Last weekend, I taught a workshop to a group of pole dancers on the pelvic floor. Chat GPT came up with the name for the workshop, which apparently appealed to the audience because it sold out within 13 hours of registration opening.
(I am not someone who sells out workshops so I assure you, the amount of participants had nothing to do with me.)
I realized two things as I taught to this group of curious individuals:
- Giving people the space to explore without attachment to a specific outcome is a rewarding experience for both the teacher and the student.
- In an effort to look graceful, there’s a lot of clenching that occurs.
Clenching can look a lot of different ways.
You can clench your jaw.
Your fist.
Your butt cheeks.
Your abdominals.
Your breath.
And yes, your pelvic floor.
I am not going to write a litany on the pelvic floor.* What I am going to do is (briefly) explain why it’s helpful for movement.
It connects the front of you to the back of you. The muscles in the pelvic floor mostly run from front to back, connecting your tail bone to your pubic bone.
This is not only super cool, but understanding when to create the connection and when to let go of the connection can make movements feel more powerful, more stable, and more flexible.
Because there are two sides of your pelvis, there are also two sides of your pelvic floor; just like you have two iliums (the upper, wing shaped bones of the pelvis) you also have two pubococcygei.
What this means is you can use the pelvic floor to help you move up or down, side to side, or to rotate left or right. This applies to all movement; it comes in particularly handy when you are rotating your body through space while hurling yourself around a firm vertical object.
Creating a connection with your pelvic floor can make your movement lighter. Easier. Softer. It can make a heavy barbell seemingly float off the ground or the weight of your body lift into the air as if by magic.
I started studying the pelvic floor a gazillion years ago (okay, more like 12, but it feels like a gazillion years ago). And I am sharing a live 30 minute presentation on it Sunday at the Unravelling the Myth of Flow summit that is happening this weekend.** The summit is free and features over 25 speakers from a variety of disciplines. Even if you don’t practice aerial or pole, if you are interested in movement, you should consider attending.
And if you are curious about how the pelvic floor can direct movement but an online summit really isn’t your thing, check out this pigeon flow. Give it a try. See how it goes.
Warmly,
Jenn
*The litany on the pelvic floor can be found here.
**This event has passed.
***Jenn’s substack can be found here.
[Feature Photo by Oladimeji Odunsi on Unsplash.]