Checklist evaluation

Even if you answered only one single question affirmatively you will benefit from this book. That’s because your “pelvic floor”, together with your diaphragm, forms the core of your deep musculature. The “pelvic floor” is quite literally the center to which all muscles holding your skeleton are linked. This core or center is the place from which all bones are held together and moved.

My use of quotation marks in writing about the “pelvic floor” is quite intentional. It has become a fashionable subject, and everybody interested in keeping fit believes that he is training his “pelvic floor”. Every health club, fitness center, sports club, and lately even the strength training centers offer some kind of pelvic floor training or claim that their training program also addresses the pelvic floor muscles. Yet when all is said and done, it only means that you contract your butt muscles or overuse your sphincter muscles.

In other words: the pelvic floor is experiencing a boom of interest. But the label “pelvic floor” is no guarantee that people are actually talking about – and exercising – the pelvic floor.

Can you interrupt your urine stream in mid-flow? Usually that’s considered the red-hot track to the pelvic floor. And it is a nice trick, but has nothing to do with your pelvic floor. Can you contract your sphincter muscles really tightly? Again: nice, but not about the pelvic floor. Are you a woman and able to do the “elevator exercise” with your vagina? Nice, but – no pelvic floor. Can you pull in your navel and contract your transversal abdominal muscles? Nice, but it has nothing to do with your pelvic floor. Are you a man and able to contract your gluteus maximus (the large butt muscle) until your anus hurts? That’s not even remotely nice, and no – it has nothing to do with your pelvic floor.

The actual pelvic floor, the body part that really and truly forms the floor of the pelvis, that part of all things has been most unfortunately named by the medical profession. Its official name is “anus lifter” or levator ani. I would have named it organ lifter. Or trunk floor. Or pelvic chief. The anus lifter is formed by two sets of five muscles fanned out symmetrically and running on the front and back and toward the sides of the body, connecting, holding, protecting, supporting and mobilizing all the pelvic bones. This system of muscles, which among other things also lifts the anus, forms the actual floor of the torso. It sits like a bowl in the so-called small or true pelvis (also known as pelvis minor). From there it performs at least eight different tasks, and does so beautifully:

• It controls the movements of the pelvis and legs.
• It holds, protects, and supports the organs in the lower abdomen.
• It builds the foundation for a good and healthy posture.
• It keeps the lumbar vertebrae safe and sane.
• It carries the weight of the torso, making the work of motion easier for the feet, knees, and hip joints.
• It maintains the conductivity of the pudendal nerve, enhancing sexual pleasure for men and women.
• It is the basis for a well-defined butt, a flat stomach, and beautiful, straight legs.
• It is the core from which graceful, effortless movement is born.

How the stomach wall became a stomach floor

The stomach wall had to transform into a stomach floor when humans began to walk upright. What used to point behind now pointed down. The weight that used to be distributed along a long central axis (i.e., the spine) now had to be held by a small floor at the bottom of the upright torso. Evolution met this challenge ingeniously: the stomach floor consists of a solid, multi-layered muscle construction. Anatomical terminology differentiates three layers (tiers), each of which is specialized to take on a specific task.

The outermost layer is formed of the sphincter and erectile muscles.

The sphincter muscles’ job consists in opening and closing. No more and no less.

In the female body, the front loop envelops the vaginal opening and bladder sphincter. It is formed by erectile muscles (musculus bulbospongiosus).³ The male front loop surrounds the root of the penis. It also consists of erectile muscle fibers (musculus bulbospongiosus) and supports the ureter, seminal duct, and erection. The back sphincter muscle, male or female, is in charge of bowel evacuation.

The middle layer extends from the pubic bone to the sitting bones and forms the wall of the lower abdomen. In the female body this middle layer embeds the vagina (vaginal vestibule), in the male body, the opening for the urethra and the blood supply for the penis.

The two outer layers are connected at the perineum with the innermost, largest, and most important pelvic floor layer: the levator ani. Its layout is identical in male and females. The CANTIENICA® method focuses on this innermost layer because a strong and well-exercised levator ani relieves the two other layers and allows them to perform their own tasks unencumbered.

The levator ani sits in the pelvis like a bowl made of muscle. It is connected to the front of the body via the abdominal musculature, to the sides via the hip muscles, and to the back via the back muscles. If the levator ani is in good shape, it forms a veritable entresol in the human architecture. It provides a foundation for the spine, the spine has a secure hold and can stretch up and fully expand. This full expansion activates valuable deep muscles.

The hips and legs are relieved and gain the kind of lightness that leads to a beautiful shape and graceful movements. The levator ani is also home of the sex nerves: increased levator ani muscle activity enhances the fitness and conductivity of the pudendal nerve with its fine and complex neural network. The result is an increase in sexual pleasure and/or the return of pleasure that may have been absent due to an operation or giving birth.

Of humans and wardrobes:
a pelvic anatomy primer

Imagine for a moment that your body is a wardrobe. If you want the shelves and other things in the wardrobe to stay put, you need a wardrobe bottom or floor. Now imagine this wardrobe moving around on its legs. To do so it needs a floor that is mobile.

Let me continue with the wardrobe analogy a bit longer. The content of the wardrobe varies, it can expand and retract. The wardrobe fills up and empties out over the course of the day, and it does so by itself. New things get in, old stuff gets out. For such a wardrobe it would be ideal if its floor was elastic and could give in a little.

Sometimes the wardrobe does strange things. For example, it breathes downwards. It sneezes. It coughs. The perfect wardrobe floor would also be able to withstand and react to such percussions, to soften the blows.

This is exactly the kind of floor that your torso is equipped with. Humans have the perfect floor!

There is only one hitch: your perfect floor “needs” a little maintenance, which means that you need to use and exercise it so that it can work perfectly throughout your life. I put “need” in quotation marks because I want to demonstrate and prove to you that there is no “need” and “must” involved here. Instead, it is a matter of fun and of feeling so great from the very first moment that your body will just ask for more and more.

The pelvis is an extremely flexible construct. It consists of seven bones. As a child grows, two sets of three of these bones fuse together to form the two hip bones, one on the right and one on the left. The sacral bone connects these two sides. It is equipped with a pelvic joint surface along which the two hip bones (or rather, their “wing tips”, the ilia) can glide.

And now, for the next two chapters, we will segregate the sexes. But only because the male pelvis and pelvic floor look different from their female counterparts.