Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, the place to be for honest and real talk about relationships and sex. Whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to help you have the relationship of your dreams and the best sex of your life.

Kevin Anthony 0:27
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 415, and it is titled “The Sexual Health Secret Your Doctor Probably Never Mentioned. You know, we’re going to be talking about. I’m just gonna. I’m gonna give you the secret upfront. We’re going to be talking about pelvic floor health and how that relates to your sexuality. And one of the things that has always sort of boggled my mind is how many people will just accept that dysfunction that tends to occur as they get older for various reasons. I remember years ago, I was out doing some training with some friends, and one of the women there-I’m trying to remember how old she was. I don’t remember, maybe 40-ish or so.

Kevin Anthony 1:11
And we were all just sitting around after training and talking, and she just mentioned that, you know, every time she laughs, she pees a little bit. No, you know that just happened after I had some kids, and that’s just the way it is. And I mean, even back then, I knew enough to know that that wasn’t right. That wasn’t normal, and that didn’t need to be that way. And I actually mentioned it to her, and she looked at me like I had three heads. Like, what are you talking about? My doctor said that this is normal. So we’re going to be talking about all things pelvic floor today. We’re going to talk about what the pelvic floor is. We’re going to talk about what’s normal, what’s not normal. We’re going to talk about, you know, and this will make more sense later on. The 90% of things that are not medical issues versus the 10% that are. We’re going to talk about what causes the pelvic floor dysfunction, how to solve it.

Kevin Anthony 2:03
We’ve got some great tools for you throughout this episode as well. So you are going to get your primer on pelvic floor health, and how could I leave this out? How that could make your sex life so much better. So if you want a better sex life, stay tuned to this episode.

Kevin Anthony 2:25
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Kevin Anthony 3:23
Okay, my guest today is Janet Danielson, and she is a Pilates master instructor, pelvic floor and fascia expert, and the inventor of the cooch ball, which we’ll be talking about more later. It is a revolutionary tool that helps women and men build a stronger foundation for passion, pleasure, and lifelong vitality via their pelvic floor. A two-time Amazon International best-selling author and founder and CEO of Bloom Better, Janet is on a mission to change the conversation around pelvic floor health because pleasure should not be optional, and she refuses to let people believe that decline is inevitable. She is one of the most refreshingly honest and boldly necessary voices in wellness today. Welcome to the show, Jana.

Jana Danielson 4:10
Kevin, thanks for the invitation. I’m excited for our conversation.

Kevin Anthony 4:14
Me too. And you know, to let the listeners in on a little secret, you and I kind of know each other a bit. So, like a lot of the guests I have on the show, I meet for the first time in the pre-interview call, right? And then they come here to the show. But you and I, we know each other a little bit. So when I’m reading like one of the most refreshingly honest and boldly necessary voices, I’m like, yeah, that’s true, actually.

Jana Danielson 4:35
Thank you.

Kevin Anthony 4:36
You all are in for a treat. So let’s get started with talking about what the pelvic floor is. So you know we’re talking about all things pelvic floor for both men and women, and you know most people have some idea what the pelvic floor is, but most of them don’t really know exactly what it is, how it functions. What it’s used for and why it’s so important. So let’s start with that.

Jana Danielson 5:04
Yeah, it’s such a great foundational piece to build it off of. So first of all, every single human being on this planet has a pelvic floor. It is not just reserved for a female body for being able to have a baby. That’s the first myth that I want to bust. I was at a trade show one time, and these two guys walked by my booth, and they were, you know, kind of having this informal conversation, and one of them said like, “Thank God we don’t have to worry about stuff like that. And I was like, “Whoa, guys! Just reeled them in a little bit. They didn’t. They didn’t even think that they had these muscles.

Jana Danielson 5:38
And so everybody on the planet has these muscles. There are actually 14 muscles that are working as a symphony orchestra alongside each other to be able to hold up our pelvic organs. So, in a woman’s body, the bladder, the rectum, and the uterus. In a man’s body, the bladder, the rectum, and the prostate it is a functional group of muscles that we literally use every day, all the time. And what we’re going to learn through this conversation is that because we don’t understand them, we don’t support them, and their function can become dysfunctional very simply. So every step we take, every pee we take, every poop we take, every run we go on, every pickleball game we go on, every squat we do, every time we are having self-pleasure or pleasure with a partner, like these muscles are used all the time, and so the 14 muscles are located. Basically, we’re sitting on them.

Jana Danielson 6:44
If you imagine that, where you feel those bony butt bones in, you know, when you’re sitting, those are bones of your pelvis. And then there’s this hammock-shaped thing, and it’s not truly a hammock, but that’s just a very simplified way of explaining these 14 muscles in three layers. Some of them are what we call fast-twitch muscles. So when we cough or sneeze or sing or laugh, when there is quick spurts of what we call intra-abdominal pressure, that requires my fast-twitch muscles to do their job. On the other hand, standing in line at the grocery store, going for a walk, those are the slow-twitch muscles. So we have sprinters, and we have marathoners, and together they work together as this very highly functional team. The pelvic floor is actually part of our core, and that’s what a lot of people do not realize when we think about our core. What is the first group of muscles you think of, Kevin? When you think, or you hear someone say, “I’ve got to strengthen my core?

Kevin Anthony 7:47
Abdominal muscles, of course.

Jana Danielson 7:48
Abdominal muscles, of course. So you think about crunches, sit-ups, planks, and that’s only a portion of our core. So if you think of our core like a house, the abdominals are the walls of the house. You really wouldn’t have a structure if you didn’t have a floor and a roof. So the pelvic floor truly is the floor of our core. The abdominals wrap the body in this 360-degree cylinder, and then the diaphragm, our main breathing muscle, sits on top, just in the crest of our rib cage. Imagine it like an open umbrella or a mushroom cap.

Jana Danielson 8:26
So this 360-degree cylinder with a floor and a roof is our core, and the pelvic floor is a very important part of that cylinder. The reality is, as we go through our teenage years, young adult years, especially as women, the shoes we wear, the fashion we wear, trying to suck in our bellies to make ourselves look narrower and smaller, that starts to create just those simple habitual lifestyle activities of daily living start to create a dysfunctional environment for the pelvic floor because the first thing it does is it shuts down our diaphragm. Now, if you think of the diaphragm and the pelvic floor like this, the diaphragm is like the influencer on social media. The pelvic floor is like the follower, so the follower, aka the pelvic floor, is very influenced by what the diaphragm is doing. As soon as the diaphragm stops moving, the pelvic floor also stops moving. It doesn’t respond to the coughing, the sneezing, the walking, the sex, the peeing, the pooping like it used to. And over time, it kind of gets amnesia of these 14 muscles, and it forgets what its job is.

Jana Danielson 9:47
But here’s the perfect storm: as we age, we have been conditioned to think this is just what happens as we age. So no one ever questions it. And you said it at the beginning of the show. The word normal. We just start to believe this is normal. It is common. It is not normal. And so, understanding how this canister works with the floor and the ceiling. And you might think to yourself, well, Jana, how is that possible? Like, if this is our main breathing muscle, if we’re not using it, don’t we just die? Well, no, because we’re so brilliantly designed, we’ve got these small little muscles in our neck called the scalenes and sternocleidomastoids. They’re like little strips of beef jerky. Their job is to hold our head on top of our spine-a pretty big job.

Jana Danielson 10:32
But then, as we stop using the diaphragm, those little beef jerky muscles just take on the extra load of breathing, which we breathe between 20 and 22,000 times a day. It’s a big job. So not only are you training your pelvic floor dysfunction, you are also by the action of using these little muscles in your neck to breathe, setting yourself up for a lifetime of jaw tension, TMJ, neck tension, headaches, and again, because of our technologically driven world, we just chalk it up to sitting at a desk all day, being on our phone all day. But these are both things that we can absolutely unwind and train ourselves out of.

Kevin Anthony 11:17
Yeah, you know, I actually experienced that connection between those muscles in the neck and the diaphragm because at the end of last year I had a pretty horrendous mountain bike crash, of which I ended up breaking this wrist horribly, requiring you know a titanium plate and 11 screws, but also I severely bruised my diaphragm, and I mean, I knew that I was having trouble with that. But when I went to see a specialist who does like applied kinesiology to help with the the diaphragm issue, he he was like, “Well, you got an issue going on here, which was actually causing nerve issues and numbness down my left arm because these muscles were so tight, right, and that was in relation to what was going on with my pretty severely bruised diaphragm.

Kevin Anthony 12:09
So, from personal experience, I can say that everything you just shared about the relation between all of that is absolutely true. In my case, it was easier to diagnose because it wasn’t due to a slow and gradual decline over time; it was due to a traumatic injury. So it was like really obvious. Well, it wasn’t totally obvious. I needed an expert to tell me that Oh, what’s going on here, and here is related to here, right? But anyway, just to say that so people can understand that, like, everything Jan is talking about about the relationship between these muscles is absolutely true, and I’ve personally experienced it.

Jana Danielson 12:48
Well, you know, you bring up a really important point here. Is it’s one of the messages that I love to share is that we’ve been so conditioned to believe that our body is pieces, like we’re like these potato head dolls. But you know, our arms are different from our legs, our legs are different from our head, and we’re truly-that’s not how we are built. We are systems of systems. So, in your case, with your, you know, your mountain bike accident, there was, you know, the skeletal system, there was the muscular system, there was the nervous system. Like there were lots of systems that were impacted by that. I mean, if you have a flat tire and go fill up your car with gas. That’s not going to make much sense.

Jana Danielson 13:24
So you know we have these experiences come into our life. So now for the rest of your life, you’re going to understand that where you are experiencing pain. Let’s say you get a headache one day. Your mountain bike accident taught you that well maybe it’s maybe the pain isn’t in my head maybe there’s something going on in my shoulder maybe there’s something going on you know in my hip or my low back and and that’s such an important message or lesson I guess for us to learn because we become so conditioned to just go where the discomfort is and we forget that there’s this whole other body parts of the body that might be holding the key to the root cause of that discomfort.

Kevin Anthony 14:06
Yeah, and that’s such an important point to make. You know, my partner does something similar to what you do with being a Pilates instructor and a Czech certified practitioner, and you know she’s one that’s really helped me with that too. Where, like, I’ve had numerous things from sports, you know, a lifetime of extreme sports. I’ve had a lot of injuries and stuff, and she’s been really good at helping me pinpoint, like, oh, when the pain is here, it’s actually coming from over here, right? You know, and it’s just not something that most people are trained to do. They think that where the pain is is where the issue is, and that is definitely not necessarily the case. And especially when it comes to the pelvic floor. And by the way, you know, while you were giving us that excellent explanation of the pelvic floor and the muscles and how it all fits together, we missed some opportunities for some epic jokes. So I just have to come back to them for a moment.

Jana Danielson 15:00
Let’s go!

Kevin Anthony 15:03
Because I like to keep the show entertaining as well. The first thing is, is those two guys that came up to you in the show and were like, “Thank God we don’t have to deal with pelvic floor”. They just told me without telling me that they’re premature ejaculators.

Jana Danielson 15:18
Really? Tell me. Tell me how.

Kevin Anthony 15:20
Well, because your pelvic floor muscles are so integral to your ability to control your ejaculation as a man, right? So if they’re not even aware they have them, they’ve got they’ve almost guaranteed to have one of two issues: they either have really weak pelvic floor muscles, which means they can’t contract them to stop an ejaculation, or they have chronic tension in those muscles, and that is, you know, tension equals ejaculation. When you’ve got all that tension in there, you can’t control your ejaculation either. So two guys telling me that they don’t have pelvic floor muscles. I’m like, okay, you need to go take my master your ejaculation course because I can guarantee you’ve got one of those two issues.

Kevin Anthony 16:03
You know, my wife, when she was alive, she was a certified sexological body worker, and so she was able legally in the state of California to touch people, and so she would do a lot of like prostate type stuff with men and help them with premature ejaculation and stuff. One of the things that she would do if she was working hands-on with a man is she would always palpate their perineum, and she said that almost every guy she worked with had one of those two things. In other words, she would push in, and her fingers would just sink in like there was no resistance at all, or it would be hard as a rock. It would be like hitting a wall, right? Very rarely did she find what you’re looking for, which is some resistance, but some movement as well. That’s sort of in between, and so that’s how I know for sure that that those guys probably they’re they’re in the at best five to seven minute category, and probably less than that. The second epic joke is, I mean, come on, you got to have a theme song, Jana. Every pee you take, come on. I mean, how did we not come up with that earlier? You were like, every pee you take, every poop you take. Like it is…..

Jana Danielson 17:19
You’re right. That is epic. Yes, absolutely.

Kevin Anthony 17:24
You need an epic rewrite of the lyrics to that song, and you need to make it your theme song.

Jana Danielson 17:31
My walkout song to the next time I’m speaking at an event.

Kevin Anthony 17:34
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I don’t know. You know, I have a brain that kind of works like that. Part maybe it’s partially because I’m also a musician, but like just phrases and key words instantly bring songs into my head. And the first one, like you said, a bunch of, you know, little phrases like that, and from the very first one, that song was in my head, and it hasn’t stopped since you said that.

Jana Danielson 17:58
I think I started with Every Step You Take, which isn’t literally one of the lines.

Kevin Anthony 18:02
Yes, every step you take, every move you make. Exactly. All right, enough of the joking around. Let’s get serious again here. So we’ve covered basically what the pelvic floor is. We talked about the muscles and how they’re all connected to everything else, and you know I talked a little bit in making the joke about the two guys who approached you about how that is affecting their sexuality. Let’s talk a little bit about how these pelvic floor muscles affect people, and you know we can talk about how it affects everything from their breathing to their ability to orgasm and whatnot, but like what if somebody’s having challenges that they probably aren’t even aware of with their pelvic floor? What types of things might they see as a result?

Jana Danielson 18:51
So there are some really common things. I mean, there are some you can, you know, draw a direct line from one to the other. So for women, incontinence, right-that coughing, sneezing, laughing, a little bit of leaking-I have women will say to me, “My pelvic floor is good because I don’t pee my pants. But what they don’t realize is that bloating, constipation, and chronically tight hips and low-grade back pain and cold, tingly feet can all be. Those are all rooted in pelvic floor dysfunction for men: inability to get an erection, sustain an erection. I mean, same thing there with, you know, constipation and bloating, and even in young kids- young kids, I’m going to say like you know eight, 9, 10-year-olds who are wetting the bed. That also is a hypertonic or a too-tight pelvic floor outcome when those muscles are not functioning properly.

Jana Danielson 19:57
So, you know, pelvic floor dysfunction is not just leaking or something a man has to worry about post prostate cancer surgery. Like there are so many lifestyle outcomes that are rooted in the pelvic floor that you might not think to connect those dots, and that’s one of the biggest things. I even had that last week. I did some content on my social media about hips and chronically tight hips and pelvic floor, and I was blown away by some of the comments. Like people are just, again, unaware, and there are actually 36 muscles. So the pelvic floor, as we know, has 14 muscles, but there are 36 other muscles that attach into the bones of the pelvis in and around that muscular structure. And every, you know, as soon as we have an old sports injury that doesn’t properly heal, we have compensation patterns, and those can show themselves decades later in the pelvic floor. You know, I think of like my dad. You know, he’s in his 70s now. Well, he wore his wallet in his back pocket for decades and decades and decades. Well, you know what that does to the bony structure of the pelvis? Like it actually shifts the bones of the pelvis.

Jana Danielson 21:20
As soon as our skeletal structure has shifted in some way, and usually not from a traumatic injury, but usually from lifestyle habits like wearing your wallet in your back pocket or your phone in your back pocket, that’s going to start to shift things, and those 36 muscles are going to respond to that. So that’s one piece that I love people to know about is that because of the geographical location of the pelvic floor, halfway between your head and your toes, basically like a suspension bridge that joins the right and left side of the body, it is a major intersection of you know what we’re doing with the upper body, throwing a ball, throwing a frisbee, doing a shoulder check-like the pelvic floor is is involved. Walking, running, jumping-all of that-the pelvic floor is involved.

Jana Danielson 22:08
So that’s how you know when you when you start to understand the globalness of the pelvic floor, it shifts your perspective, and then they’re hopefully they’re and hopefully we’re experiencing that with your audience. There becomes a curiosity. Okay, all right, you got my attention. Now what? How do I improve it? How do I know that it’s improving? That’s basically the next phase. And what are easy ways to make sure that we’re supporting those muscles in minutes a day?

Kevin Anthony 22:40
Yeah, and we will definitely get there in a little bit. We’ve got a few more things we’ve got to cover before we get to how people can do that. But I think the larger point that you made is just how integral the pelvic floor is to literally everything that we do, every movement that we do, and I also liked the point that you made about, you know, how some of the older injuries that you have can manifest you know decades later. That’s always been a little bit of one of my concerns because I’ve spent my entire life literally doing extreme sports from rock climbing to mountain biking to martial arts and, you know, all kinds of other stuff too. Those have kind of been the primary ones throughout my life.

Kevin Anthony 23:28
But when I was rehabbing my broken wrist, I was sitting in physical therapy, and you know, it’s like a bunch of people all doing different physical therapy in this little corner, and the physical therapist is there, and we’re just chatting. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, I know. I’ve torn this rotator cuff twice, and I’ve broken this wrist. I’ve broken five toes. I tore this knee. I did like, I was listing all the injuries I’ve had over the years. And she just looked at me like, “What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m like, “Well, you know, if you enjoy doing that kind of stuff, it’s sort of inevitable.

Jana Danielson 24:04
Well, it is, and you know, and the body we’re because we’re so brilliantly designed, we can, especially for someone like, like I’ll use you as an example. If you are, if you are, you know, an extreme sports or any kind of athlete, it’s kind of a bit of a kryptonite because you’re such you’re so good at moving, right? Like your body will find different ways to make it do what you want it to do, and then down the road we start to see, you know some of these old injuries rear their ugly head, and that’s why understanding, you know, the there is a very important soft tissue in our body that is starting to get a little more attention, and that’s fascia. So fascia is connective tissue. It’s like a spider web. It literally covers us from head to toe. It’s unlike muscle, where muscle will basically start and end at a joint structure. You know, our biceps go from our shoulder to our elbow, as a simplistic explanation. Fascia is not like that, and there are layers of fascia and different types of fascia.

Jana Danielson 25:16
But what fascia starts doing in its interaction with muscle is when we are overcaffeinated or dehydrated, or living in a state where our nervous system is in that fight-or-flight for, you know, a perpetual amount of time, fascia and muscle in a healthy body will interact. If we were at the water park going down water slides, that’s how fascia and muscle should interact. They should glide. The reality is, in most bodies, fascia and muscle are stuck like sticky Velcro, and over time, fascia starts to engulf muscle fibers and bundles of fibers and bundles of bundles, like a boa constrictor snake, which blocks this oxygen-rich, nutrient-rich blood flow from getting to the muscle fiber, which essentially is the muscle’s food, and without food, over time the function of that muscle group is going to start to deteriorate. And so, what we want to be doing is making sure that our fascia is just as healthy. I mean, that’s why. And I know we’re going to get to the stat. Maybe can we get into the 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction? Can I go there?

Kevin Anthony 26:21
Yeah, that’s where we were going next.

Jana Danielson 26:23
So let’s go there. So the study that I love to reference and what really inspired me to pivot into this space was Dr. Bruce Crawford’s research that showed that 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is not a medical issue. It’s a fitness issue. It’s there’s three things: poor breathing mechanics, poor posture, and a lack of blood flow. And so, as I’m explaining this concept of blood flow, when there is a lack of blood flow to any muscle in the body, that muscle is going to get temporary, hopefully, but sometimes permanent amnesia about what its job is because it’s just not getting the nutrition it needs. So when we talk about this from a, you know, a pleasure or an orgasm perspective, the pelvic floor needs to be able to contract and relax, so turn on and off between two and 32 times during the duration of an orgasm, approximately.

Jana Danielson 27:21
So you know what that means is that the muscle needs to be able to contract or work, and then go back to rest in a very, you know, back-and-forth sequence. You talked about this earlier: when there is a lack of tone, we call that hypotonic. So there’s a lack of tone. So if we think of the orgasm as a mountain, for those people with hypotonic, they have a hard time getting up the mountain. Right, you know, the peak of an orgasm would be just going over the top of the mountain and coming down the receiving. Right. So if you are hypotonic, getting up the mountain is really challenging for you. It can be extremely frustrating, and on the other hand, if we are hypertonic and the muscles have too much tension, we’re basically living almost at the peak of the orgasm mountain.

Jana Danielson 28:11
But it’s really hard to let go to receive that. So either situation, there is going to be a lot of frustration, and there’s going to be maybe even the belief system that you know I will be 53 at my next birthday, so maybe I shouldn’t be able to orgasm like I did when I was 33. Those voices in your head can really start to perpetuate those belief systems, and then we start to just become okay with just settling for, you know, a meh life when it comes to, you know, sex and orgasm, and we know so much more now about how that action plugs into, you know, hormone balancing and immunity and longevity. So this is why it’s. I felt like when I heard that stat that 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is a fitness issue, not a medical issue. It really empowers the word “empowered me. It makes you think differently about what I can do.

Jana Danielson 29:14
Oh, you mean learning how to breathe properly? Oh, you mean understanding that when you have 60% of your weight in your heels and 40% across the widest part of your foot when you’re standing-that is optimal for pelvic floor health. Oh, you mean pelvic floor therapy or using the cooch ball could be great ways to bring that oxygen-rich blood to those 14 muscles? And the answers are yes, yes, and yes. So there is a huge opportunity to rewire the brain around this part of our body for whatever it is-not waking up at night to go pee, having a better night’s sleep, being able to have, you know, juicy intercourse or self-pleasure, and know that those muscles are going to serve you, to be able to have good. Poops every single day. That’s really what this optimal blood flow will result in when you understand how to invite it into that part of your body.

Kevin Anthony 30:13
Yeah, and I agree with you when you hear things like 90%, you know, are not medical but are indeed physical. I think that gives people a lot of hope, and well, there’s two things, right? Because one is a lot of times people just think it’s normal. So first of all, just knowing that it’s not normal gives you a little hope, right?

Jana Danielson 30:34
And common, right? Like switching, take pulling out the word normal and replacing it with common that shifts the frequency around the conversation 1,000,000%.

Kevin Anthony 30:43
Yeah, because I think, you know, when you’re in that mindset of, well, this is just what it means to get older, right? You’re pretty much in a state of disempowerment where there’s like there’s nothing you can do, and you just have to live with it for however long you live. And so shifting that narrative and coming back to, yes, it’s common, but it’s not normal. I think it’s huge, but even there, a lot of people might say, “Well, okay, but you know, it’s probably some sort of, you know, medical issue that is going to require some, I don’t know, surgery or medication. I don’t want to have to take. I’ll just deal with it as it is.

Kevin Anthony 31:23
So the second piece is knowing that 90% of it isn’t actually medical and is instead physical, that you can actually retrain. I think it’s another huge piece. Wow. Okay, it’s not normal, but it’s common. But in 90% of cases, if I just do some retraining, I can solve it. That is hugely empowering, and I think if people who are listening to this take anything away from the conversation, I hope that’s the biggest thing that they take away: is that if they are experiencing anything that we’ve talked about so far, it is possible to solve it, and it’s not going to be that hard. It’s not going to be that complicated. It’s not going to require a bunch of unintended side effects or consequences for 90% of the problems that are out there.

Jana Danielson 32:17
Exactly.

Kevin Anthony 32:19
Okay, so we talked a little bit about, you know, how these issues show up. I want to just cover a little bit more on the other side of the break here in a moment. Issues specific to women versus men because I know there’s another study that you like to quote when it comes to men as well. So I want to, I want to dive a little bit into that, and then of course, once we do that, then we’re going to get into what things that people can do right now to start retraining their pelvic floor and, you know, make their sex life better, maybe even solve some of the challenges that they might be having. So we will do that just on the other side of this break.

Kevin Anthony 33:02
Are you getting your daily dose of vitamin O? And did you also know that September is Sexual Health Month? So you know, in today’s episode, we’re talking about pelvic floor health, and we’re talking about how important the pelvic floor is to your overall health as well as your sexuality, and yes, that is absolutely critically important. And there’s a bunch more to come in this episode. But when it comes to sexual health, there’s a lot more to it than just that. So you know, you spend time tracking your sleep, your steps, your protein, and all kinds of other metrics. I mean, nowadays you got smartwatches, and you got rings, and you got all this stuff that tracks all of these health metrics. We’ve got all these new scans and different things to give you all this insight into what’s happening in your body.

Kevin Anthony 33:58
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Kevin Anthony 35:19
But I always go in there before I’m doing a commercial. I want to look around, see what they got new, and I always see new things in there. So I love that they are continuing to expand the number of courses, the variety of courses. There’s something pretty much for everybody in there. So Sexual Health Month is the perfect time to take your sexual health a little bit more seriously and get in there and learn some stuff that’s going to make your sex life better. And you can kick off your journey by taking the personalized roadmap to sexual happiness quiz. The link is in the description below. I tell you, I mean, I’m a little biased. I know because I do sex, love, and relationships for a living. But I just feel that, you know, the quality of your sex life, whether it’s your sexual health or just the amount of pleasure that you’re having, I just think is so critically important to living a really full, healthy, satisfying life, and so I wish everybody would learn as much as they could. And you can do that by taking the personalized roadmap to sexual happiness quiz. That link is in the description.

Kevin Anthony 36:39
All right, so we covered what the pelvic floor is. We talked about some of the ways in which problems show up. We talked about the fact that it’s common but not normal. We talked about the fact that 90% of it is a fitness issue and not a medical issue. So, as I said before the break, I want to talk a little bit about how these issues show up specifically for women, and then specifically for men, because we’ve been talking a little bit sort of generalized so far. So let’s start with the women. If women are having pelvic floor issues, how does that generally show up for them specifically?

Jana Danielson 37:20
So specifically for women, we’re talking incontinence, and there’s different kinds of incontinence. So there’s stress incontinence, and then there’s urge incontinence, and they are different. But women can also present with both at the same time. So let’s let’s let’s delineate those two. So stress incontinence is that cough, that sneeze, that laugh. You’re singing, and you’re leaking a little bit. Urgency, on the other hand, is that experience you have maybe when you’re walking up to your steps and your, you know, your arms are full of groceries, and you place your hand on the doorknob, or you hear you’re out for a walk, and you walk past a park, and there’s a fountain, and you hear water running. There is some sort of external stimulus that triggers this response in your body: that I have to pee now, like not in two seconds, but right now. That is an urge, and an urge in most cases is a habit, a lifestyle that you have trained into your body. Now, what do I mean by that?

Jana Danielson 38:37
And I am guilty of this with my Kids, boys, we’re going to hockey practice. We’re doing whatever when they were little. Go to the bathroom, Mom. I don’t have to go. Go to the bathroom. Just try, Mom. I don’t have to go. Just go, right? And so that you know, you pee like a few little drops out, and away you go. Over time, what starts happening is we start to retrain the muscles, so the inside of the bladder is a smooth muscle, and we start to also retrain the nerves that surround the bladder. Their job is to identify and understand when the bladder gets to a certain level of fullness, then those nerves tell the brain, “Hey, it’s time to go. It’s time to empty. Here’s the problem: when we don’t actually allow the natural rhythm of our, you know, urination schedule to drive that, when we start putting in more superficial, I’m going to the grocery store. I don’t want to have to go to the bathroom. I’m just going to go now.

Jana Danielson 39:45
And again, we pee for two seconds. Over time, that re-trains those muscles and those nerves to now send those signals to the brain instead of, let’s say, when the bladder is 80% full. Now you’ve trained it to send those signals. It’s 40% full or 30% full, so now you’re going to the bathroom much more often, and we have women say, “I don’t know if I had $1 for every time a woman said to me, ‘I have the bladder the size of fill in the blank nut, walnut, peanut, like there’s all sorts of nuts, and bladders are a little bit bigger than a walnut, but that’s what’s actually happening. There is research that shows that you can unwind the nervous system and retrain those neural, you know, the neural pathways in the brain in nine to 12 weeks. About 75 to 85% of that urge can be improved upon by very much focusing on a new, you know, a schedule. I mean, it sounds crazy, but this is how we start to, you know we we start we keep a bladder diary, we keep track of how much we’re drinking, when we’re going pee, and we start to really understand the.

Jana Danielson 41:02
You should be able to go between two and a half and three and a half hours in between each time you pee. So that’s important to understand because that can, especially during the night, be very disruptive to our sleep. We know when we’re not getting a restful sleep, you know, the healing in our body, the rejuvenation, is not happening. We’re waking up tired, you know. Layer on top of that other perimenopausal and menopausal, you know, experiences, and now you have a woman in a body that is becoming so disconnected and so just almost out of her body. She just doesn’t even know. She doesn’t feel any connection to it, and then that’s when the voices in the head. You know, you start sleeping on the other side of your of the bed from your partner.

Jana Danielson 41:49
You start feeling less pretty, less confident, and that’s how we end up with a society of middle-aged women that are just kind of numb and settling for a life that’s just, you know, mediocre because they just believe that this is what life is, and that doesn’t have to be like that. So that’s the urgency, stress, and stress incontinence, and urgency incontinence. Women can also, as I said, have bloating and constipation. So there was another study done. A group of women; researchers used little monitors throughout the body, and these women were watching a not like a horror show, but like a scary, suspenseful show, because the researchers wanted to see where the first place that stress and tension were experienced in the body was when watching this suspenseful show, and the researchers anticipated they would see heart rate variability.

Jana Danielson 42:44
They would see you know some some sweating, perspiration, maybe some tension in the jaw, in the hands, but it was the pelvic floor that fired first unconsciously to these women, and it stayed active, holding, guarding, protecting way after the show ended, so women carry stress, tension, and anxiety in this part of the body, past traumas that just get shoved down, and it’s going to manifest itself as pelvic floor dysfunction. High-heel shoes, even a running shoe. You don’t have to be in a, you know in a high heel shoe to experience pelvic floor dysfunction. Running shoes, you know, even even flat shoes. We do have a little bit of forward body pitch when we’re in footwear for men as well. This changes the structure of our house, and so as soon as we get not catapulted but positioned forward because of a heel, the pelvic floor is compromised. We are now using our toes as a braking system, where our toes should be movers to propel us when we’re walking, running, jumping. Our quadricep muscles are also part of the braking system. Our glutes and our hamstrings completely turn off, and our low back starts taking the brunt of these forces that it shouldn’t have to manage.

Jana Danielson 44:13
So this is another issue that plays into hips, into low back discomfort, and over time will work its way up the chain. We call it neck tension, and you know jaw tension, and then down the chain through the sciatic nerve as well into plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, and I mean that’s that’s for both men and women. And then it’s, you know, it’s the waking up at night to pee. As we age, we just anticipate that this is part of aging. I should be getting up 234 times to pee, and that that’s not the case. One time is considered common, but more than that, we want to really start to look again at what are our. Habits and patterns. One thing, one mistake that women make for thinking that they’re solving their night waking is they’ll actually stop drinking fluids. Let’s say four or 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

Jana Danielson 45:12
Well, you know what this actually starts doing is it now turns the urine into a much more highly concentrated liquid, and the bladder gets the lining of the bladder gets severely irritated by this highly concentrated urine, so it doesn’t want to hold it. So it’s almost like that urge conversation we just had, where the bladder wants to get rid of that highly concentrated urine. So you’re not actually fixing the problem by not hydrating, you know, into the evening; you may actually be exacerbating it. So you know those are some really common experiences that women might have that are all related to the pelvic floor.

Kevin Anthony 45:54
Yeah, and I’ve heard women talk about every single one of those. It’s actually quite common to hear that. I’m always blown away, and I’ve had men tell me this too that they get up every single night to go pee. I’m like, you should not be doing that. That is not normal. You should not be getting up every night in the middle of the night and having to go pee. Like you, there’s a there’s something that needs to be fixed there for sure. So I’m, I’m curious also, since we are a sex, love, and relationship show here, what might women see when it comes to sexuality as a result of pelvic floor dysfunction?

Jana Danielson 46:33
So, pain during intercourse is one of the most common pain points that that I Hear about simply because of the hyper tone in the pelvic floor, a lot of women that are also going through menopause are experiencing more vaginal dryness, and so these two, you know, there’s kind of this intersection that women some and some women just suck it up, and you know, give their partner the pleasure that they feel like they deserve, despite their own pain and discomfort. Women also are sometimes really self-conscious with actually, you know, urinating during penetrative sex, and just as we can be, we can have urinary incontinence. There’s also fecal incontinence, so there’s that concern as well that that that can be a consideration, you know, during during sex.

Jana Danielson 47:41
I think that the inability or the disconnect from the body and what that does from an orgasmic perspective plays into, like we mentioned earlier, some of those belief systems that there was another candle on my birthday cake, therefore maybe I shouldn’t have as you know, juicy of of an orgasm, and you know, and it comes right down to to confidence and self confidence in the bedroom. The ability to experience an orgasm requires safety, and if the nervous system is not feeling safe, it is guarding and protecting, you know, all of the really, all of the courses; all of the toys are only going to be able to improve your situation so far. It real this really is like the key in the Roman, the keystone in the Roman arch. The pelvic floor can drastically improve, you know, the sensuality, the confidence, you know, the kinkiness that maybe you are craving. It is these muscles, and you know we’ve talked a lot about the physicality of the pelvic floor, Kevin.

Jana Danielson 48:52
But I want to also let your audience know that there are two other aspects of it. There’s the emotional aspect of it. So, as I mentioned, we do men and women alike carry a lot of stress and anxiety in their pelvic floor. That shows itself as, you know, in many cases, the inability to not just orgasm but have a sustained orgasm and, you know, crave that orgasm on a regular basis, but then there’s also the energetics of the pelvic floor. So the sacral chakra lives in the pelvis, and the energy of that is sensuality and creativity. So when we think about creating life, I mean that’s literally where a baby is created in that geographical area, and it doesn’t have to be a baby. It could be you’re creating a business, you’re creating an art project, you’re doing a renovation in your home, like that’s where all creation comes from. And the main nerve that runs from our brain to the genitals through to the pelvic floor is called the pudendal nerve. And this nerve is both a motor nerve and a sensory nerve.

Jana Danielson 50:03
What does that mean? A motor nerve means it’s a communication highway, so it’s sending messages to and from the pelvic floor: when to pee, when to poop, when to let go to have an orgasm, when you’re going to be jumping, you know, over a puddle, whatever it is. But it’s also a sensory nerve, which means that every sensation, from pain through to pleasure, also runs through that nerve. When I learned that the Latin root of the word pudendal means an area of shame, it answered so many of my questions around why this conversation isn’t more prevalent in our society. Shame, if you know Dr. David R. Hawkins’ scale of consciousness, shame is the lowest frequency emotion on this planet, and the nerve that brings us function and pleasure is named after an area of shame. Are you kidding me? So that was a huge aha for me, and part of why I’m so passionate about, you know, waking women and men up to these muscles and how wildly better life in so many aspects can be once you understand these 14 muscles and how they work.

Kevin Anthony 51:24
Yeah, isn’t that crazy that they named it after that? You know, that was not a mistake.

Jana Danielson 51:31
Oh, oh my God, no! And I mean, if I could go back in time, you know, sometimes someone asks you if you could go back in time and talk to one person, alive or dead, what would you? Who would you talk to? I want to talk to the person that named that nerve. I do, and I want to, well, you know.

Kevin Anthony 51:46
Tell me that you are suffering from deep sexual shame without telling me you’re suffering from deep sexual shame. You’re a doctor who discovered this and then named it that, right?

Jana Danielson 51:57
Exactly, exactly.

Kevin Anthony 51:58
But there are so many ways that they have intentionally tried to disempower us, but that’s a subject for a whole other show. I’m glad you brought in the energetic part. Actually, I was, I was waiting, you know, for you to finish what you were saying. I was, and if you didn’t say it, I was going to bring in the chakra aspect of it. So that’s great. I’m glad that you brought that in, and just to sort of finish up with the women and to say that, you know, you mentioned this earlier. A big part of what you perceive as an orgasm are the rhyth the rhythmic contractions of those muscles, and so if they’re either too weak to contract or too tight or too tense to contract, it will actually decrease your sensation, your felt sensation of an orgasm, when and if you even have one.

Kevin Anthony 52:46
So I just kind of want to add that to all the other things that you said about how this can potentially affect a woman’s, you know, not just her sleep patterns at night and her confidence and all that other stuff, but also very specifically in the bedroom as well. So, if that doesn’t motivate you to fix your pelvic floor, I don’t know what will. Okay, we are getting close to the end of the show, and we’ve got a lot more to cover actually. So, I want to quickly talk about men because I know there was a Japanese study on pelvic floor tightness with men. Let’s talk about how this shows up for men a little bit, and then we’ll jump into some things people can do right now.

Jana Danielson 53:26
For sure. So the study looked at men and their stride length, so their walking gait pattern, and there was a direct correlation between shorter gait and a hypertonic or too tight a pelvic floor. So guys, and again, I don’t want to. I don’t want to generalize, but I am going to generalize. Guys tend to be very locked through their pelvis, like chronically tight hips, low back, you know, glutes that might not fire when they’re at the gym, quads all day long, and this just becomes something that is common in a guy’s body. Well, when you understand the outcomes of this study, you know what would we then say? We could deduce from that study that when we release through the pelvic floor, we should then see a longer stride, which means more mobility through the hip complex in the pelvis, and that becomes almost like a litmus test.

Jana Danielson 54:31
That it’s not just as we age, you know, our stride gets shorter and shorter and shorter, and then fast forward, you know, go to any elderly home care facility, and you actually see more of the left-to-right shuffle than you do seeing the leg come underneath to take that forward step. It’s that side to side. That’s what starts to happen over time when we lose our hip mobility. So for guys. Again, chronically tight hips-they’re still in the constipation, you know, realm of pelvic floor issues, plantar fasciitis, you know, cold, tingly feet, sciatic pain is very common. There’s a glute muscle called the piriformis that, in 30% of the population, the sciatic nerve runs right through the fibers of that muscle, and that creates pain, and we become guarded. And when we become guarded, we might feel it, you know, in our neck and jaw.

Jana Danielson 55:33
But I guarantee, because of the deep front line of fascia and the superficial back line of fascia, any guy who has any jaw, neck, or, you know, tension in and around the head, or is living with a plantar fasciitis diagnosis, there is pelvic floor dysfunction, and I know that with confidence because of those two fascial lines. And when there are issues at the head and the feet, there are going to be issues at the center, basically the fulcrum, which is the pelvic floor. You know, from a sexual perspective and a performance perspective, that plays into the ability to get an erection requires, you know, vasodilation. It requires nitric oxide. Well, nitric oxide is a molecule that is created in the body simply by breathing diaphragmatically.

Jana Danielson 56:27
So, when we breathe diaphragmatically in through the nose and out through the mouth, not only are we taking in 600 percent more oxygen, but we are giving a hug to our parasympathetic nervous system, giving it a boost, the rest and digest. Our cortisol levels lower. Our oxytocin, which is our love hormone, increases, and now we’re setting ourselves up for the ability to get that nice hard erection because our, you know, our blood vessels are dilated. We have this molecule in our body, and the pelvic floor can be an obstacle to that outcome of an erection when it is too tight. It’s like if it’s a brick wall, you’re not gonna- you’re not gonna get much through that brick wall. So having a pelvic floor, and again, I want to remind men and women listening to this that it’s not just about the penis, and it’s not just about the vulva, the rectum and the rectal area. The pelvic floor is still very much a part of that, and so when we are holding and guarding and protecting, it can show up as constipation.

Jana Danielson 57:38
And as soon as we start straining, that is doing even more harm to the pelvic floor with that downward interabdominal pressure. We want the pelvic floor to be almost like a trampoline that can absorb the forces, versus just like a concrete barrier, which in most people’s bodies that’s what it is. My dad is a prostate cancer survivor, and he chose to go the surgical route in his healing. And my mom tells the funny story about how after his surgery, the nurse comes in and has the incontinence products and explains to him that he’ll, you know, be using these as his body heals.

Jana Danielson 58:20
And he said, “Well, my daughter created the cooch ball, and I’ve been using it leading up to my surgery. And so, it was really about 10 days post-surgery that he was using incontinence products, and then was able to, you know, reconnect back into that function of his pelvic floor. And so, there’s a lot to be said about confidence. You know, guys, the dribbles. So when you’re going pee, and it’s like dribble, dribble, dribble, and then the strong flow of urine, or maybe some dribbles at the end, that is hypertonicity. That is too much tension in the pelvic floor. That is your brain being like, “Are you sure you want to release? Are you sure you want to release? And we know that is something that can be improved upon as well with bringing the pelvic floor back online with oxygen-rich, nutrient-rich blood flow.

Kevin Anthony 59:10
Yeah, so you know, obviously there’s the physical things of you know peeing and and that sort of thing, but you know we need to motivate the men a little bit more to really take this seriously, so we have to drive home the point that guys, it’s affecting your erections, and it’s affecting your ejaculation primarily. As I mentioned earlier, it’s contributing to premature ejaculation. So, as Jana mentioned, guys, if you have chronic tension in there, you’ve got to get blood into the penis to get an erection, but then you also got to keep it in there, right? So those muscles have to open to allow blood flow in, and then they have to shut, right, in order to keep it there. So if you have chronic tension in there or lack of, you know, any sort of tone in there. You’re going to potentially have those issues, so it’s affecting your ability to get a boner. If that doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will.

Kevin Anthony 1:00:06
The second thing is, as we talked about earlier as well, is that it’s potentially contributing to premature ejaculation. So if you’re struggling to be able to last longer than a couple of minutes during penetration, this is likely one of the causes. Now, in my men’s sexual mastery program at PowerMastery.com, I have a couple of programs in there. One of them is Power Up Your Erection, so we’re helping you learn that. We talk about pelvic floor muscles, also in Master Your Ejaculation, where we’re talking about learning control over that. We also talk even more about pelvic floor muscles, and one of the things that I want to tell you is that I know, I just know how guys are, right? Guys are going to be like this. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, so then we just need to do a bunch of Kegels, right? And boom, good. I’m done. Like, I know how to work muscles. The problem with that is, though, if you do those incorrectly, right, you can actually create more tension and exacerbate the problem. So now is the perfect time to talk about what men and women can do if they are experiencing pelvic floor issues. What are some of the practices that you would lead somebody through, or some of the programs that you have available for them to help them with this problem?

Jana Danielson 1:01:27
So earlier on in our conversation, I talked about the trifecta: poor breathing mechanics, poor posture, and a lack of oxygen-rich, nutrient-rich blood flow to the pelvic floor. So I mean, the first thing is learning how to breathe properly. We have to wake up the roof of our core without the diaphragm doing its job. It actually doesn’t matter what else you do because it’s the diaphragm. It’s almost like CPR for your pelvic floor. The diaphragm is going to wake up the muscles of the pelvic floor. It is, and you might think to yourself, “Yeah, yeah, but Jana, if I don’t breathe, I die. So I’m breathing all the time. Isn’t that? Isn’t that? Am I not okay? And the answer is usually no. You’re not. So a really easy way to start to understand how to bring this form of breathing into your body is one hand on this flat bone called your sternum. So just beneath your neck, one hand on your belly button, and you can do a little test. Breathe in through your nose like you’re smelling a fresh-baked apple pie, and then exhale out of your mouth like my boys used to say when they were younger, like a friendly dragon, or like you’re fogging up a mirror. Do it again. Inhale, and then exhale out the mouth, and do it once more. And I want you to notice which hand is moving more, top or bottom, and exhale. All right, Kevin, truth time: top hand, bottom hand. Which hand is moving more?

Kevin Anthony 1:02:49
Well, my bottom hand is moving more, but I will say I spent many, many years doing breath work and yoga and teaching men this, so I’m not the normal example. But I will tell you this, though, in relation to, you know, diaphragm, I was talking about my injuries and my bruised diaphragm. I didn’t actually know that I had pretty severely bruised the diaphragm. I wasn’t aware that that was actually because I bruised ribs. I had like a bunch of stuff going on, but I didn’t know that was an issue until I started having some breathing challenges, and I only noticed it in certain posture positions. So, like, I noticed, like, if in the morning I was sitting at the breakfast table and I was like doing a little bit of this rather than this, all of a sudden I’d start to get like a little lightheaded and dizzy, and I’d be like, man, I don’t, I don’t feel so good, you know. And then it finally clicked. I realized something made me realize I wasn’t breathing properly, and it was because this muscle was so damaged. And the thing is, I was breathing every day, right? Like it’s not like I wasn’t breathing,

Jana Danielson 1:04:00
Yeah.

Kevin Anthony 1:04:00
But the way I was breathing was different than how it was before the accident, and it took me a while to realize that that was going on. And you know, I probably have a bit more awareness than the average person. So, like, I have at least three, if not four, different breathing exercises throughout the three-course program on PowerMastery.com, and the crazy thing is, is like sometimes people are like breathing exercises, really, and it’s like now that we talk about this stuff, now you can see why this is so important and why this is in there.

Jana Danielson 1:04:34
It’s so important, and I mean, doing this like three or four times a day, or like do it. I like to do mine before I eat. I eat sometimes, like I still have three boys under the age of four. Like I shovel my food when I breathe like this before I eat. I eat slower. I chew better. My digestion is improved. So you know, stack it with other things in your day. So breathing is number one. Understanding that when we inhale, we want to fill our waistband with pants because a lot of people are conditioned to do it the other way. They suck in as they inhale, and here we want to expand our body into the waistband of our pants, filling up as much air as we can near the belly button, and then on the exhale, that ha sound- not a birthday candle blowing in this case, but a soft jaw H A sound.

Jana Danielson 1:05:26
You think of narrowing your body away from your waistband in 360 degrees. The importance of that is over time. When you inhale, it’s like the pelvic floor as the elevator in the hotel is going to the main or to the lobby, right? That’s what happens on the inhale. On the exhale, again, I don’t love the Kegel because most people execute it like a clench or a squeeze, and that is tension and tension and tension. So for women, I’ll use examples, as you know: imagine picking up a vagina or picking up a grape with your vagina. For men, I’ll say you’re walking into the ocean or the lake, and the waves or the water gets three-quarters up your thigh. It’s that lifting, that soft lifting sensation with the scrotum. So we want to be mindful that it’s not a clench, it’s not a force. It is much softer than that, and that’s how we start training function. The other part of the tri, or the second part of the trifecta, is posture.

Jana Danielson 1:06:24
So I mentioned it earlier. When you’re standing optimally, you want 60% of your weight in your heel bone, your calcaneus. The feet have 26 bones and 33 joints. The biggest bone is the heel bone, which should be bearing most weight. 40% of your weight goes across the metatarsals, which is where the toe is connected to the main part of the foot. The heel bone, the big toe knuckle, and the baby toe knuckle create this tripod. That’s what you should be standing on for optimal support of your pelvic floor. Most of us have about 80% of our weight forward, so as you are transitioning to this new 6040, you might notice some discomfort in the back of the knee, in the low back, in the neck and shoulders, because you’re retraining your skeleton, which means you’re retraining the muscles, and it takes a little bit of time, but but it’s absolutely worth it.

Jana Danielson 1:07:15
And when you’re sitting, move the flesh out of your butt away, so you can really feel those sit bones beneath you and sit on top of those sit bones instead of having your butt sticking out back or, you know, slumping in your seat. You want to be up on those sit bones like golf balls on a golf tee. The third piece, and this is where pelvic floor physical therapy can be a huge benefit, and where the cooch ball kind of comes into play, is when you’re sitting on the ball for three minutes. We work our way up to three minutes a day. What starts to happen, Kevin? You have yours. What starts to happen is the weight of the body on the cooch ball starts to melt through those fascial restrictions.

Jana Danielson 1:07:55
So it becomes like a massage therapist for those people who have a hypertonic pelvic floor, and there will be an ouch factor. I’ll tell you that the ouch factor is inversely related to the health of the pelvic floor. So we want a rainforest. We want juiciness in the pelvic floor. The reality is most of us are a desert. So when you first start doing this work, it’s going to not feel awesome. And if you don’t understand that the LH factor is just communication from your body saying, “Are you sure? That’s why the breath work is so important. When you continue to breathe diaphragmatically, you’re telling your nervous system, “No, I’m okay.

Jana Danielson 1:08:31
As soon as your breath gets erratic, it’s time to come off the ball, finish your three minutes off the ball, and then try again tomorrow. Over time, we melt through those boa constrictor restrictions, and the blood flow comes rushing into the area. You start feeling warmth. You start feeling tingling. Like I just- one of my guys just sent me a note and just said how happy his wife is with him because he’s waking up like as the 23-year-old version of himself every morning now. You know, two months into his cooch ball experience, what you don’t see in this ball is the inner layer and what makes it really important for a pelvic floor tool.

Jana Danielson 1:09:09
This isn’t just a regular ball because if it’s too hard, it triggers that sympathetic nervous system, creating more tension, more guarding, more holding, which can exacerbate pelvic floor dysfunction, and if it doesn’t have enough oomph to it, it’s not going to melt through those boa constrictor fascial walls that allow the nutrition to make its way to the muscle. So it’s a three-minute-a-day practice. I know, Kevin, you’re going to have a link in the show notes. Basically, what this is is two phases. The first 30 days, as we call it, is release. You’re just sitting on the ball for three minutes a day. Then we move into the rebuild phase in month two.

Jana Danielson 1:09:47
So you’re going to continue to do your three minutes a day forever. An average, like brushing your teeth every day, but three times a week. Once you get to month two, you’re going to start adding three of the cooch ball method exercises. Take seven minutes have been shown to be more impactful than a Kegel, bridging, butterflies, cat-cow, but executing it- I train you or I coach you to execute it with your pelvic floor in mind- and that’s how we start rebuilding that functional strength. So, our peeing and pooping and sex and our running and walking is totally amplified, and you literally are rebuilding your body from the inside out.

Kevin Anthony 1:10:28
Yeah, so those are three things that people can start doing right now. You can learn to breathe better, which I mean, we’re talking about breathing in the context of, you know, your pelvic floor and how that might help. There are so, so many other benefits to learning how to breathe properly. I’ve had this conversation on this show and on YouTube videos more times than I can count about, like, yes, you’re not breathing properly, and everything. But what do you mean I’m not breathing properly? I’m like, it’s just something you take for granted because you’ve been doing it since the second you popped out of your mother’s womb, right?

Kevin Anthony 1:11:02
But nobody actually ever taught you how to do it properly. So trust me, unless you’ve taken some time to focus on it, you’re not breathing properly. So there’s that proper posture. That’s a big one too. And then of course, using your cooch ball. And yes, there is a link down there for how you can find the cooch ball program. I’ve been sitting on my cooch ball every morning since I have one now, and you know I want to say too, you know we were mentioning you know sort of the Kegel exercises. I know there’s still guys that are going to go out there and do that, and it’s okay if you do it correctly. The point I want to make here is that the relaxation phase of that exercise-you have a contraction and a relaxation-is just as important as the contraction.

Jana Danielson 1:11:51
More, I would say it’s more. Yeah, even potentially contraction. Yes, the contraction is a function of how well you have relaxed.

Kevin Anthony 1:11:59
Yeah, I just think it’s that. So you know, sometimes you know, men want to work with me, and you know, they say, “Well, what kind of stuff will we be doing? And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’ve already done those. I found a video online. And I’m like, “Yeah, you didn’t do them right. I guarantee you, you didn’t do them right. Because nobody ever teaches that. And I try to use the analogy too. This really only works for like musicians. But what makes music is the balance between the note and the space between that note and the next note. So the silence in between is what makes it. And like the easiest way to demonstrate that is if you think about drumming, right? So if you’re drumming, if you just went right, it’s it’s not music anymore. It’s just noise at that point.

Kevin Anthony 1:12:46
But if you do it rhythmically, it’s the space in between those. Whether the space is long or short, it’s the space that actually creates it. So you can’t think in music in terms of just notes to play or beats to play. You have to think about it in terms of space, right? And it’s the same thing when you’re doing this exercise. It’s not just how much you can contract a muscle; it’s how fully you can really relax it. The relaxation is the space, right? So I just wanted to go there because I already know. I already know there’s going to be men listening to this and going, “All I got to do is tighten, strengthen my pelvic floor. I already saw that video on YouTube about, you know, contracting my muscles. I’ll just do that. I’ll remind myself to do that more.

Kevin Anthony 1:13:32
Please, if you’re going to go that route, do it right and know that there are other options for you as well, like the cooch ball that may actually do a better job for you than that. So, and of course, I know you’ve got a ton of other stuff on your website and other programs as well. So please tell the audience where they can find more about you and all the programs that you offer.

Jana Danielson 1:13:57
Yeah, you can well, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Jana Danielson, and bloombetter.life is my website.

Kevin Anthony 1:14:07
All right, and of course there will be a link to that in the show notes. So I highly encourage both men and women, if you haven’t thought much about your pelvic floor, to give it some thought. Maybe do a couple of little tests that Jana mentioned, and you know, do a little assessment. See where you’re at, and if you think you know you’re having issues with, you know, bladder stuff, you’re having issues with erections or premature ejaculation, or you know just not having a great orgasm or any of that stuff, take some action today. This is something that you absolutely can solve, and you don’t necessarily need to go to a doctor to do it. So it just takes a little motivation, recognizing that there is something that needs to be solved, and then taking some action. So. Thank you, Jenna, for coming on and giving us the crash course on pelvic floor muscles.

Jana Danielson 1:15:06
Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Anthony 1:15:08
And I also forgot to mention at the beginning of the show that the reason why we’re having this discussion today is that a listener of mine actually said, “Can you please have somebody talk more about the pelvic floor? And so I said, I know just the person to have on the show to talk about that. I don’t remember the listener’s name, but you know who you are. Thanks for suggesting it because it was a great conversation. All right, Jenna, thank you one last time for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge and wisdom.

Jana Danielson 1:15:37
My pleasure.

Kevin Anthony 1:15:39
All right, everybody, that’s all the time we have for this episode, and I will see you next week. I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe, leave me a review, and share it with your friends. And for more free exclusive content, join me in the Passion Vault at https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. That’s https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. Thanks for listening, and remember, as Celine used to say, you’re amazing!