapist is going to get a new body to work on. They're going to be able to go deeper in the healing, you know, in, in the therapy. And how amazing is that going to be? So the mom of three young boys at that time, I went downstairs to their toy box and I sat on every mini basketball and floor, hockey ball and tennis ball. And some were not appropriate, some were like way too hard, some were way too big, not, you know, didn give me enough, enough impact. And so I was telling my husband over what would have been a couple of weeks, like, I can't find the right ball. It's not creating the, you know, the sensation that I wanted to create. Because if it was, if it was too hard, the sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight flight freeze, would just shut everything, shut us down, right? It would just protect us. It wouldn't allow us to like get the release we wanted. And if it wasn't, if it didn't have enough oomph to it, then the blood flow wouldn't make its way into those restricted tissues. You know, we can talk about fascia later, but that's what I was fighting. I was called the Three Bears. I was looking for that porridge that was just right and I couldn't find it. So that's how the idea for the couch ball came to be. I found a manufacturer and they started sending me samples and same thing. I couldn't find something that created the sensation I was looking for until.

We found this nylon thread. This nylon thread that had a little bit of tensegrity to it, but a little bit of stretchiness to it. And when we wrapped the nylon thread in this really cool pattern around the bladder of the ball and then put the outer layer on the ball on.

Was like, Matt. I was like this, you know, Cinderella on the glass slipper. It was perfect. It was perfect. And so I decided to. And here's what the Kuch ball looks like. This is as simple as it is. Okay? So the one I have is one of the originals. It is co branded for guys as the Gooch ball as well. But it's the same ball. And when we fill the ball up, we leave a little bit of space in it, okay. So it's not unsafe to completely fill it but the body just responds in a more optimal way when there's a little bit of give. Because again.

When you sit on the ball, the weight of your body on the ball creates this beautiful interaction between the ball and, first of all, your fascial tissue. Okay? Fascia is like connective tissue. It literally surrounds every fiber of muscle like a boa constrictor snake. And when fascia is unhealthy from being dehydrated, from poor posture, from maybe having eating too much sugar, all these reasons, fascia and muscle stick like a. Like a sticky piece of Velcro. And muscle is not. Or blood is not allowed in to. To give nutrition to the muscle. And soon.

That suffocating muscle is just going to atrophy and die. It's not going to know what its job is. It's not going to be able to function. And so when you sit on the ball with the weight of your body and breathe diaphragmatically, because that's key. Because here's what's. Here's what happens when we breathe. When we inhale through our nose, our lungs fill with air. All right? That big diaphragm is like an open umbrella, the mushroom cap we talked about.

Because our lungs fill with air, the diaphragm actually has to duck cut of the wave. And what the diaphragm does, the pelvic floor does. So as the diaphragm descends, the pelvic floor also descends into a state of rest. And that's during the inhale phase of breath. When we exhale, the lungs empty, the diaphragm expands back up into its open umbrella at the crest of the ribs. And because the diaphragm travels upwards, the pelvic floor also travels upwards. All right? So the pelvic floor and the diaphragm have this beautiful relationship. Inhale, they descend. Exhale, they rise. They melt and float and melt and float. So when you're sitting on the couch, ball. That's why breath is queen, because as you're inhaling, you feel your pelvic floor at rest. And when you exhale, you feel this beautiful. This gentle lift, okay? Not squeeze, not stop the flow of urine. It's almost like picking up a grape with your vagina or thinking of those two sit bones, those bony bones in your butt, narrowing as you exhale and widening as you inhale. So all of a sudden, there's this subtle resonance of breath and this muscular activation that starts to wake up. It wakes up the nerves, it wakes up the fascia, it wakes up the muscle. And because our body is so innately brilliant, it creates this remembering of what its job is. It needs to work and it also needs to rest. And that's. It's a three minute a day practice. There is a bit of ouch factor, I'm going to say. So when you sit on the ball, the ouch factor is going to be high when the health of the pelvic floor is low. All right, so it's an inverse relationship. So that's how you know with confidence. This is working and improving your pelvic floor health. Because when you sit on it, day 14, right. No, but as you progress, you're going to start to notice, like, hey.

I started this and I could only stay for a minute. Now I'm able to stay for three minutes and I, you know, my breath isn't erratic. And so there's this biofeedback between the ball and your body that happens when you are consistent in your kuchball practice.

So you. Do people, do you suggest people start with a smaller amount of time and work up to the three minutes?

For sure. Yeah. And you know what? Here's the simple thing. Your breath is your guide. So your breath will tell you, right? So when you're on the ball, start your timer. If you notice that you're, like I said, your breath is a bit erratic or you're holding your breath, that is a very good sign that you need to come off. Because holding your breath or erratic breath is a surefire message to that sympathetic nervous system. You know, alert, alert. This is not.

You want to trigger that?

You don't want to trigger that? No, exactly what I did. And I did your quiz, right? I did your quiz. So I am tired and wired. And so now I'm learning about that. Because we don't want to trigger, we don't want to trigger stress, right? So as long as your breath is your guide and you're breathing beautifully in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Then that breath will dictate the length up to the three minutes.

Okay, that makes sense. That's. That's amazing. And do people usually sit like on the floor on a chair?

So yes to all of that. You know, the floor isn't accessible for everyone. And so. And what I usually say when someone starts is start on your couch, because our couches usually have a little bit more of a thicker cushion or even on, even on your bed. Because when you first start, it's going to be weird. Your body's going to be like, what is this I don't know if I like this. Right.

So you don't usually sit on a ball. So we're kind of like, what?

Or whatever. Right?

Yes. Right. So, you know, starting on your couch, starting on your bed is a great place to start. And then maybe move over to, you know, a chair that has less padding, and then maybe to a kitchen chair, a wooden kitchen chair. And then if you can get on the floor, you know, get onto your mat or throw a pillow. A throw pillow down, and then get rid of the throw pillow. So there's a process to this. And.

And also know that the body is different every day. Like, if you were. If you're traveling on a road trip, and you might sit on your ball and think, oh, my gosh, why is this ouch factor so jacked up? Well, maybe your hydration has been off a little bit, or maybe there's been more stress in your life. Like, you know, the pelvic floor, just like the head, neck, and shoulders, is a spot where we tend to hold a lot of stress, a lot of trauma. And there's the. You know, I like to remind women and men that there's the physical aspect of the pelvic floor. Yes. We have pelvic floor muscles. They might work great, they might not. But deeper than that, there's the emotional part of the pelvic floor, and then there's the energetic part of the pelvic floor. Like the pudendal nerve that I talked about earlier. Did you know that the Latin root of the word pudendal means ashamed?

Wow.

Like, when I learned that, it was like, I. It kind of gave me chills because I was like, no wonder we're not talking about this. No wonder women would rather live in agony or exhaustion from getting up four or five times to go to the bathroom feeling disconnected from their partner. They would rather just be silent. And so that's why I like to talk about the physicality, the emotionality and the energetics of that part of our body, because it's all there. Our root chakra is there. Our safety, our security. You know, the sacral chakra is there with our free. Our creative juices and sensuality. And so it would be a mistake to not just mention the other dimensions of the pelvic floor, because they're. They're there as well.

That's amazing. And I'm sure that you hear people who are practicing with you, and they report in, oh, my gosh. I noticed this. This major change that I wasn't expecting, because. Tell us more I mean, I know that like, so if people start practicing using the Kuchbal, what period of time might they start to see a difference? It probably varies.

It very, it does vary. And so what I to be able to manage expectations, right. Because I have had people within seven days be like, oh my gosh. Because what you're gonna feel, here's what you're gonna feel. You're gonna feel warm and tingly in through that area of your body. And that's how you know with confidence we're getting blood flow there. Right. For some people that are so locked down, they may not feel that until their second or third month.

Right.

Because they're just so locked down. I like to say when you're consistent for 30 days up to three minutes a day, you are going to start to feel. Because I, I always talk about you're going to feel changes because we can't really see down there. Right. So you're going to start feeling things within 30 days. It might be day 8 or day 12. You might notice that your feet aren't as cold. You might notice if you're a golfer or a tennis player that your rotation has improved. All of a sudden you've got more strength in your swing. You might notice that you're sleeping better at night, only maybe getting up once. You might notice that you're not planning your day around bathroom breaks like you normally do or you get the confidence to go for that run without putting on a panty liner.

Right.

So I like to use the 30 day threshold as, as what I want, you know, my women and men to.

Aspire to start to notice little things.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's those and, and it's the process. Right. The magic is in the process. The product. Yeah, that we celebrate that too. But just like, like consistency is key. So if we didn't brush our teeth, if we brushed our teeth once a month, probably wouldn't have the best oral hygiene. It's the same thing with this is it's the consistency of gifting yourself the three minutes a day to go inside, to feel your body, notice how it's starting to change.

And you know, almost, I know some people, the like, I don't meditate, I just don't meditate. And that's okay, you don't have to meditate. But if you could just gift yourself three minutes of quiet and just listening to yourself breathe, just listen to yourself breathe, that can do so much for again this, you know that like our stress level or you know, our ability to manage the curveballs that life seemingly throws at us throughout the days. There is just, you know, it's like a, it's like a little spider. There's just so many ways that this practice can improve your quality of life.

Oh my gosh, that's amazing. It's true. Like to think, oh yeah, we can take three minutes, just take a break and whether, whatever time of day and be like, okay, this is what I'm going to do for the next three minutes. And that's so powerful that it can add up to such major changes. And it made me realize as you're. I was already thinking this and as we've been talking, it's becoming so clear to me that the use of the Kuchpal would really help with one of the conditions I help a lot of people with, which is abnormal Pap smears and HPV related.

Cancer risk. Because there's. What's also happening with the HPV virus is that it becomes a chronic infection for women in the vaginal area affecting the cervix or the vaginal tissue. It can also affect men in the rectal area and the, and also on the penis and oral area. But we're talking about the pelvic floor here. And, and what's happening, I find with HPV is often it's there. Not only is there the effects of stress on our immune system, but also that there can be this decrease in blood flow and it becomes this inherently we experience shame around it because there's so much information out there about HPV being sexually transmitted. And so people feel very ashamed about experiencing it, even though most all of us are exposed to this virus at some point in our lives. And so what I help people to know is like, like break those myths. Hey, this is a virus we're most all exposed to and it's about helping our bodies protect ourselves from it. And I can really see from everything you've described here today that, that by using the Kuch ball, it could really help both men and women to fend off HPV virus and, and bring blood flow that's really essential for bringing our immune system to the pelvic area so that we can more effectively fend off infections including HPV virus. I don't know if you've ever thought about that before, but I know, you.

Know what, I would just thank you. So thank you for, you know, gifting that because it was something that never crossed my mind. And.

Yeah, that's another big area of health that I think like pelvic floor dysfunction. People would rather not talk about it than reach out and, and ask for help. And yeah, this again, the body.

When we understand our body, we can, we can make magic happen with the right professionals in our corner supporting us and you know, giving us information and bite sized pieces that we can understand how the dots get connected. Aren't we so lucky to, you know, to be doing the work that we're doing? So yes, thank you for mentioning that.

Absolutely. I, I know I'm, I'm like you. I'm one of those people where I see, wow, this is something where so many people struggle and experience, experienced so much also negativity and, and in their experience in the world when there's information and answers that we can provide to help. And I, I feel motivated by that as well, passionate about sharing that. So I understand your passion around that and I know that you not only have created the Kuchbal, but you have a sister Kuchbal and also support that you offer online. So tell us a little bit more about that before we wrap up.

Yeah, for sure. So you know, let me just run and get this little ball because I think when you see it. So yes, my Pilates world, we know that we are not like potato head dolls, right? We're not pieces, we are systems. And systems impact other systems. So our posture impacts our circulation. Right. Our digestion impacts our elimination, our like. So there's all these crossovers of these systems. So this is the scooch ball and the scooch ball is the cooch ball's little sister. And why I created the scooch ball was because I wanted a tool to help with other parts of the body that impact pelvic floor health. So for example, our feet. Most people would not draw a line from the health of our foot to the health of our pelvic floor. But there is such a direct connection between our feet and our pelvic floor that I wanted something that I could teach my community to use. And that's why it's called the scooch. To kind of scooch it into those areas where there's like small little bones and lots of joints that because of again posture and poor habits, those joints become immobilized, right? They've been, they've been bearing weight. Like they're big long bones. And these little bones are like. But I'm a little bone. I'm meant for movement. Why, you know, why am I given this job of holding? I'm a mover. So we use the scooch ball on the feet. We use the scooch ball to release the calf. Because the calf is. Is literally considered the secondary heart muscle. It's important for getting the blood back from the extremities up to the heart to get new oxygen in the blood. We use this a lot for. Through the glutes. So for people that have sciatic pain, we do a really great release on a muscle called the piriformis. We do a lot of work even just through the pressure points, the trigger points on the hairline. Right. So there's all these places where we like to. You know, it's like our junk drawer in our, you know, in our desk where we just, like, shove a whole bunch of stuff into it. There's pieces of our body that we just shove tension. We just shove it down there and just leave it for a rainy day. But that tension actually starts to impact.

Systems in our body. And so that's where the scooch ball came from. And then I wanted a community where I could support people throughout, you know, their wellness journey. And that's when cooch school was born. And, you know, it's. It's just. There's amazing. We do something for orientation called Coochology 101. So your first 30 days of cooch school. School is just three minutes a day with me just learning your body, learning how to use the Kuch ball. And so that's what I'm trying to do. And, you know, with. With help of. Of, you know, amazing people like you getting the word out that pelvic floor health is not just reserved for new moms and women in menopause. It is something that we can do. You know, these. These minutes a day, 180 seconds a day, we can completely rewire how our brain works. You know, whether your pelvic floor is too tight, which we've talked about, or hypotonic, which is lacking tone, you know, we can still use the cooch ball to work on the lifting aspect of that pelvic floor work. And. And, you know, then it's fun to use your cooch ball for other areas. Like, you can lay on your tummy and do a really great gut release. You can use it on the side of the breast for breast health. Like, there's just so many ways that you can use this little ball for overall health and wellness.

And I love to hear just how excited you are about it. That's the thing. When you're an inventor and creator and you're like, you start you every day, I'm sure you're like, oh, my gosh and we could use it for this. And it just is continually exciting to see the benefits of it. And I'm so happy for you to have it be born into the world for people to benefit from. So I'll be sure to be sharing links so that people can find out more, how they can order the cooch ball, the scooch ball, and. And also to learn more about your. Your online program and support that you offer. Oh, my gosh. Anything else you wanted to share, Jenna, while we're. While we're here?

You know, I just. I know sometimes, like, when I listen to podcasts, sometimes I think, oh, my gosh, that was so much information. I feel so overwhelmed. So I just want to. I want to frame this last thought this way. So what Dr. Donnie and I share today, it's information, right? Almost an hour of information.

But if there was one or two things that resonated with you that you were like, huh? Or you could see yourself doing, that, information now becomes education. Because when you live information, it's education. And so you're bringing it into your body, you're bringing it into your life, and you're not going to bring all 60 minutes of this podcast into your life. So you move from information to education, and then once you've been living that education for a while, I invite you to share it with someone in your life, because that's when it becomes wisdom, and that's how we're going to get rid of or make a dent in the $21 billion incontinence product industry. Too many women believe that that's the solution. So if you can help me, take what you've learned, live it, and then share it, that's how we can empower women and men in a different way.

Just to enjoy the most high quality of life that they can.

Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. That's beautiful. And absolutely. Yeah. Like, I hope listeners take this in and feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. And Jenna as well, I'm sure. And I'm happy to help guide you because, yeah, it's true. And you're. You're offering a solution that can be an alternative to surgery, to medications, to pain, to discomfort. Like, this is an alternative solution that has not only so many benefits, but no negative side effects. And you can actually gain so much more freedom in your life by by choosing something like this and having Jenna's help to utilize it in an effective way, the way it was intended to be used. So. So thank you again so much for joining me. I'm very happy to have you and I'm really excited to have my patients and program participants who are working on fending off HPV to try out the Kuch pol and try out this that we realized today that this could really be helpful for because millions of people are experiencing cancer related to HPV and if we can turn decrease that cancer risk, that's a whole nother level of health that can be benefited from use of the gooch ball. So I'll definitely let you know as I get more feedback about them.

Please do. Thanks again for having me here.

You're welcome. And thanks everyone for listening. Be sure to like subscribe and join me for the very next episode of How Humans Heal. I'll see you soon.

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