In this insightful discussion, I’m talking with Caroline Smith-McLean about my personal experience with pelvic floor dysfunction and how I found recovery through Hypopressives. I explain why traditional pelvic floor exercises like Kegels often fail and introduce Hypopressives as a holistic approach to pelvic health. We discuss the need for better education and care around pelvic floor issues, breaking down the stigma and offering alternative therapies for lasting recovery.
I am passionate about raising awareness of women’s pelvic health issues. I believe that no woman should feel embarrassed or afraid to talk openly about her pelvic floor health.
If you aren’t able to watch right now, or you want to listen while on the go. You can download the MP3 of my chat with Caroline using this link: MP3 Version
Here’s another bonus for you. Below is the transcript of my video.
Transcript
Nikki Scott:
I’m Nikki Scott. I am a Women’s Health coach and one of my core principles is to talk. No bullshit. So sorry if you don’t like swearing, but I… I’m a bit fed up with all the fluff that women are being given around their pelvic floor and pelvic floor treatment, so… So I tend to be fairly plain speaking, so hopefully that doesn’t put anybody off. If… if you’re not put off already by the fact that we’ve started about 25 minutes late because I was faffing around with trying to get myself set up. So yeah, anyway. Here we go. Does… does that work? I just really hate my lights. There we go. That’s better. That’s actually alright. I’ve put it on a little shelf for my phone, so I’m not holding onto it.
Caroline:
Ah, brilliant. Thanks, Nikki. Sorry about all the… the technical stuff tonight. I just don’t know what was going on with that, but we’ve made it, we’re here. Thank you so much, everybody, for your patience. And yeah, I’m just so grateful to have Nikki on my page talking about this because it is a really important conversation. And I think one that a lot of women are really embarrassed to talk about. And I think that’s so brilliant, the way that you do break things down and remove some of that feeling of being embarrassed, so that people do feel like they can ask the questions, they can talk about whatever it is they need to talk about. And… and I know that you’ve got a journey that you’ve been on as well, haven’t you so?
Nikki Scott:
Yes, absolutely. So yeah, hopefully people will understand that it’s, you know, it’s definitely something that we… we should be having more open conversations about, really. And I think people get a bit scared and a bit embarrassed, and it’s almost like… we have been conditioned to be very British and not have conversations because, like, in European countries, they talk about the stuff… they talk about vaginas, they talk about pelvic health and what’s going on and we just don’t. We don’t tend to have such open conversations. We all know these things are happening, but we tend to keep it to ourselves, so…
Nikki Scott:
Hopefully after this evening, you’ll know that it’s actually OK to be having a chat with people or having a chat with me about what’s going on with you. My very quick back story — ’cause I don’t wanna talk about myself so much now — is that I was a… hairdresser for many years, and whilst I was a hairdresser, I got pregnant with twins. I was very active. I liked going to the gym like a lot of people, so I used to go to the gym probably three or four times a week before I had my kids. And then I got pregnant and then… off drive. So you know, I’m telling you this because… I… I’ve thought in my mind that I was in like, I was really fit and that everything was working OK and that I had no issues until I had my children. And then there was no real information given to me before I had kids about what happened to my body or what was going to happen to my body. You know, even through the birth, I didn’t really have the nitty-gritty, all the details that I needed to prepare myself for kind of how I was going to be left afterwards. And to say that I was very weak and unstable was a bit of an understatement. I just… yeah… I just felt very disconnected after having twins and… one of the major issues that I had, and that continued to be a major issue for a very long time, was incontinence. And a lot of people hear the word ‘incontinence’ and they kind of think about that an old lady sitting in a nursing home, wetting herself or having to wear like big incontinence pants.
Nikki Scott:
Because they can’t, you know, not leak, but any form of… any form of leakage is incontinence. So even if it’s just a drop or a massive flood, or, you know, when you sneeze or when you get up out of the chair, you lose control. That is a form of incontinence. And so you, you can imagine how… you know, debilitating that was for someone that was looking after twins for a start. Rushing around trying to do everything and also I liked my fitness, so I was really wanting to come back into doing something, you know, for myself. There was no information out there for me. There was no help apart from what there still is, which is to go to your GP and the GP will either give you some advice or they’ll refer you. I did actually get a referral, but not straight away. I had to kind of go a few times before they took me seriously. The attitude was very much like… “Well, you’ve had twins. What do you expect?” And… and… and women are often being very gaslit by… by men, male GPs, and even some female GPs because they haven’t got time for them or because they think we should just get on and cope with these things as well as look after… for me, two babies at the same time. So I went down that route. I went to see a Women’s Health physio. She gave me pelvic floor squeezes, which over a period of time actually made my symptoms worse. So, you know, there’s lots of women for… with various different forms of pelvic floor dysfunction that are given a blanket treatment like pelvic floor squeezes and… they’re not really the ideal solution for them, so I am not really a fan myself because they made… made my situation worse, and I got to the point where my kids were 12, so not newly postnatal, where I really had to go and do something about this because it was affecting every part of my life. So my personal life, as well as what… I mean, by that time I had retrained to be a personal… you know, and you know to… to be able to help myself, and having majority female clients meant that I felt like a bit of a fraud because I just didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to be able to… to do that stuff. So yeah, I went on a bit of a journey trying to find really something to fix myself and to help me. And so I did a bit of research and found Hypopressives being talked about. It was very much seen in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries as the go-to treatment for postnatal healing. So I did a… I did a bit more research and very fortuitously, a training course came to the UK and I… I went on that training course and that’s kind of where my business was born really. So I went from just kind of doing personal training with women and running female and male boot camps and doing other kind of fitness activities for people like classes, to… my business is pretty much solely Hypopressives now just because there’s a massive need for this form of rehab, and I really in all the years that I’ve been doing this haven’t found something that works better than Hypopressives. So if I had, I would have gone on the training course and I’d be offering that as well, but I just find that it seems to be that missing puzzle piece for most people where they… the similar journey to me and then they just feel like it doesn’t quite cut the mustard, isn’t quite… they… what they need to address their issues. So yeah. So that’s kind of my journey and I… and you know, I went from…
Caroline:
Right.
Nikki Scott:
I had stress and urge incontinence. I’ll just talk a little bit about what they are. Stress incontinence is where you leak when you sneeze, cough, laugh, or do any kind of high-impact, sudden movements that create large amounts of pressure in your system. And then urge incontinence is where that constant need to go to the toilet, that key in the door moment where, you know, you’ve… you’ve parked your car, you put your key in the door, and you can’t hold it and you… and you, you know, you completely leak. So both of which, as you can imagine, are just really horrible and just really affect people’s lives. So yeah, that was kind of where I was coming from before I found Hypopressives and because I didn’t… and have the right information whilst I was pregnant, or even before I was pregnant, about the sort of things that I could be doing once I’d had my kids, it took me that 12 years to find something that actually started to fix the problem. And the reason for me that the… the traditional treatment, which is pelvic floor squeezes, didn’t work very well was because they actually made the problem worse by over-tightening. So… traditional kind of treatment is based on the theory that you have a weak or weak pelvic floor or weak areas in your pelvic floor, and you need to do this squeezing to make those areas stronger, and that isn’t always the case. So it’s not always like… it’s not always as clean cut as that. And actually, muscles don’t work just on pure contractual strength. Muscles… you want to work where they need…
Nikki Scott:
…where they can relax and be relaxed when they need to and strengthen and contract when they need to.
Caroline:
Hmm.
Nikki Scott:
So traditional treatment just doesn’t really allow for that kind of autonomic response of the muscles, and that’s where Hypopressives comes in because it gets to that, it gets the muscles working for you before you needed them.
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
Just to explain that, that is… Say you’re gonna sneeze, you get like, a split second before. And you… aren’t contracting consciously all the muscles that are needed to handle that pressure of the sneeze and not cause you to leak. So you need the autonomic, you need your other muscles on high alert, ready before you even realise you needed them, so that they can automatically. So that’s the… that’s the kind of key thing with it really is, traditional treatment just works on that model, that it’s weak and we need to make it strong, and that just isn’t the case. It needs to be functional.
Caroline:
Yeah. So Nikki, just quickly, from somebody that doesn’t know anything about Hypopressives really, what is the difference between Hypopressives and normal kind of traditional ways of teaching you how?
Nikki Scott:
So, most traditional pelvic floor exercises involve squeezing, yeah? And again, just going back on what I said, it’s working on that model that… your pelvic floor is weak and you need to make it strong. But the pelvic floor is like this hammock-shaped band of tissue that connects from your pubic bone to your coccyx, and it… it supports your pelvic organs, yeah? So you can understand why people think it needs to be really strong to hold everything… up, but actually, it needs to be functional. So when you move, you don’t just need it to be really strong like this solid piece of scaffolding, you need it to be able to… say you’re gonna sit down or get up, you need it to be able to move with you. So it… it needs to be able to have that ability to contract, release, relax, you know, do all of these things, support and… and not necessarily just be as clear cut as strong or… weak, yeah? And so the traditional model works on… muscles to strengthen them, to… to, you know, to do that. A bit like if we did a bicep curl, we’re just kind of working to build our bicep. And so the theory is that it… that… that the contracting will make the muscles stronger, and that to a point is… is true, but… there’s also another part of the muscles that need subconscious innervation, which means that… that just as I was saying, using that example of a sneeze, that… you… you don’t always have a chance to consciously squeeze every single part of those muscles, ’cause that’s not how they work. You need some where you didn’t even know you needed to use it, but it’s working on your behalf, so autonomic response, it’s… it’s conscious and subconscious. I can talk to you about that ’cause you understand that the…
Caroline:
Yeah, but… yeah.
Nikki Scott:
Subconscious is… is the part of the muscles that Hypopressives gets into more. So, the other thing is that pelvic floor squeezes work in isolation, so… you’ve got your pelvic floor, you report problems there, that’s what’s being treated. That is traditional medicine model, yeah? So your… your knee is sore, you go to the doctors, he looks at your knee, he treats your knee, he doesn’t look at… why is your knee sore? What’s around your knee? What’s connected to your knee that might be causing those issues? And it’s the same with the pelvic floor. So, pelvic floor… actually connects into the diaphragm, so our big breathing muscle, and they should be best friends. So what one does, the other one does. They mirror each other, but when there’s a level of dysfunction, whether it’s from childbirth, whether it’s from posture, whether it’s repetitive patterns like in your job, that dysfunction means that it’s like the best friends that have fallen out. So they’re just kind of not talking properly. They don’t communicate properly, they’re not listening to each other. That’s what the pelvic floor and diaphragm get like when there’s dysfunction. So whether that’s incontinence or prolapse or, and I’ll go into what all those things are as well. So…
Caroline:
Mhm.
Nikki Scott:
If you think about having to get that relationship back first… so we do that by… by using the breathing. So although, and that’s where people struggle with Hypopressives, is they’re like, “Well, I don’t understand, I need to have a strong pelvic floor.” You don’t — you need to have a functional pelvic floor, and in order to get… have a functional pelvic floor, you need to get that relationship back together between the diaphragm and the pelvic floor. So as we start to get that back with the breathing, that they’re not just connected in isolation, are they? They’re connected like in this big web. So all of your body is connected together. And so as we start to get the… the best friends talking again, all those deep core muscles start to work differently, and we actually start to change those neural pathways. So how the brain… communicates with the muscles, and that’s where the magic happens, really, because we start to get more subconscious activation of all of our deep core muscles just through doing really good lateral breathing and getting the diaphragm really stretching. And getting the pelvic floor doing the same. So, a traditional pelvic floor squeeze you would be able to feel when you’re doing it, you know, as I’m saying it, I’m doing one now. I can feel how everything tightens up, pulls up inside. When you do diaphragmatic breathing, you don’t feel anything in your pelvic floor. Because all we’re doing is training it to function in the same way as the… as the diaphragm, and we’re getting that relationship back together. So you don’t get that, squeeze, that contract. But you know, by building a better relationship between those two, but when we need it, when we sneeze, when we jump, when we do all those things, those muscles are gonna start to work differently because we’ve… we’ve reset them.
Caroline:
Hmm.
Nikki Scott:
So that’s… that’s one of the differences. The other thing is we’re using a breathing method, so we also use a breath hold. We’ll go into that later. And we’re using that breathing method within postures, those postures work on our posture, funny enough. So it… they help release tension, which may be causing pain and discomfort for… but they help release tension in our body, and they help to put that tension where it’s needed. So if you imagine, it’s mostly tension at the front of our body, which we call the anterior chain, that causes our posture to change, so it’s pulling us forward. We’ve got this ball and socket joint here, and it’s pulling our shoulders forward, it’s dropping our head forward, and eventually we end up quite hunched as we get… older. So if we could… get rid of that tension in the front of that body, front of the body, and then actually put it into the muscles that are supposed to be holding us up, right, and stabilise us, then that would be a perfect solution, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s the premise with Hypopressives, is that we do these postures so that we’re releasing unwanted tension and taking that tension and putting it into muscles and making them stronger so that they’ll hold and support us.
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
Very different from pelvic floor squeezes, which just work on one area of your body. And very foolishly leave out the big muscle that that pelvic floor is connected to, unless you go and see someone who’s a very forward-thinking Women’s Health physio, and they may give you some breathing exercises to do with pelvic floor squeezes as well. Yeah, that’s the main kind of difference — it’s a whole body approach because you never know what a bit of tension in your body could be causing in the rest of the network, because we are like this… this network, this web.
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
So if we’ve got a little bit of tension in our shoulders and our neck, it’s causing a pull somewhere else in that web, which, if you’ve got pelvic floor dysfunction, isn’t going to be very helpful.
Caroline:
Yeah, I’m really interested in how you use that analogy, like if you go to the doctor and your knee’s hurting but actually it’s cause your hip’s out or something. It’s exactly the same. I love that analogy.
Nikki Scott:
Yeah. You just get… it’s like, you… you have a problem, and the focus becomes that problem, where the pain is, where the discomfort is, where the… whatever. That becomes the focus. And there isn’t this look at the whole body to say, “OK, why? Where’s that coming from?” I mean, when you think about the pelvic floor, it’s connected to the diaphragm, but also it has deep fascial connections with the base of your foot. So that fascia that sits on the bottom of your foot is really important when you have pelvic floor dysfunction to work on. So I’m going to show you something ’cause I can see it right here.
Caroline:
Why?
Nikki Scott:
So, this ball… this ball is brilliant for… I mean, and actually, there’s a lot of postnatal women that have pelvic floor issues that also have plantar fasciitis, which is a really painful condition of the plantar fascia, that’s the bit of the bottom of the foot. So… and I suffered a lot myself with plantar fasciitis, and it’s like getting out of bed and putting your feet on razor blades in the morning, that’s how sore it is. And you, you know, I used to freeze a bottle of ice and work that over my foot, but we’re not told… we’re not given that information. My niece is doing this. She’s gone to someone who treats feet and looks at her gait and looks at like how she’s running, and she’s gone and bought an expensive pair of trainers, but actually probably just spending a little bit of time easing the tension out of the underneath of her foot and working on it, and, you know, doing some targeted stuff would actually help more than a supportive pair of trainers. So yeah, there are so many things in the body that are deeply connected, and yet we just focus in on, “Oh, you’ve got neck pain, let’s, you know, let’s work on the neck.” But you know, why? And what can we do? It’s… yeah, it’s just like this big puzzle that we have to work out.
So another big thing that causes tension in the body, and that will be a problem if someone has pelvic floor dysfunction, specifically pelvic organ prolapse…
Caroline:
Hmm.
Nikki Scott:
…which I’m just going to cover what that is, so that if people don’t know — so, pelvic organ prolapse means that one or more of your pelvic organs has moved out of position. OK, so if you’re diagnosed and you know you’ve got a prolapse, that’s what it means. It just means it’s moved out of position. So the thing with prolapses is that often that movement is caused by pregnancy, and it’s caused by vaginal birth. So, the majority of us that have had children — I would say it’s like 99.9% of us — have a prolapse whilst we are pregnant because when baby or babies, in my case, are growing, there’s not enough room for everything to sit where it should do. So pelvic organs move out of position in order to make space for everything that’s there. So with that information, we should then be giving women rehab for a prolapse because we know that they’ve got one. And you know, I would say that pretty much everybody that’s had a baby will have a prolapse. Doing a small amount of rehab for that afterwards would save people from having the problem further down the line, because once that’s moved out of position, some… because everything’s quite tightly packed there, you can find that what starts off with one organ that’s a little bit out of position is resting usually on then something else. So then that will cause that organ to move a bit more out of position. And then we’re kind of having this knock-on effect, where what could have been just a simple fix ends up being a much bigger problem. And especially when we get to things like perimenopause and menopause. So, prolapse can often be that organs move to that position and it hasn’t been addressed.
And the other thing that’s important to… to find out if you’ve got a prolapse is did you have a birth scar, so… or did you tear or did you have an episiotomy? Because those are key to causing tension in that area of your… of your pelvic floor, and the tension is not going to be good because, again, tension creates pull. And so if you imagine that little scar in the perineum, it will twist and pull the tissue around it. So unless you’re doing some work on that scar and releasing that scar off, then prolapse is going to be made worse over time. And the other thing… learning some real knowledge bombs here is… is that if you are given pelvic floor squeezes to do and you’ve got areas of your pelvic floor around that scar which are really tight, what are pelvic floor squeezes gonna do? They’re gonna make those areas even tighter.
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
And that’s going to cause even more of a pull. And then that’s going to make the prolapse worse. So, by giving someone a blanket treatment for all forms of dysfunction is just the wrong thing to do in the first place. Yeah, you’re just kind of basing it on, “Oh, she’s got a prolapse, she’s got incontinence, she’s got this, she’s got that, let’s just give them this one…” It’s like, you know, me hurting the front of my knee, someone else, you know, hurting their ACL, someone else catching the side of their knee, but we all have the same treatment. It’s bonkers, yeah.
Caroline:
Yeah, it is, and I… I would have… I would have never ever thought about the fact that the bottom of my foot was connected to pelvic floor… like never.
Nikki Scott:
So we don’t just have the diaphragm, we have the pelvic diaphragm, and then I think we’ve got… I’m not clear on all of the diaphragms, but we have another one further up, and then we’ve got one on the bottom of our feet… I can’t remember what they’re all called, but…
Caroline:
Umm.
Nikki Scott:
But yeah, I mean, it’s amazing. The fascia goes from like the tip of your big toe all the way up and over to the end of your nose. So that just shows you the web that we’re working on. So when you do something for pelvic floor dysfunction, where there’s tension, and you’re adding more tension by doing pelvic floor squeezes, it’s just completely the wrong thing to be doing. So that’s the thing — conventional treatment is really, really outdated. It kind of goes back to Victorian times almost. And yet it’s… it’s… and you know, why? Why, as women, are we being given this substandard treatment? Why are we putting up with it? Because we’ve been gaslit, you know, no one’s ever got any time for us to really explain anything properly. There’s not the right education out there for… for women getting pregnant so that they have proper information about this, this, and this is what you’re going to be left with.
Caroline:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Scott:
And this, this, and this is what you can do about it. It’s always a bit like, “Oh, we don’t… Oh well, what if that doesn’t happen? Let’s not tell them because we don’t wanna scare them.” Well, if they’re gonna go through having a baby, you wanna know what you can do when… when you’ve got out the other side, or even if there’s something that you can do before you even get pregnant, that would be the ideal. It’s just…
Caroline:
I was going to say, I guess some of these would be preventative, wouldn’t they, if they were used early enough?
Nikki Scott:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, whilst I absolutely champion Hypopressives because it’s made a massive difference to me, and I… you know, I can’t… I can honestly say hand on heart that I’ve… that I’ve trained hundreds of women with Hypopressives, and they’ve all had positive results. They might not have got to exactly where they want to be, but they still got better results than they would have done by having… by doing pelvic floor squeezes. Now, on the flip side of that, I only see people really whose pelvic floor squeezes have failed or have not hit the mark that they wanted them to. So I’m sure there will… will be some viewers out there that will be…
Caroline:
Oh.
Nikki Scott:
…saying, “Well, I… I… I do pelvic floor squeezes and I feel the benefit.” Fair enough, but the… the kind of thing that I’m coming across every single day is women for which they’ve been told, “Do pelvic floor squeezes, it will sort it out.” It doesn’t. And then they’re told the next thing is surgery, and really, really, if we can avoid ever having surgery unless it’s like the last straw…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
That’s how it should be used rather than surgery as kind of almost seen to be that… that magic pill, that quick fix, and often it leaves women in a worse case scenario than they were before they started. So, you know, I think we should never really be just handing it out like sweets. It should be something that is a last resort. But then giving people options, not just waiting until they get to that point, and then you say, “Right, well, that’s it. Now you’ve got to…”
Caroline:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Scott:
…have surgery, yeah.
Caroline:
And like you say, if it was prevented before it even got to that point, that would be the ideal situation, wouldn’t it?
Nikki Scott:
Yeah, it’s a difficult one though, because… you know, if you think about how you go about your daily life, you’re not thinking, “Oh, I better do some… some hip exercises or I better do some mobility, and I better do this and I better do that, because when I’m 60, you know, I don’t wanna have those sorts of problems.” It’s really… it’s a really hard one because at that point in your life, you’re not really thinking about, “Well, I could prevent, you know, myself having a prolapse.” You just think it won’t happen to you until it does. And that’s when you come for treatment. So it is a difficult one to actually get it right. But I do think that the start would be…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
…we… give better education to women that are thinking about becoming pregnant. That it’s not just all the fluff and the faff and the “Yes, and then you do this…” I remember thinking about a month before, or a couple of months before, I was about to give birth, I suddenly had a bit of a panic and was like, “Oh my God, these babies have actually got to come out of me.”
Caroline:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nikki Scott:
All of a sudden, no. But it was all like lovely and… well, it wasn’t lovely, my pregnancy wasn’t, but… but you do, you know what I mean? It was all like, “Oh yeah, this is so great!” And then all of a sudden, I just had this realisation that I had to…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
…actually birth these babies, so…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
So I think that there’s a way to go with kind of… the information that we give. I think we need to be a little bit more… more black and white, and just tell it like it is. And have, you know, even going back to, like, the education in schools, it needs to be more realistic, yeah?
Caroline:
Yeah, yeah.
Caroline:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. And we’re taught, you know, sex education and… and some of this could totally be weaved into that, couldn’t it? It is… you know, the same way we have periods and… like, menopause. All of these things, this is so relevant as well.
Nikki Scott:
It is, it is. Yeah, but it’s, you know, it’s a… it’s a hard nut to crack, isn’t it? I mean, my… my hard nut really is just to… to give women voices, ’cause most of the women that I’m seeing are… quite scared, quite embarrassed, been living with things for quite a long time, not really knowing that there’s anything else out there because it’s almost like this is the best kept secret. You know, not that I want to keep it that way, but just kind of like, no one’s really talking about holistic therapies that are really, really good for women’s pelvic floor. It’s almost seen as… has to be some sort of medical intervention, really. And, you know, our body needs to…
Caroline:
Hmm.
Nikki Scott:
…it needs what it needs, and I think that that’s the thing, it’s just about saying to women that… you might have all of these things going on, but actually it’s so common to have a prolapse after you’ve given birth, but we… again, people think it’s just them. They don’t… but they don’t have those conversations, so they think it’s just them that’s got this prolapse, and yeah, yeah, you know. I might go on a call with ten people and they’ve all got a prolapse, so it’s not just…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
…you. And then when you know about it, rather than being really scared to even look at it and… and address it, just get out there and get the right information, and have the right treatment, and, you know, go to your health care provider and say, “This isn’t good enough. What you’re giving me does not address the problem, and it’s outdated.” Because that’s the only way we’re really going to affect change, is we, the people.
Caroline:
And… and it is. It’s that stigma and shame around it. When it’s one person who thinks that it’s just them that it’s happening to, that’s when people shut down conversations because they don’t want to feel that way.
Nikki Scott:
Yeah, no. And when you look at the figures around age groups of women and incontinence, for example, you know, they’re quite high as in prevalence. But what you’re gonna see with those figures is that, you know, because women are embarrassed, they’re not going to report the symptoms. So, even if they were asked, they just could be like, “Oh no, no, no, that’s not me.”
Caroline:
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Nikki Scott:
…not talk about that. And so there’ll be a percentage of that… those figures that aren’t quite right anyway, because there’ll be a… a chunk of those women that don’t even want to talk about it, don’t want to address the issue. And again, that’s kind of almost conditioning, it’s conditioned into us that we, you know, just get on with it, get on with it, do our thing, you know, be the wife, be the mother, be the… be the business owner, be whatever, and all those things, all those hats and plates, we have to juggle, we have to just get on with it. But… but no, we shouldn’t. Because the trouble is that if it isn’t addressed, even if there’s only very minor symptoms, even if there are no symptoms after having children, the chances are that you do need to do some form of rehab. I think every woman should have that opportunity to do some rehab because it’s only gonna make things better for them as they get older. Because what tends to happen is some issues are tiny, tiny and don’t seem to affect their lives, so they just kind of get on with them, and they’re… they’re living with symptoms. But then what happens when they go through perimenopause is there’s this change in the hormone levels and that will… will 100% affect the symptoms that they were living with. So at that point they will start to get worse. And then it is a downward slide because we, as we go through that perimenopause and then menopause and out the other side, we… we… our hormones really change, our hormone levels, and so that means that our tissue becomes more lax. And we know that because we get wrinkles, we get saggy skin. You know, that’s just part of ageing, and that’s happening internally as well. So we need to be looking after our internal system as well so that… when we get into those amazing ages that we’re gonna… we’re gonna go through, that won’t affect being able to do all the things that we still want to be able to do, you know, being able to play with your grandchildren, being able to go on holidays and be active, and you know, all of those amazing things that you wanna do well into your old age. However, we’ve still gotta look after the internal workings. I mean, it’s… it’s, you know, you wouldn’t have… say you really love Ferraris, you wouldn’t have a Ferrari and then never clean it, put really terrible fuel in it, not… not top the oil up, put the water in it when you feel like it, would you? You… you’d treat it like a prized possession.
Caroline:
Yeah, yeah.
Nikki Scott:
Why… why… why should we not do that with ourselves? We are… we are only here this one life and we need to really kind of nourish and look after ourselves. So… so yeah, I think that often we, when we go through motherhood — I know myself — we’re very much on the back burner and we… we put others first before ourselves. But you know, there are some very simple things like Hypopressives that you can learn, and you just get up and do it, just you know, get up and do it in the morning in your pyjamas, and 10, 20 minutes, and you’re done, and, you know, get into a habit of doing that every day. And then you’re looking after your pelvic floor and all that in… in deep core musculature and your posture and everything all in one. So it’s just a fabulous thing to do.
Caroline:
And I imagine, Nikki, if… I know a little bit about breath work, obviously doing the breath work, but I imagine with Hypopressives that also means that it does kind of relax your whole body as well, like kind of set you up for the day as well as helping with the pelvic floor. If you could do that for 20 minutes in the morning, I’m guessing you’d just generally have…
Nikki Scott:
Same…
Caroline:
…probably a much calmer day after that.
Nikki Scott:
It’s a really good time to kind of centre yourself, that’s how I like to think about it. So when I do a session myself… so I… I’ve learned all of the foundational stuff, and obviously I’ve learned all of the difficult stuff as well, but I… I very much just stick to the basics when I do it myself because I don’t have to think so much about what I’m doing.
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
So… phones just low battery mode, I should be alright.
Caroline:
Oh, yeah, while you’re talking what I’m going to do is I’m going to share your… your freebie in the group. Any… on the comments.
Nikki Scott:
Perfect.
Caroline:
So…
Nikki Scott:
Yeah, I just find with my session that… that it’s just a very mindful time that you can… sometimes it’s really nice just to shut my eyes and imagine I’m somewhere like my dream place and I’m doing this amazing breathing, and I can feel… I love being by the sea, so you know, it’s usually by water, and you know, it’s just a really nice calming way to start the day, you know, it’s almost like once you’ve finished… you… you… you wish you could start again. Do you know what I mean? It’s… it’s the one. So… so yeah. In terms of… I mean, I’ve talked very much about the physical self, but I know that Hypopressives is really, really good with mental health issues as well. Just really to calm everything down, a lot of breathing…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
…issues like panic attacks, anxiety attacks, even with medical conditions like asthma, where it’s got breathing… it’s very tied in with Hypopressives because we’re encouraging the diaphragm to work, really, as it should do, which is really stretching laterally and expanding the rib cage. Obviously, the lungs are underneath the ribs. So we have much better expansion of the lungs and, you know, it’s just a really good way of kind of getting everything in that area to move properly, like the rib cage to move properly. So it’s… it’s… it’s a really wonderful practice and the plus side…
Caroline:
Yeah.
Nikki Scott:
…is that it helps your pelvic floor dysfunction, so, you know, I mean, what… what could you get that does that? Absolutely. So yeah, I’ve got a freebie. If people are interested, I’ve got a little freebie that is an e-book, which you’re just… you’ve just shared the link, and so you can download that.
Caroline:
Win-win! Just shared the link.
Nikki Scott:
And have a little bit of more… more of an in-depth read about… and everything to do with your foof, really. And there is a little video link in that e-book that I’ve shared, a little teaching video on the breathing. So that’s just to get you started if you are a bit curious about what it’s all about, really. But yeah, if… if… if you’re… and if anyone’s interested in doing any training with me, probably the best way would be to have a look at that little video that’s in the e-book. And then if you want to learn the postures, then I have got a two-week, 14-day mini-course, and that just takes you through three of the postures. So it gives you a little taster of it, gets you practising, and then after that you can continue on and do the whole course if you want to, which is… you’ll learn eight postures. And those eight postures with the breathing fit together to form a nice little flow that you can get up and do first thing in the morning, 10, 20 minutes. So yeah, that’s… that’s when I talk about flow, that’s what you would learn, is this lovely flow where you start standing up, you finish lying down.
Caroline:
Amazing. I have sent… I’ve posted the link as well for your… the 14-day beginner course in the comments as well.
Nikki Scott:
Brilliant. Thank you. That’s really great. So yeah. And you know, if anyone wants to reach out and have a chat with me about anything to do with pelvic floor dysfunction, then I do have the option on my website to book a discovery call, and that’s free. So it’s just half an hour where you can get a bit more clarity on what’s going on, and you know, we can discuss the process that you go through to learn Hypopressives if you want to. If not, I can signpost you to maybe some other treatments that you might wanna consider, depending on what’s going on with you. So yeah, if you wanted to do a discovery call, there’s… my calendar on my website.
Caroline:
Right.
Caroline:
Amazing.
Nikki Scott:
Yes.
Caroline:
Thanks, Nikki. Just quickly, before we go, just one question — is there any other therapies that people with pelvic floor dysfunction can look at as well?
Nikki Scott:
Yeah. So often with things like prolapses, especially if you’ve got a scar, I would recommend finding someone that does some scar release work, or some… somebody that does release of, what’s it called… pressure points in the pelvic floor. So often, where muscles get… where you’re squeezing so much, your muscles get very, very tight because of scar tissue. They lose that ability to contract and release, so to function properly. So you often need to have someone do some internal release work. So Women’s Health physio can do that, but you can actually get a specialist that works on perineal scars as well. So if you’ve got anything like scars or prolapses, then I would definitely be looking at doing some scar release. I also have a… a really good video that I share up from a Women’s Health physio. She shows you how to do it yourself, so she’s not showing you on herself, she’s showing you on a silicon model so that you can understand. Actually, it’s fairly easy if you wanted to. I did go because I… I ended up, because I did so many pelvic floor squeezes, I ended up just… my pelvic floor got so stuck. It couldn’t contract, couldn’t release, and so my incontinence got a lot worse. So I had to actually go and have that kind of released off over a number of treatments.
Caroline:
Hmm.
Nikki Scott:
And now, you know, if… if ever I’m like, feeling my scar in the shower and it feels a bit sore, then I just do a little bit of massage over it. But I’ve looked at that video that I… I mean, I can find the link to the video and share it with you tomorrow if you…
Caroline:
Oh, fantastic! Yeah, thank you.
Nikki Scott:
…if you want. Other things that can help is acupuncture as well. Often people have issues with, like, rib cage positioning because when you have a baby, your rib cage usually gets put out and you… you know, you get some asymmetry going on in there. So often you can get those releases done through Women’s Health osteopaths, through a Women’s Health chiropractor, who would be able to help you with things like that. But yeah, there’s… there’s lots of stuff out there. These balls are really, really good for doing external release as well, sort of around the glutes and around the pelvic floor area, and often you can find some really sore bits by just rolling over, so you’d sit on it basically, work along the perineum, and work along kind of the hip joint into the glutes. Often with…
Caroline:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Scott:
…pelvic floor dysfunction, there’s that tightness through the hips, so any mobility that you can do that… that is helping to keep your hips from seizing up and getting really… If a good test is to just have a look at yourself in your underwear in the mirror, and… and just really study what you’re seeing in terms of asymmetry. So, are you stood to one side? Is your head off to one side? You know, there’ll be loads of different asymmetries. Any of those show you that you’ve got some tension and pull somewhere in your web, and it needs addressing. So either you do it yourself, you go for a massage, chiropractor, osteopath… yeah. There’s so many things, really, that… that we can be doing that we don’t even think about, really, but we should be taking care of ourselves more, absolutely.
Caroline:
Oh, brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Nikki. And we did get there in the end…
Nikki Scott:
We did get…
Caroline:
…with all the issues! We did get there in the end, and it’s been great catching up and learning about Hypopressives ’cause I didn’t know much about it, so… Oh, brilliant. Well, thank you so much. Thank you everybody for joining. This video will be staying on my page, so please feel free to share it, to tag anybody who needs some information about pelvic floor health. Nikki’s page is also on this as well, and the links are…
Nikki Scott:
Thank you.
Caroline:
…in the comments. So thank you so much, everybody, and thanks, Nikki. Bye!
Nikki Scott:
Bye.
