Can Belly Dancing Help Pelvic Floor Strength and Bladder Leaks?

Still leaking when you laugh, cough, or exercise, and not sure what actually helps? Welcome to Beyond Diagnosis. I'm Rita D. Michelle, and this health podcast brings together functional, integrative, holistic, and mindset practitioners to help you explore new paths to better health. It's brought to you by the Beyond Diagnosis Collective, your bridge to trusted holistic support. Today we're exploring how belly dance. can support pelvic floor health in a way that feels strengthening, freeing, and practical. My guest is Jennifer Sobel, a professional belly dance instructor with over 21 years of experience, the creator of The Belly Dance Solution, and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. So good to have you.

Thank you so much for having me.

What a unique thing we're going to be talking about today. I would never have thought, and I don't think there's many women out there who would think, that belly dance could be the solution to their leakage, which happens to so many of us. Women find it embarrassing to talk about, you know, like they don't like to say to each other, oops, you know, I laughed and I peed myself. It just seems a bit humiliating. It really doesn't, because it happens to all of us. Tell us, how can belly dance Really help with bladder leaking.

I was as surprised as anybody else when I discovered that belly dance could help with this because I didn't make the connection on my own. I had been teaching for many years by the time that this event happened. I call it a happy accident. I used to teach a regular belly dance class at a gym. One of my regular students came up to me after class and she was really happy and she said, I have— I'm so excited, I have something to tell you. And I said, what? And she said, well, since I've been belly dancing, I don't have bladder leaking anymore. And I was like, wow, that's fantastic. And she was just so happy. And to be honest, I forgot about it until a few years later. I was really intent on creating a belly dance program to share with people online. And I was at the gym again, and I was on the treadmill, and a commercial for bladder leaking drug came on. In that moment, even though it had been years later, something clicked in my mind and I went, huh? I— and then I remembered that day of my student coming up to me and I thought, I wonder if more women could benefit from this. I did the research and I thought, well, of course, of course belly dance helps with this because all the belly dance movements involve the hips and the pelvis. Also, even though there's a lot of debate about the origins of belly dancing, a lot of people believe that it actually began as a form of movement, as a dance, to help women prepare for and recover from childbirth. And a lot of the belly dance movements that are like undulations, which are like that wave-like movement, the figure eights, help a baby move down the birth canal. Now we know there's also been research. There was actually a research study done, which again, I was shocked to discover that somebody had actually researched this. It was in the Journal of Physical Therapy Science, and they studied belly dance movements for strengthening the pelvic floor and relieving bladder leaking. Think of a movement in belly dance that doesn't involve the hips or the pelvis. What's cool about belly dancing can be a real downside of Kegels for many women. A lot of women who have bladder leaking, it's not because the pelvic floor is weak, it's because it's actually hypertonic. There's— it's too much tension and they can't relax. And if you can't relax a muscle, you can't contract it. There's 2 phases that need to be there. And in belly dance, that's really built into every, every belly dance movement. There's a contraction and a strengthening phase and then a release. And it's very organic and functional. And so that balance is just built into the dance, as you, as you could say, it's a functional, a very functional movement.

I'm sure a movement that really brings a lot of joy. If you do have bladder leakage, one of the things that I would be concerned about if I was on a gym floor trying to do all these sit-ups, like in Pilates, they're asking you to feel your pelvis, you know, the area, the muscles. pull them up, etc. I could never do that, you know.

Mm-hmm.

That creates leakage. And not only— I find that whenever I did Pilates, I couldn't actually feel the muscles. When they said, you know, feel the muscles, tense them, and pull them up, I couldn't feel them. So I always felt that there was something wrong with me. So it feels a bit disempowering sometimes, whereas this feels like it's got more flow and you're actually Strengthening those muscles just naturally by moving.

Yeah. And I mean, it sounds like what you're saying— I personally have not done Pilates. If a movement is too internal, like Kegels are, you don't have any external feedback. There's no movement of the bones. It can be hard to actually find the muscle. For example, one of the most powerful movements for strengthening the pelvic floor that I found in belly dance is the pelvic tuck and drop. And we do this movement a lot when we do like an undulation. You can start to tune into those muscles because the bony structure of the pelvis is moving. And it gives you a cue as to how to do it. And that's true of many different belly dance movements. It's— it is a very deep internal movement, but not so much so that you can't get the whole holistic part of it, the gestalt, the The bigger part of the movement. And then you can gradually over time refine and feel the deeper part of the movement. But also, it's very important to point out that even though it's, it's very helpful to know the different mechanics of the movements, my student who came up to me after class, she wasn't like, let me find my pelvic floor here.

Yeah.

She just did the belly dance movements. And it was this incredible side effect that she was like, oh my gosh, This also happened. So she didn't need to know where those muscles were. She didn't need to stress about, am I contracting the right muscle here to help my bladder leaking? She was doing the movements as best as she could. And that's what I would focus on each week in class was getting the mechanics down as well as we could, refining over time, not stressing about it. Like you're saying, having fun, enjoying the, the fun of dancing.

Yeah.

and belly dancing, and this is a good side effect.

It feels like, or sounds like, it's a bit of like a therapy, almost like a physical therapy. They don't need to know whether they need more strengthening or more release. The body will just— will the body just adjust itself and the muscles through these particular movements?

You know, if you were going to, for example, lift a bag and you were using your bicep, You would eventually let it go and you would relax the muscle. You know, it's just that's built into functional movement. And so in belly dance, if you're doing a pelvic tuck or drop, or if you're doing a movement like a hip drop, you contract the muscle in your side to lift the hip and then you release. You don't just keep a contraction on. There's 2 parts to the movement and that's just natural.

Yeah.

It's how we walk with one foot in front of the other, one foot is doing a flexion, the other foot is— the other leg is doing an extension. Like, this is the natural balance of human movement. And the same thing is true of belly dance. You will naturally contract, and then the other part is you relax it. And I bring that attention to, you know, my students when they're doing the movement. Okay, fully contract here and then fully release. Contract, release. And that's true of a lot of different movements. In belly dance. There's the right side, there's the left side. There's the part where the muscle's contracted and the part where the muscle— it's just, you don't even need to think about it. You're just doing the movement and it's, it's already built in for you.

When you're saying this, um, contraction and release that the body intuitively knows over time, it's going to end up balancing those internal parts of you out. Like it'll start to align through these movements. Slowly making the parts that are tight more relaxed and then strengthen the other.

It sounds—

it just feels so intuitive to think that through just basic kind of movements that you can resolve something that, you know, many women don't want to be wearing those incontinent pads. With this belly dancing, is it doing all this wonderful pelvic floor natural reconstruction in a way? I feel it's making someone, if you did it, more in tune with their body, bringing themselves back home. Do you feel that women can feel disconnected from their body and belly dancing is a really beautiful way to reconnect?

You know, I used to be a Chinese medicine practitioner. I'm not anymore, but, you know, I have my master's in Chinese medicine. And so I'm always approaching my programs that I create from this holistic healing perspective. I don't see belly dance as just a dance. I really do see it as a healing modality. And one of these really powerful healing benefits is coming back to your body, the awareness. And I think something that's, you know, really important when it comes to bladder leaking, where a woman feels so out of control of her body, That belly dance is a way for her to start to feel back in control of her body and feel like she has ownership of it, and she can choose. Oh, I can get to move this way or that way, and that I do have control, and that my body can be a sanctuary. It can be a safe space. It can be my place that I own to come back to. And you know, for this area of a woman's body, this the pelvis. The hips can be a very charged area, you know, and a lot of women can store shame or trauma there. So to take back ownership of this part of your body is really, really healing.

What you were saying before, feeling out of control and then bringing back that control, you hear it all the time. So many women go, oh no, I'm not going to go hiking because, you know, if I have to do a different type of movement, or I can't jump, or I can't do what I used to do because I might leak. That disempowers, whereas this seems to— this strengthening of belly dance seems to bring back the power.

Absolutely.

Especially during menopause. You know, a lot of this happens after you've had given birth, or definitely during menopause when hormones are changing your muscle structure and everything else. It sounds that it's incredibly helpful during that period. The problem is, is there's so much mixed advice out there of what women should be doing during menopause and especially around belly dance?

Dancing can never do you harm. You know, I mean, I think we have to think about the things that we just intuitively know are good for us that we don't need to consult anybody on. We know that, like, for example, belly dance is no impact. It's easy on the joints. I can't imagine any potential downside to doing belly dancing because we all need movement in our day. Most of us are not as active as we should be. Most of us sit for way too many hours a day. Cortisol and stress hormones are high. So we're doing something good for our body, for our mind. When we're dancing, we can't be in that hamster wheel in our head where we're stuck in all these negative thoughts. thought loops. We can connect with our heart, with our joy, with our creativity, the source of our power. With outsourcing our solutions to so many different people and medical professionals, we forget to tune into our own wisdom. Belly dance, coming back into our body, is a place where we can get centered and start to listen again to what our deepest self is telling us about what we We need. You can have epiphanies after you dance, after you've gotten out of that hamster wheel, and boom! Something will come to you. Ah, this is what I could do. I think that's really important. And going back to what you were saying about oh afraid to go hiking or jump or things like that for fear of leaking. Something that I really want women to know is don't accept this as your just this is what I have to deal with. This is my normal. State. Don't accept that. Whether you are seeking belly dance as a solution or some other holistic thing or pelvic floor physical therapy, explore all your options and don't accept it because you have one life and you deserve to enjoy that fully at any age, to feel free, to feel in control of your body, to not have the fear of bladder leaking constantly in the back of your mind. And I had a student I worked with one-on-one For belly dance, for strengthening her pelvic floor. And I'll never forget, she said to me after we worked together for some months and her bladder leaking had incredibly improved, she said, was it really this easy all along? And I really want women to know that. Like, don't just accept that, yeah, this is just my life. I just— this is just something I have to deal with. Don't, don't do— don't, you know, explore your options.

Absolutely. That's— I mean, that's what this whole podcast is about, is exploring your options, you know, interviewing people like yourself who give very unique options to a very common problem and one that distresses so many women. What you were saying then about this movement and the joy and everything, I was thinking it would just be amazing for people with mental health issues, especially like depression or or that sad, you know, uh, feeling, or anxiety, or anything like that, because it brings you back into your body, your movement. You know, you're not thinking, oh, this has to be perfect and I have to lie on the floor. And especially for, uh, ADHD, where—

Mm-hmm.

Repetition isn't necessarily something they enjoy, or rigid exercises. It has to be like this and micro movement like that and something else, and it just doesn't feel joyous. Whereas dancing, everybody— I mean, the whole world loves to dance, you know. It just brings so much happiness, those endorphins into the body. So it just seems like such a better way to go than a rigid protocol.

You know, a lot of women think, oh well, Can I belly dance? Can I do it? You know, am I coordinated enough? Do I have the skills? It absolutely does not matter. You just have fun. You do the best you can. You approach it with an energy of play and curiosity. And you're doing it at home. Nobody's looking at you. Go in your bedroom if you need to, if you don't want anybody to watch. And it's just you and you. There's— it's— this is not— I say this is— belly dance is not a spectator sport. Especially the way that I teach it. Like, you get to feel your way into the movements from the inside out. It's not about seeing yourself from the outside in, from judging yourself, being self-critical. You just move and have fun just being able to move, which is really such a blessing.

Reminds me, you just give yourself that permission to be free, but you have to be very specific in your movements. It's like going to the gym and using the equipment. You have to be very specific so you don't hurt yourself. Whereas this is like a breath of fresh air. It's like opening your heart and just allowing your body to be free and move and not be self-conscious. Would be such a liberating way to actually improve your pelvic floor. I assume it would improve your stomach muscles as well.

Oh yeah.

The lower area. I just can, I can just Imagine it just going zoom, like tightening up.

Yeah. I mean, and going back to this whole idea of functional movement, you know, the body is designed to move in all planes. But the way that we move on a day-to-day basis or how most abdominal exercises are, they're very limited in that way. But belly dance, we move in planes that most people don't. And those are usually the planes of motion where people get injured when they're reaching for their purse in the back of their car or something like that because they're not used to doing a twisty movement. But in belly dance, we do that all the time. So we're literally training the abdominal muscles 360 degrees, which we don't do in our normally normal life. And you're building those deep core muscles very internal. And that's what also protects your back. And so a lot of my students tell me that their back pain is better. And you also— it's also your posture. You start to have more of an awareness of your posture, how you're holding yourself. And that also impacts how you move through the world and how you feel about yourself. Because if you change your posture, you will change how you feel in a second.

I mean, a lot of people who deal in positive psychology often talk about positioning yourself in the right place You know, if you want success in study, for example, go study in the library or at university. Don't stay home. It's like putting yourself in the right position. Having the right posture can uplift you. If you're all slumped, you feel low.

Right.

And that was something I was going to say, was when through belly dancing and you're lifting and you're supporting the pelvic floor, you no longer have this leakage. You're backing your stomach muscles are starting to strengthen, would you naturally then feel the emotion of support throughout life? Not just physically, but emotionally?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I know that they've done studies on like, if you smile, even if you don't feel happy, you'll start to feel happy because your, your muscle, your body also, it's like the loop works in both ways. If you smile when you're not happy, you're going to start to feel happy. The same thing when you change your posture and you hold yourself in a different way, you'll start to feel the way that that posture is communicating. And then it just becomes automatic. And that's how you move through the world. And you start to feel like there's kind of this goddess queen energy in belly dance. And you do start to feel that. You start to feel that inside. Oh, I'm tapping into this part of me that feels sensual and powerful and feminine, however you define that for yourself. I feel flowing, I feel fluid. I mean, that just changes how you feel.

What is the simplest way for women to start using this in real life?

I mean, if you— you can always check to see if you have some local classes. You know, that's always fun if you have that close by, because there's also a really lovely community that usually comes with belly dance where women are very supportive of one another. So that's a good way. You can always go on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. There's a ton of belly dance YouTube channels. There's online programs like I have. You know what's around you, what kind of format you enjoy. Do you want to do kind of like a one-off YouTube video, or do you want some more structured. It depends, but just start anywhere, you know. And the most important thing is, and I tell this to my students all the time, because this is where women will block their joy, is when you're starting out, it's probably going to feel strange and challenging because your body has never moved that way before. Do not have any negative thoughts about yourself. And how well you're doing and whether you're doing it right or what you look like doing it. When you hear those voices come up, just acknowledge it. Have the awareness. I hear it. And I'm just doing this for myself. I'm having fun. It doesn't matter whether I do it right, what I look like. I'm just here to experience joy. Don't worry about the technique too much. Just have fun.

How many exercises can you be free Empowered, have fun, and no leakage at the same time.

This is what I'm trying to get the message out there, you know, is like, just try it. I mean, you really can't go wrong. Even if for some reason your bladder leaking isn't helped, well, then you get a strong core and you get a good workout, or you have fun and you experience joy. Like, there's no wrong— there's no wrong way here.

It sounds incredibly empowering. And liberating. And thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about this. It's a very unique way to actually strengthen the lower half of our women's bodies, and you get that— all the added benefits from it. And for our listeners and viewers, if you would like to have a look at Jennifer's videos or her course, the links will be in the show notes. Well worth it. What a joy. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.