Why Kegels Don’t Work for Pelvic Floor Health
This Tantric Life Podcast – Transcript
Why Kegels Don't Work and Other Surprising Things About Your Pelvic Floor Health
Introduction
Lauren Ohayon: For physiological orgasm to happen, we need all sorts of blood flow. And what ends up happening for a lot of people is that their pelvic floor muscles are too tight. And so when any part of the body is too tight, it cannot perform its function for a long, sustained period of time. A lot of times, what people are not aware of is how the pelvic floor is one of the best spaces to cope. You can just grip it. Nobody can see you – you’re just in there gripping and tightening. Strong pelvic floor doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do contracting exercises. You need to make sure your pelvic floor is trained to task.
Layla Martin: What does it look like to be able to create strong muscles in your pussy while taking down tension?
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, it’s a great question.
Layla Martin: Beloved, welcome. Today we are going to talk to Lauren Ohayon. She is a pelvic floor movement specialist and she is the creator of Restore Your Core® – pelvic floor trainings for women that have had over 15,000 members in them. And she is a huge advocate of enlivening, healing, and awakening the potential of the pelvic floor without the burn and shred mentality.
She trains professionals in this methodology and also works with healthy birth and pregnancy outcomes in relationship to the pelvic floor. So our conversation today is going to satisfy you if you’ve always suspected that the few things you’ve heard about the pelvic floor – like it should be tight, like you should lift a lot of weights, you should always be doing your kegels – if you’re like, that doesn’t sound right. It just doesn’t feel right to me. Something is off with this. You’re like, you know what, I don’t want to lift a bowling ball with my pussy – it just doesn’t feel natural.
She is going to reveal in this conversation, along with me, why tight isn’t the goal, and why even strength can be misunderstood in the pelvic floor world. We’re going to walk you through a simple practice you can do on a daily basis to restore pelvic floor sensitivity and connection, and ultimately pleasure and blood flow to the region. We’re also going to talk about the connection between pelvic floor health and sexual pleasure and orgasm.
And you’ll not only get a lot of takeaways about the importance of your pelvic floor, how to care for it, how to steward it, the connection between your nervous system and your pelvic floor – but you’ll be deeply, deeply inspired about an approach to the pelvic floor that feels profoundly feminine, playful, and fun, and not misguided. We’re going to talk to you about why you don’t ever need to do a kegel again, how that is not the answer to having the sex life of your dreams, and being able to fall in love with your body in a profound and potent way. This is a deep, shame-free conversation. So excited to take you on this ride and for us to have a world filled with magical pelvic floors. Yeah, because that’s as it should be.
Layla Martin: Welcome, Lauren.
Lauren Ohayon: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah.
Layla Martin: It’s beautiful to have you. So I am really excited for you to walk us through: how does pelvic floor health connect to a sexual experience? The feeling of pleasure, even things like desire, if it does, and even orgasm. What is the connection between those?
The Pelvic Floor, Blood Flow, and the Physiology of Orgasm
Lauren Ohayon: That’s a great question. You know, for physiological orgasm to happen, we need all sorts of blood flow. Like, what initiates orgasm? There’s the desire of the mind, right? There’s the spark, the turn-on, the excitement, the game. Right. But then there’s the actual physiological thing that needs to happen. And a lot of that happens – getting wet, getting turned on, getting excited – it creates this cascade of events that dominoes and ripples down into the pelvic floor.
However, to keep the momentum going towards climax – if climax, right, orgasm, is the goal of that exchange – you need blood flow. Yeah. And you need a lot of engorgement. And it’s like the engorgement narrates the lubrication, which narrates the blood flow, which narrates more. And then all of this is being facilitated by the muscles of the pelvic floor being able to work really fast and for a long period of time. So there’s like this endurance quality to the muscles that’s needed. And that’s pelvic floor muscle health.
So you can have all that other stuff happening. You can be like super turned on. I’m ready. Let’s go. I’m wet, I’m available, I’m here. And then it kind of flatlines, or orgasm doesn’t arise, because the pelvic floor really does need to work hard for a sustained period of time to create climax.
Lauren Ohayon: So, you know, and what ends up happening for a lot of people is that their pelvic floor muscles are too tight. Yeah. And so when any part of the body is too tight, it cannot perform its function for a long, sustained period of time. The easiest way for people to understand this is tight hips. If you have tight hips, you will be limited in pulling your knee towards your chest, for example. You might be able to do it for a flicker, but to keep it and sustain it requires something else. So same thing with pelvic floor muscles. They’ll get you to the gate, but they might not take you to your seat.
Layla Martin: Because they’re too tight. Totally. And the thing that also comes to mind with blood flow – I’ve never thought about it quite this way before – is I get really cold feet, especially cold hands and feet. Most of us, especially women, know that feeling after you eat, because your blood goes to digest your food so you get cold hands and feet. Or for those of us who just naturally get cold hands and feet – that’s usually poor or lowered circulation. And when I have lowered circulation in my hands and feet, my hands and feet don’t want to do anything.
There’s this feeling of – I feel like there’s an intuitive feeling of what blood flow does for wanting to do things. Especially if you think about your hands: when your hands are cold and there’s poor circulation in them, you don’t want to make art, you don’t want to touch anyone. You don’t want to make something, right?
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah.
Layla Martin: It’s like, ooh, right. So the physical desire to do things and make things and have experiences has a lot to do with blood flow. Yeah, yeah. And what creates that chronic tightness?
Lauren Ohayon: Everything from – we can talk about modern life.
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: We can talk about high-heeled shoes. We can talk about shoes that don’t allow feet to be feet. We can talk about tension originating from the feet – and like your fascial connections into your pelvic floor begin in your feet, travel up through your calves into your inner thighs and right into your pelvic floor. We can talk about nervous system patterns. Great thing.
Layla Martin: Let’s go through every one of those and you can ruin my life. So I’m going to leave the high heels thing for a moment, but we’ll go there second. I’d love to hear first about modern life. What is modern life doing to our pelvic floor? And I’d imagine you’re talking about kind of sedentary lifestyle, the way we sit, things like that. Anything else with modern life that’s really impacting our pelvic floors?
Modern Life, Sedentary Habits, and How the Pelvic Floor Is a Conduit
Lauren Ohayon: I like to think of the pelvic floor as being a conduit. Yeah. So when people are like, what’s the pelvic floor? I’m like, it’s this incredible conduit. Because it absorbs. It’s like – what do our legs do? Our legs absorb force from the ground and then propel us forward. So we’ve got this shock absorption happening through the legs, and then this propulsion. And the pelvic floor is the exact same thing. It absorbs from the legs and it propels us forward. And so we need all sorts of – and all the bones, if you look at the human body bones, they’re spiraled. And they all facilitate motion of all forms.
Like blood – what is blood flow? What is circulation? It’s motion. What is orgasm? Orgasm is motion. What is inception? What is conception? All of it is motion-driven. So like as humans, we’re really motion-driven. And it’s not incidental. It is implicit in our design. It’s implicit in our physiology. It’s implicit in our ecology outside the body and our ecology inside the body.
So we are designed to move. And there are multiple ways we’re designed to move. And the pelvis is at the receiving end of so many of those forces. And it’s also the place of stability – like it is a container. It is holding organs, it is holding. It is like a container. So it’s holding and protecting and receiving and offsetting and transmitting. Like it is doing so much. It’s a conduit.
Layla Martin: Amazing.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. So we sit a lot. Sitting a lot can keep things frozen. We wear shoes that don’t allow for that spiral to happen – that transmission of force from the feet upward through gait. So there’s just a variety of ways that we don’t move throughout our lives that encourage more sedentarism. It’s not a word, but now it is. And that creates a level of sedentarism in the pelvic floor and in the pelvis.
Layla Martin: All right. So we want to move – movements important. Are there any particular kinds of movement that are better for the pelvic floor than others, or just any movement?
Lauren Ohayon: That’s a great question. I mean, I think it depends on for what, for who, and why. What is happening in someone’s life? I think that sometimes it can be overwhelming for people to think, like, now I need to be like a caveman living in modern society. And so while I am a big fan of moving more and less shoes and sitting less, I also love modern conveniences, and I understand that people have to work 9 to 5 at an office desk. It wouldn’t be fair to talk about gyrating all over the floor all day long. But if they get a rocking desk, or walking – let’s just start with walking more.
So one of the best things you can do for your pelvic floor is actually walk more. And then it’s like figuring out what in you is patterned really well to modern life. And how can you introduce new novel patterns to give yourself more blood flow, more circulation in areas that are not getting circulation?
Layla Martin: Amazing. And then, yeah, in terms of shoes – are you saying barefoot is the best option? But what is particularly bad about high-heeled shoes for your pelvic floor?
Lauren Ohayon: So yes, barefoot is a great option. But for most people who have not worn barefoot shoes, I would say progress with caution and give yourself a year to transition. Which is not what most people hear – like a barefoot health shoe podcast, and then they’re like, I’m getting rid of all my shoes tomorrow. And then in a month they’re like, and now I have plantar fasciitis and I need knee surgery. So let’s take it slow.
But basically, high heels change your relationship to yourself physiologically. So, like, it shifts your pelvis forward a little bit. It shifts your spine back a little bit. It rolls the shoulders forward a little bit, the head – like, everything has to counterbalance to adjust to that heel. And so patterns and tightness literally ripple upward from the feet. Just because you’ve changed even just an inch, or even a millimeter, it changes how your body is arranged relative to its various parts in order to not fall on its face as you move. Because that’s all your body cares about – staying upright. And so it will do anything it can to prevent you from crashing down. So it will tighten things up and hold things in to prevent that.
Layla Martin: So I’m going to just guess, so you tell me if I’m wrong. You can wear heels like once or twice a week for a few hours and not completely destroy your pelvic floor. This is more like if you’re wearing them all the time.
Lauren Ohayon: Yes. I am not a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater person. I don’t take extremes. I don’t have polarizing ‘you must’ and ‘you have to.’ Go where the shoes feel amazing and then celebrate what you feel when you wear them. Go on an adventure. And then spend some time barefoot. I think it’s more about what you do when you’re not in your heels than what you’re doing when you are in your heels.
The Nervous System, Coping Patterns, and Pelvic Floor Tension
Layla Martin: Totally. All right, so there’s all of that. And then there’s – you said nervous system. How does our nervous system create tension or relaxation in the pelvic floor?
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. You know, I think a lot of us are so used to our patterns in parts of our body, like our hands or our feet. You were talking about your hands and your feet before. Because we can see our hands and our feet, and for a lot of us, we’re aware, to some degree, of how we grip in response to life. If you walk into a porta-potty, you’re not going to be like, oh, Layla, yes. It’s beyond your conscious – like, you’re not sitting there planning it. You’re not like, now I’m going to constrict my diaphragm and my nostrils and I’m going to make sure I don’t breathe. You don’t. You just trust your body to do that because bodies cope.
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: And so nervous system stuff is interesting because what we are as humans is patterned. We are super, super patterned. And the way that we survive is by recognizing patterns. I walk my dog every morning at like 4:45 and it’s really dark. And I don’t love feeling afraid – I’m actually afraid of the dark. I’m one of those people who loves the dark but is afraid of what’s out there. But I do it anyway. And I bring pepper spray with me. But every tree and every car and every house – I’ve created a blueprint of what I’m about to experience every morning in my neighborhood. So that if there was a bear – like in Miami, we don’t have bears, but if we did – I would notice it, because what we do is patterns.
And so the nervous system creates coping patterns to help us. It’s a beautiful thing. And a lot of times what people are not aware of is how the pelvic floor is one of the best places to cope. You can just grip it. Nobody can see. Nobody can see you doing this. You’re just in there gripping and tightening. And so the relationship between the nervous system and pelvic floor is nuanced. But one of the most primal places is that it’s just really easy to cope in the pelvic floor. And when you do it so much, you stop perceiving that you’re doing it.
It’s like walking into a room where somebody has been making banana bread. You smell it for 30 seconds, but then the smell is gone – but the smell is still there. You’re just no longer perceiving it. That’s because our nervous system is like, okay, we know what that is. We don’t need to keep registering that. Cut that smell off. But the smell is still there and you’re just no longer noticing it. That’s the same thing with tension patterns in our body, like gripping in the pelvic floor.
Layla Martin: It’s a lifelong dream of mine to have at Burning Man: a really gnarly, disgusting porta-potty, but somehow have it have a secret entrance to like one of the most outrageously good parties you’ve ever been to. But it’s so nondescript from the front and so horrific that you’d have to make your way through it.
Lauren Ohayon: There’s a password. You need to know that’s the door you go through.
Layla Martin: And it’s fascinating, this tension piece. Right. Because in working live with people and looking out at a room full of people breathing and moving, there’s almost a direct correlation between someone’s aliveness and general joy – like they’re not joyful all the time, but they have a kind of joy to them, they can enjoy things, they’re grateful for their life – and a sort of mental suffering that shows up as rigidity and deep tension inside of the body.
And I don’t know what you would say to this because I don’t know your exposure to eastern traditions and things like that. But definitely in the tantric tradition and the Taoist tradition, the pelvic floor being so connected to the root – lots of signaling of ‘I’m unsafe and my core presence on this planet is at risk. Like I am not physically safe. I’m not emotionally safe. I’m not sexually safe’ – would show up predominantly in the pelvic floor in terms of the energetic area where we would code feeling unsafe.
And the interesting thing for me is I have never come across a woman who hasn’t done at least some work for a period of time, who felt fully safe in her body on this planet. Because we haven’t been. And we’ve gotten all these codes, and some of us direct experiences, that have said: your body is not safe, and it’s at risk. And there’s an intelligence to our body tensing like that when it doesn’t feel safe. It’s almost like a last-ditch protective mechanism. Like if I feel protected out here, I don’t have to protect myself here. But the moment I don’t feel protected around me – and nobody’s looking out for me, or it feels like that – then I’m going to do the last thing I can, which is to tense my body and tense my nervous system to try and stay protected or safe.
I articulate through that because I’ve encountered so many women who feel so much shame around their tension and so much like there’s something wrong with them. And there’s nothing wrong with the tension – it’s an intelligent response to an unsafe world. But even if the world can be unsafe, there’s so much safety in our lives. Like you actually are safe in your bedroom, or you are safe in the moment, or you are safe most of your life. And so for those of us who are blessed – and most of us listening to the podcast are, obviously not true everywhere in the world – being able to encode that safety in your body so that your nervous system can relax does so, so many things.
Lauren Ohayon: 100%. I mean, I think that coming into your body in a full way has ripple effects to even how you speak to a doctor. Yeah, right. Like it’s this ripple effect outward. Which is incredibly powerful. I don’t think that people realize, though, the connection between how feeling safe in your body is the same as feeling safe asking for more milk at a restaurant.
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: Like it ties in. I think, like you said, so many women – we don’t want to take up space in the world. Forget that the world’s not a safe space for us. But also we’ve been well conditioned and trained not to take up space. Yeah, and not to be too loud and not to be too pretty and not to be too industrious and not to work too hard. But why are you so lazy? I mean, we’re constantly being coded and controlled.
Layla Martin: Very controlled around sexuality as well. And yes, don’t feel too turned on, don’t feel that much pleasure. Don’t be that type of woman. But then let her be orgasmic at exactly the right moment and–
Lauren Ohayon: And better be tighter. Yeah, yeah.
Layla Martin: That tightrope walk creates so much tension in the nervous system. And if you want to disappear and vanish and not take up space, one of the fastest ways to do it is to physically try and put yourself into a ball, which is the signature of so much of this tension.
Lauren Ohayon: 100%. Yeah. And I think that also around the female pelvic floor, there’s also been this idea that tighter is better. Like if we’re talking about the nervous system and feeling safe – our pelvic floor actually doesn’t feel safe when it’s that tight. And so all the work around tightening it is a problem. Kegels, and even – I come from a yoga tradition and a Pilates tradition, and there’s just so much, you know – it’s all wrapped up in different language, but it’s all the same thing, which is: contract your root for more power. And it’s like, no. That is a patriarchal message that now we’re absorbing into less patriarchal systems. But they’re still absorbing the same patriarchal message of tighter is better. That’s kind of a problem.
The Difference Between a Tight and a Strong Pelvic Floor
Layla Martin: Right. Well, let’s break this out because I’ve been very clear about this for a long time. ‘Tight pussy’ is code for patriarchal control, because you have a tight pussy when you’re afraid and actually tense, because you’re scared of the world and you don’t feel sovereign over your own body. So it’s actually quite a distorted taste.
However, there is strong. Right? So like – I’d love to hear your take on this. Because if you have a strong pelvic floor, then you can grip while you’re having sexual experiences and you can also have, as you were talking about earlier, stronger rhythmic waves of pleasure that happen in your pelvic floor. So it’s a great irony – it’s the upside-down legacy of misogyny and patriarchal control, which is that a tight pussy is a traumatized, unfeeling, unpleasurable pussy. Where sex is going to actually hurt and be unpleasant. So that is a tool of social control for a woman. However, having a strong pussy is a great idea for many different reasons.
So there would be men listening to this, or women who are lovers of women, who are like, well yeah, but a strong pussy feels better to me than just a limp pussy. Nobody wants that. Like, actually I really encourage that we celebrate full expression but we also want to think about strength because weakness is also a sign of I haven’t been paying attention, I haven’t actually utilized the muscles here, I haven’t made this a priority in my life – the same as if I don’t work out or don’t move my body at all. So what does it look like to be able to create strong muscles in your pussy while taking down tension?
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think that a lot of people think that strength is the amount of force you can generate. Right. Which is where people are like, do more and more and more contraction. Yeah.
Layla Martin: When I think of the main question that I get due to misleading marketing – if I want to be able to have a multiple orgasmic, pleasurable sexual experience, do I need to be able to lift an entire surfboard with my pussy? And the answer is no. Just like to enjoy your life and be able to be a strong human who can run and jump and play with your kids, you don’t need to be able to lift a 300-pound barbell.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, yeah. Amen. I think that when I define strength of the pelvic floor, I talk about it being responsive. Can it respond? If I go to pick up my couch, my pelvic floor needs to do something really different than if I go to pick up my phone or my AirPods. Right. So I need it to be able to respond to different scenarios. When you go to open your door, you don’t tell your fingers like, okay, I need you to do this now. It just does what it needs to do. And the pelvic floor is no different. So strong pelvic floor doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do contracting exercises. You need to make sure your pelvic floor is trained to task.
I work with a lot of athletes and they have washboard abs – picture perfect abs – and they are rife with imbalances, pain, and aches. So something that looks functional or something that looks ideal – look at muscle men at the gym, their arms can’t even straighten because their muscles are full but their shoulders are compromised. Because that is not being trained to task. Their muscles are not balanced.
So pelvic floor work should train the pelvic floor to do its job – to respond. And the amount of tension needed for a certain activity should be available to it. If we only train tight, we’re never training for the 300,000 other scenarios throughout your day where your pelvic floor doesn’t need to be tight and it doesn’t need to be relaxed.
I think there’s this also kind of false equivalency that the pelvic floor has two states. State number one is engaged. State number two is relaxed. So a lot of people with a tight pelvic floor are like, how do I relax my pelvic floor? And it’s like, well, you know, you don’t need to relax your pelvic floor. You need it to be ready. You need it to be in that ready-response state. When it is – it does. If it needs to be relaxed, it will be. But it doesn’t have to be this either/or of: either you’re tight and gripped, or you’re relaxed and effortless. There’s actually this entire spectrum of other states that you would be in, in a functional, healthy, responsive pelvic floor that have nothing to do with being on or the opposite off.
And I think that, again, it’s like these patriarchal ideals about the body that misinform human behavior. No, I need to tighten my pelvic floor to get it strong. Actually, strong is about responsiveness. Like: can it do its job?
Layla Martin: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, my experience – like even as we’re talking, my pelvic floor is like signaling. She’s doing a kind of harmonic pulsation, a sort of contraction. And then she’ll pulsate in like a wave upwards, which is really lovely. And I love you describing this because it almost feels like there’s a musical instrument inside. And it’s like my pelvic floor can play different keys or something like that.
Lauren Ohayon: I often talk about it like tuning into a different radio station. We’re so used to feeling our body as like grip-pull, because of our arms and legs. Right? We can kick, we can reach, we can pull. But the pelvic floor doesn’t do any of those things. It’s not how it’s shaped. It’s this other shape and it does. So we try to foist onto the pelvic floor actions that we do with our hands and legs. But our hands and legs are appendages. They’re not axial. They’re not like deep support systems.
So again, it’s like we create these false equivalencies of ‘well, strength means I squeeze’ – and like you said, playing an instrument – I talk about like tuning into a different radio station. Yeah. Because we’re so used to feeling the radio station of the body that we can see and control. This is really different. The pelvic floor is a different radio station.
Jade Eggs, Ritual, and Building a Genuine Relationship with the Pelvic Floor
Layla Martin: I think one of the things that I experienced early on in coming through the door was trainings and really working a lot with the jade egg and crystal egg practices and things like that. Early on, weightlifting was really emphasized. And because the only stuff I could find at the time was all about kegels being like the key to pelvic floor health. And so I lifted weights, and incorporated it into some of my trainings. But I – and this was really just intuitive, and from my own experience – was like, I don’t think this is actually that important. I think it’s more the regular, even if not every day – at least a couple of times a week, if not once a week – am I engaging with that part of my body? Am I like, does it, is it part of the way that I move my body?
So if I shake, am I moving in my pelvic floor or am I tense and trying not to feel it? If I do a somatic practice, really bringing in sensitivity and touch and things like that – and this is definitely the time for my five-star pussy story – because I had a practitioner, a pelvic trained person, but who had also now incorporated a lot of goddess work and healing. So she would do external and internal work on pelvic floor healing that was very emotional and somatic and psychological. So she wanted to work on my pelvis and I was like, sure, why not?
There was this part of me that was like, well maybe I won’t be as strong as I’m supposed to, or she’s going to give me some feedback because I wasn’t lifting the hard way. Am I good enough? Exactly. And then afterwards she was like, ‘holy sh*t, I wish every woman’s pussy and pelvic floor felt like that.’
And I only tell the five-star pussy story not to put myself on some kind of pedestal, but because I experienced sexual abuse, I had really intense vulvodynia – very, very intense pain during sex for a couple of years in my 20s that gynecologists just tried to give me numbing cream for. I would have really unexplained burning sensations happen. I couldn’t feel below my neck when I first started doing these practices, let alone my own pelvic floor. So it’s just a testament to spending loving, beautiful time with your pelvic floor and working with your body. And doing that does what you need to do to heal. Like, it doesn’t have to be this big, elaborate thing. Humans didn’t do big, elaborate things with their pelvic floor. They just used them.
Lauren Ohayon: Right. That’s how I got into this work – because I was a longtime yoga teacher and I was like, why are we over-cuing this part of the body constantly?
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: Like why is it constantly lift up, pull up, tighten, pull, squeeze. Like exactly what you just said made no sense. But like, you know, in certain yoga traditions you’re just supposed to like pull and tighten so much. Made no sense.
Layla Martin: I feel like a lot of yoga traditions are copying what the body does organically in spiritual states. And when your energy is very active, your pelvic floor pulsates. But it feels like aliveness. It actually pulsates organically. It’s like something switches on energetically and it’s just like a vibration. So it’s a very alive part of the body. But I think what’s interesting is most modern yoga – I think original yoga, and then also modern yoga, is copying those states of aliveness, but forgetting that the point was actually to be alive, not to just copy the state.
So I think the root tightening became about like push up the energy and supply the energy and have a strong pelvic floor, rather than: oh, eventually when you relax enough and embody enough and your Kundalini activates and you have healthy flowing energy in your body, your pelvic floor becomes so alive that you’ll actually get these pulsations happening organically on a regular basis. We don’t need to try and push that. You actually open into that over time.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, yeah. It’s a lot of like, perform into – let’s perform those things. Yes, yes. And then maybe we’ll get them. But you know, what you said about the jade egg is interesting, because people often assume I’m very anti jade egg practice just because I’m not convinced of kegels. I’m just like, I just don’t get them. And for a lot of my clients who have vulvodynia and a hypertonic pelvic floor and pain with sex and difficulty to orgasm, that wouldn’t be even on the top 50 things I would have you do. But with jade eggs, people assume I’m against them.
And I think it all comes down to exactly what you said – what is your relationship to the egg? And are you performing the egg, or is it a tool that you’re utilizing to have a different relationship? Right. So it’s like I can put my hand on the floor and I can feel the floor in my hand. But I can also feel my hand on the floor. There’s two ways to feel that – I can feel what the floor feels like to my hand, but I can also feel what my hand feels like on the floor. Yeah. And it’s two different things. And the jade egg gives you that change in proprioception.
Layla Martin: Yes.
Lauren Ohayon: Right. That interference too. It’s like an interference of your normal programming. You’re interfering your usual programming to bring you a message. And so it’s like a transmitter. You’re able to kind of get different messages as opposed to where people have misappropriated it and they’re like, use it to strengthen. So I have a lot of clients who are like, I messed up my pelvic floor because I did so many jade egg contractions. And I’m like, yeah, the jade egg is probably better used as like a listening device and a relational device and not like, I’m going to use it as a means to an end. But I’m going to use it in my journey.
Layla Martin: Well, it’s so different. Yeah. I love you articulating it that way. And it’s beautiful because it gives a lot of – it’s actually giving me active permission in the way that I really have used it. But there’s like – I didn’t realize it until this conversation because I’m not a trained pelvic floor therapist and because I was raised in the more weightlifting aspect, the more masculine ways of using the jade egg.
And for me, it was more – if you want to change your relationship to your sexuality, to your pelvic floor, to your body, this requires exactly as you’re saying a pattern interrupt and the opportunity for a new relationship. And for many of us, also a safe space to heal and release things that have built up inside of our nervous system and bodies.
And just like you’re not going to spontaneously do yoga – you need something, which is usually a yoga mat, right? Like nobody just starts doing yoga on the floor randomly. The mat gives you – it’s so simple, but it gives you the invitation to do a practice. The same with a meditation cushion. Yes, you can meditate on any pillow in your house, but if you really have a meditation practice, you sit on your cushion. It’s a simple tool as an invitation to relate and to have a practice. So to me that is exactly what the jade egg is. It’s a tool that is like – wow, I am now doing healing. I am now letting myself feel pleasure. I’m now softening.
And also, one of the things I love doing with the jade egg is letting women move to the beat very organically to restore that feeling of fun and connection in the pelvis. It’s like, let’s have fun with this area.
Lauren Ohayon: I know, we’re so serious about it.
Layla Martin: Like yeah, yeah, we are so serious about it. The one weightlifting. And it’s actually not even heavy weights, but we do standing jade practices in our training. And from very early on, I was like, you know what? So we could tie fuzzy dice to these. I was like, we could put disco balls on this. And so there’s this amazing thing of instead of lifting heavy weights, it’s like, have a pussy party and actually restore fun and joy to that area because I think that goes a long way to actually coming home inside your body.
Lauren Ohayon: Yes. And I think that people need that spark, the word that you use – like the mat, the cushion – the ritual, the totem. Yeah. You know, that token that now signals to the nervous system: now we enter meditation, now we enter yoga, now we enter … Right. And so it’s the same thing. Exactly like – and I think that when you have mastered that, for lack of a better word, then you can go into it much more easily without the need of that token. The token is then removed and it integrates. Now you’re in integration. Now you’re in a space where that is just seamlessly making its way through your life.
But when you are – it’s like me walking at 4:45am. The first ten times I did it, it was clunky and weird and I didn’t know where I was, and I felt more afraid. And I didn’t have my sense of bearings and I wasn’t integrated to my environment. So I was more alert and I needed more of a – I needed a flashlight and you would need a compass, and you would need a satnav, and you would need to look at your phone to see where you’re going. And then you slowly need less and less of those ritualistic token-signal kind of things. And you’re just in the flow of whatever it is that you’re trying to get into the flow of.
A Simple Daily Practice: Breathing, Awareness, and Reconnecting to Your Pelvic Floor
Layla Martin: Absolutely. And what I’m curious then is – you know, I know people want to go really deep with this and they can work with you, and I know you have a whole methodology around this, which is an amazing contribution to the world. But if I’m listening to this and I’m thinking, wow, I only really ever knew about doing kegels. I want more of what you’re talking about. What are some of the simple things that you do recommend? What are you recommending to people besides kegels?
Lauren Ohayon: Oh, a good question. And I know you don’t want a ‘give me the three things I should do,’ but we are in such a world of like, what are your three things? From my perspective – I mean, I think that like the first thing is: do you feel your pelvic floor?
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: What does it feel like to you? And a lot of people – that alone is like, like you said, they need the token to get them there. They’re like, what is the item that can signal that to the brain? So your breath is one of the most powerful ways into your pelvic floor, because they are working synergistically together, forming this container.
And I think a lot of people don’t realize that our pelvic container – which includes, let’s say, from the ribs from, like the neck down to the root – is actually a pressure-filled ball. And our unique architecture is constantly like an accordion, changing the shape to create more or less support, depending on what we’re doing. And our breath is one of those. So if we’re constricted at the top and our ribs are not moving and we are frozen in our upper body – our shoulders are hunching, our ribs are locked down, the upper spine is just immobilized – then what’s ending up is you get an over-accumulation of pressure in the pelvic floor and core, which leads them to want to grip and tighten because the system senses instability.
Our bodies are sensing everything. They cannot even send it to your cognitive brain. So your body is 150 steps ahead of you, making accommodations for those patterns. So people who are very locked down in their upper body are generally very locked down in their pelvis too, because the pressure builds up so much in the bottom because of all that instability – that our body’s way of mitigating that is to lock it.
So we get this locked pressure system, very little movement, and a really simple thing to start to do is feel your breaths in your pelvic floor. And the way that I encourage people to do that is to find a sitting position in a chair – not on the floor, but in a chair – where you can have your feet on the ground and you can be on your sitting bones. Your feet are on the floor, and then one hand is on your ribs.
There’s a lot of misconception about when you breathe – you should belly breathe. That’s actually one of those – belly breathing is a great way to create a lot of pelvic floor tension. So ideal is to do more expansion in the rib cage as well. So ribs expand.
Layla Martin: Solar plexus and diaphragm. Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: Like into your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is here. Your heart sits on it. Yeah. So the diaphragm is up here. So we really want to just be like expanding in through the ribs. So I like to have people with one hand on their perineum, one hand on their ribs.
Layla Martin: If you haven’t touched your perineum today, now’s the time. Let’s go. Here’s a moment.
Lauren Ohayon: And as you breathe into your rib hand, can you feel the dialogue in your perineum hand? So an inhale would create a little bit of a fuller sense in your perineum hand. And an exhale would create a lift. But a lot of people can’t feel that. And I say to them, give it three weeks. And the question you ask yourself when you come to this practice is: can I feel my breath in my pelvic floor? Can I feel my breath in my perineum? And can I feel my perineum in my breath? So start with one of them. Those are two different questions. Can I feel my breath in my perineum is a different question than can I feel my perineum in my breath?
So start with one of them and feel. Then shift gears and see what you feel. And most people – again, it takes like three weeks of steady practice to be like, I think I feel something happening now. But a lot of people don’t even have that connect from top to bottom. They’re like, no. Which is a great answer. When people are like, no, I feel nothing – I’m like, great. You’re like most of the population. Like, we’re not trained to feel anything below. In fact, we’re trained to keep it all tight. We wear compression stockings and compression pants and compression. We are trained to compress. We are not actually trained to feel that rhythm.
And so I would say one thing that people can begin today is inquiry – awareness, just inquiry and awareness. And then as you’re moving through other things, you can have that same inquiry. Like if you’re doing some cat and cow or some inner thigh rocking or some somatic movement, you can slow down your movement enough to be able to inquire: can I feel my breath in my pelvic floor and my pelvic floor in my breath? Can I feel that narration, that conversation? Because it is happening.
Layla Martin: Yes. Yeah. No, that’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful. I realize, because a lot of people will be like, do you do your kegels? And for like way back in the day, I used to try that. It always felt kind of silly to me. And now what I do is a version of like – hey, what’s up, pelvic floor? Like basically hi, like what’s going on today? It’s like sitting down inside my pelvic floor. And I do periodically invite myself to do that. So if I’m moving to the airport or if I’m driving, it’s not that I’m doing kegels – it’s that, oh, am I actually feeling my pelvic floor? And I do come more alive when my pelvic floor is involved with my spatial awareness.
Like it’s part of the reality that I’m feeling. And as you’re saying, you’re always feeling your pelvic floor if you want to, but it’s really attuning to it and opening to it. And the breath I think is really amazing as well. Because everywhere that we are blocking life force energy, where there’s openness to energy, blood will flow as well. And when we’ve completely blocked off breath, which is energy, into the base of our body, we’ve also really disconnected blood flow. Which is such a – as we started off and you really launched this conversation with the core of sensitivity – it’s the biological basis of being able to feel and express and create with an area. So as simple as this process is, it’s super brilliant. And I think it really would restore that kind of sensitive, attuned movement that is the heart of a healthy pelvic floor.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. It’s like if somebody comes to you or you have a ritual for yourself, and every time you touch your shoulders you release them – and it was just that touch, right? They didn’t want you, they just gave you this little tap and you’re like, oh yeah, I should soften there. When you start doing a practice of inquiry into your pelvic floor – like you said, you can just be in the airport and just ask yourself: what am I feeling? And the more you ask yourself what you’re feeling, the more entitled you become.
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: And the more agency you have. And it’s powerful because the more entitled you become, the more you’re like, I’m not actually going to put up with that bullsh*t. And just from this – you know, I was just with my husband who had ACL surgery, and the first surgeon we went to really gaslit him. And I kind of don’t like to be that wife who – because I do wear like a very informed hat. I’m not a PT, but I’ve studied enough anatomy that I know a lot about the body, and I can come off as aggressive and, you know, all the things they want to call us Karens.
Layla Martin: Honestly, in today’s medical system, you’ve got to advocate for yourself. I mean, holy sh*t, I haven’t engaged with the Western medical system in a long time, and my little bit of re-engagement with it – I was like, oh Lord, you’ve got to know your stuff.
Lauren Ohayon: Amazing. I just watched this doctor dismiss all these questions my husband had. And we’re talking about getting like a cadaver replacement surgery for his knee. Can we please just ask, where are the cadavers coming from? Like basic questions. And again, no, you cannot. It’s no wonder we don’t feel entitled to information. No wonder we feel afraid to speak up. The doctor literally not only shamed us, but then brought in his whole team to laugh with him at our questions. Like, brought in his team to mock us. It was crazy.
Of course, he wasn’t the one who operated on my husband. And then we were like, fine. But my point – and I just sat there being like, this is why I’m working with women – my husband was like, that’s the first time I’ve experienced that. I was like, yeah, well, welcome to being a woman, because this is what we experience consistently and constantly. Like, why do you think I had most of my children in our living room? Yeah, right. But this is what we’re constantly dealing with.
And it was so enlightening to him because he was like, wow, like that was awful. And I was like, yeah. But when you start – when you do something like create a signal that’s a moment to turn inward – it does blossom more and more and more, and you become more entitled to take up space and more entitled to advocate and more entitled to ask questions and more entitled to be like, no, thank you.
Layla Martin: Yeah. Sovereign over the domain of your body. And you know, the tension in the pelvic floor, like you said, shows up as tension in the upper body, tension in the throat and jaw. Like there’s a relationship of these places of tension. And as you’re talking about that bubble that expands with breath up and down, it’s like you’re either opening your throat, your chest, and your sense of expression – you’re either opening your sensitivity to your eroticism and your pleasure and the magic of your pelvic floor, or you’re subtly reinforcing all of the beliefs that I’m not safe, I don’t deserve to exist. And that goes hand in hand physiologically with I don’t deserve to speak up. I don’t have a voice.
And for me, that’s why women’s sexuality got so shamed and controlled – and actually everybody’s sexuality, regardless of gender. Because when your sexuality is shamed and controlled, you disconnect from your pelvic floor. And your pelvic floor is a source of sovereign empowerment inside of your body. So there’s this psychological journey home as well, to really take up space in your own body first.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, yeah. And your pelvic floor is the site also of your container.
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: Right. And when you’re in your pelvic floor, you feel safe in your container.
Layla Martin: Yes.
Lauren Ohayon: Just snuggled.
Pain, Numbness, Prolapse, and What a World of Awakened Pelvic Floors Would Look Like
Layla Martin: Beautiful. All right. Let’s do, if you’re okay with it, just a couple of rapid-round questions to wrap up. Sure. Great. So do you have one thing that you would invite in sex for women who feel like there’s a lot of numbness in their pelvic floor?
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, like during the act of intercourse. That’s going to be challenging. I’m not going to lie. Like, I do believe that it’s important for people to work out their numbness away from the main event. Yeah, right. I mean, I do think there’s power in working – like if you’ve been doing the work away from the main event, then to do the work in. But in the moment of sex, there’s just so much going on. So yes, I do think there’s a lot you can do for numbness. I think that numbness is usually, like you said – it’s more a nervous system protective guarding. Yeah. There’s got to be some safety built. Yeah. Blood flow, safety, less guarding and more agency.
Layla Martin: Yes. And do you see a fundamental difference between women whose bodies guard with pain versus women whose bodies guard with numbness? Or is it just nervous system selection?
Lauren Ohayon: So I’m a Jewish person and I’ve been indoctrinated by my dad that if I ever get a tattoo, he would literally disinherit me. And my father’s my best friend. But yeah, that doesn’t make it clear. So I believe that if I go to get a tattoo, it would be very, very painful. Whereas you – I don’t know if you have one, but some people find it extraordinarily pleasurable. And how do you explain that? The same stimulus can cause pain in one person and pleasure in another. Because pain is bio-psychosocial, and it is never about what’s coming in. Because we know that people have escaped dangerous situations on broken legs and didn’t feel the pain. So pain is so much about output rather than input.
So I think that when people say to me, I’m in pain, I don’t automatically think something’s wrong. I think they’re processing the situation. Their nervous system is processing the situation as: the oven is red hot and they can’t get near it. And it’s our job to show them that the oven is in fact not even on. So I do believe that pain and numbness can stem from a very similar place.
When people say to me pain, I automatically go towards what pain is, and it’s not a creation of your mind, but it is. But it’s not. But it is. Yes. So we have to remember that. Like, if I got a tattoo, it would probably be extraordinarily painful. Not because I have a problem with needles, but because my father has indoctrinated me against that. Whereas someone else like my best friend loves them, and it’s like orgasmic to have the sensation.
I think pain and numbness can – I also think that people don’t differentiate if they’re in pain or they’re numb. Like it’s all just feels like– some people do. You would probably be able to.
Layla Martin: Yeah, yeah. A lot of people can’t.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, a lot of people can’t.
Layla Martin: And they’re very interrelated. Sometimes you’re numb because there’s pain underneath, and sometimes you’re numb and underneath the numbness there’s actually pain. It’s layers and experiences and the nervous system. Can you share a moment where you fell in love with the capacity of your pelvic floor? Like a moment in your own practice or your own growth where you were like, wow.
Lauren Ohayon: I mean, if you’ve ever witnessed a birth and seen a vaginal delivery – you just like – and you see these tissues that can stretch so much. Yeah, but then they can also come back. Right. And I would say that, like, witnessing – I saw my sister. I was there for her vaginal delivery, and it was like, just – I basically delivered her baby for her. It was amazing. I would say that was a moment where I was like, why do we vilify this part of our body that is so actually incredible and capable of so very much? Like I said before: inception, conception, deception – like all of these things happen at the pelvic floor.
Layla Martin: Yeah, it’s and–
Layla Martin: So do you have, like, a hero or heroine story of a pelvic floor – like for instance, someone who had a tear during birth or someone who had vulvodynia for so many years, who was able to find this aliveness and magic in their pelvic floor?
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, I’m really lucky. I mean, I got into my work – the online program Restore Your Core® over ten years ago, so I’ve had over 15,000 women go through my pelvic floor program, and I’m like, I create family and community. So I’m very intimate with a lot of my clients. I have had women, females, and non-binary folks go through so much.
I’ve just watched them go through so much, especially when it comes to prolapse. I think that prolapse is one of those conditions where women feel incredibly broken and ashamed. Yeah. And I’ve seen people overcome prolapse. And I am not one of those practitioners who says that prolapse goes away. It doesn’t. It shifts. Just like my herniated disc didn’t go away – it shifted. You know, things in the body – it’s okay to accept that our bodies have gone through change.
I think we’re always looking for like, returning back, bouncing back. I want to get back to what I was. And especially I’m 48 years old, and all the narrative to me right now is like, don’t you want to take this pill to look and feel 20 years younger? I’m like, I don’t want to look and feel 20 years younger. I don’t want to go back. I want to keep going forward. I like this forward momentum that I’m on.
So with people with prolapse, they’re always like, do you fix prolapse? I’m like, I don’t fix things. For me, fix is not the journey. The journey is about transformation and sitting with – so yes, I’ve seen people change their relationship to their prolapse, and I’ve seen their prolapse dramatically heal. And they would say, I fixed my prolapse. But I would say, you’re in a different relationship to your body right now.
Layla Martin: That’s beautiful. And the final question is: if every woman or person with a pelvic floor had that kind of responsive, dynamic, sensitive, well-healed relationship to this sacred part of their body – what do you think would be the most felt difference as we walked around the world?
Lauren Ohayon: Confidence. So I think that people would just have – and not confidence like, do I look hot today, get ready with me. But like confidence in just this inner connection.
Layla Martin: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: And confidence – again, I think that the work that I do – I know that there might be another physical injury waiting for me on my journey. I’m okay with that. I think the work is not about the return to perfection, the return to how things were 20 years ago in my own near-virginal state and maiden. I don’t want that. I want tools of resilience, confidence, and resilience. And I think that, you know, people would feel safe.
Layla Martin: Yes.
Lauren Ohayon: And we don’t see that do we.
Layla Martin: Yeah, totally. I deeply resonate with what you’re saying as well. Like, it feels so much better to be at this stage in my life. Like, I would never actually want to be my younger self. That was a blessing and it had its place. But all of this messaging that somehow life is better at a younger time – it doesn’t resonate at all.
Lauren Ohayon: Totally. I know, I’m very happy like I’m very happy in my 48-year-old self. Not time to change yet. Yes. Should not. Tomorrow might be a different morning. I’m open to that. To me it’s like, oh, there’s something else I love so much that–
Layla Martin: So much that I want like years of life. That’s what I want. When everyone’s like, I never want to be immortal – I’m like, I’m 100,000% immortal then. Like, wouldn’t you get bored? I’m like, no.
Lauren Ohayon: I know, what another adventure.
Layla Martin: So much to do.
Lauren Ohayon: So many different personas that we can take on and not feel shame about it. I think that’s what like – if everybody was in touch with their pelvic floor, we would just not feel shame about the things we want.
Layla Martin: Yes. Which leads to confidence. Shamelessness is confidence, right? Whatever I do, whatever I say, and if I make a mistake, even if I messed it up, even if I did the weird wrong thing, I feel fine about myself because, like, that’s nothing that no other human didn’t do at some point during their day.
Lauren Ohayon: 100%. Yeah.
Layla Martin: Oh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it so much. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone who’s interested in working with you – you can find all your links, all of how to stay connected with you, follow you, check out your course – all of that will be anywhere you’re listening or watching right now. So go ahead and check all of that out. And thank you, thank you, thank you.
Lauren Ohayon: Thank you.
Guided Pelvic Floor Awareness Practice
Layla Martin: Hey, for a little bonus practice here – if you are somewhere where you can close your eyes, I’ll invite you to close your eyes and tune in. If you’re driving or moving about the world, you can keep your eyes open.
And I invite you to do a scan of your pelvic floor – front to back – to just notice the sensations that are here, where you feel them. Maybe tingling, pressure, heat, coolness. Just notice what you feel and where you feel it. This is training your brain that your pelvic floor is a safe space to feel, that it’s important, and that the sensations there matter. Even just a simple practice like this.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, you need to write that down.
Layla Martin: And if you don’t feel any sensation, you can always touch your pelvic floor and really feel the connection of your hands on your pelvic floor. Notice what that feels like.
Then adding breath as you stay connected to the sensations of the pelvic floor – just as Lauren guided us, feeling that as you inhale, there’s an expansion. Your breath invites your body to take up space, to be alive. Your chest can lift, your ribcage can expand, belly can expand, pelvic floor can activate. Just feel how every simple breath is an invitation to come alive – for your body to take up space. And on the exhale, you can feel a softening in your whole body, but especially in your pelvic floor. Soft, silky. Sensitive.
A couple more breaths like that. Feeling your body expand. Pelvic floor expand. Take up space. And exhale. Feeling a softening. So just replacing that simple practice – just a couple breaths, a couple scans of your pelvic floor every day, as you move throughout the world, as you drive, as you find yourself sitting somewhere, as you exercise – just as Lauren shared, it can reprogram your relationship to your pelvic floor, reprogram your connection to it, your feeling state in it.
And blessings. Continuing to fall in love with your pelvic floor.
Thank you for listening to This Tantric Life. I am Layla Martin. This is the home for the realest conversations about sex, spirituality, polarity, conscious relationships, and all kinds of topics that help us live the absolute most incredible lives. Please check out the next episode. Please go ahead and leave your rating and review on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. It’s so, so helpful when you do that.
If you want to stay connected to me, the most helpful, supportive thing you can do is to head over to laylamartin.com. Sign up with your email address – that connects you to me if you want to study deeper. If you want to receive my deeper teachings, I do it predominantly via email. Finally, you can check me out on Instagram at @theLaylaMartin. And thank you so, so, so much for being here.
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