Enhance Your Pelvic Health: Essential Tips

Introduction to Pelvic Floor Health 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Reverse Alzheimer's Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Heather Sandison. And I'm really curious about everyone's feedback about this particular show. I think that you're going to get more out of this than many of the others, because we're going to talk about a really unique but really important part of aging. Jana Danielson is here to join us to have a conversation about pelvic floor health. We know that women are two out of three Alzheimer's patients. And as we age the pelvis and everything in it, our bladder and the other organs can become an encumbrance to sleep, to our dignity, to so many pieces of living a normal, healthy life as we age.

And so Jana is an award winning wellness entrepreneur who, through her own experience with physical pain, has turned her mess into her message, which is now become her mission. She is an Amazon Best Selling Author and the Founder of Lead Pilates and Lead Integrated Health Therapies and the Cooch Ball the world's first pelvic floor fitness tool for women. She's a member of the Holistic Leadership Council and a recipient of the 2023 Mindshare Leadership Summit. Future of Health Award. Jana has coached and consulted with tens of thousands of women from all over the world to help improve their quality of life as they age.

Thank you, Jana, for coming on the Reverse Alzheimer's Summit and also just being willingness, your willingness to create the safe space for women to talk and men to talk about these sensitive issues without judgment, without fear and relief, help them find solutions. Dr. Heather, thanks for having me. If I had like one wish, if there was a genie and this genie said, you know, you get one wish, not three, just one. My wish is that we could be literally more connected to our body because it really is brilliant.

And I think that sometimes we buy into societal stories and, you know, norms and narrative and and the one that I am like a champion for is pelvic floor health. And it's time that we bust some of the myths around, you know, just because I'm in perimenopause or menopause or just because I another birthday candle on my cake while I should be dealing with, you know, incessant night waking, which leaves me exhausted during the day, or of course, I have to plan my day around bathroom breaks, or of course, I'm not going to be, as, you know, connected and sensual with my partner because that's what happens when you age.

And so I'm excited for our conversation so that we can educate and inspire and maybe just leave our audience with with one or two really pragmatic tools that they can start to implement into their life starting today. Well, let's dove right into it. What if you had to give someone, let's say a woman who is in her sixties, seventies and maybe experiencing some incontinence, starting to have to wear, you know, different underwear and plan her day around bathroom breaks. This can lead to social isolation, one of those risk factors associated with dementia. Right.

Our worlds get smaller and smaller when you have to be close to a bathroom all the time or you're worried about having an accent.

Why Pelvic Floor Dysfunction Is So Common 3:34

What would you tell her? Where would you have her start? Well, this is so juicy. All right, so the first thing that I would say to her is that even though you might feel like you are alone in this situation, you're not. And and actually, the stat has gone from one in three women dealing with some form of incontinence to one in two women. So, you know, if you think about ten of us sitting around visiting, having tea. Five women and that alone, I feel like it shifts the mindset a little bit when you know that you're not, when you know that you're not alone.

The research also shows that in 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction, whether it is incontinence or whether it is, you know, bloating, constipation, cold, tingly feet, low back pain, chronic tight hips, some of these things we don't even connect with pelvic floor. Right. 90% of that is actually reversible because the body how we how we sit, how we stand, how we breathe is so important to pelvic floor health. And and if there is if there was one tool that I could give that woman that we're talking about, really, it's it's how to properly how to properly breathe.

And I would love to be able to dissect that a little bit and talk about how the pelvic floor and our diaphragm. Would we have time for that? Yes, let's do that. Let's explain the why and then. Okay. And I have you leave without showing us how to properly breathe. Yes. Okay. Let's do that. So, first of all, the pelvic floor for some people just don't know. Right. So our if you put your hands on your head, that's your pelvis, essentially. All right. There's three bones there that make the pelvic girdle.

The pelvic floor is the group of muscles that are like the hammock inside. Everybody has men and women. Everybody has a pelvic floor. And because we live on a planet with gravity over time, if those muscles are not functional, which means they can work and they can rest. Because a lot of people think I got a kegel. Kegel kegel, my way to pelvic floor health. And actually, in 70% of women, they already have a two tight pelvic floor. There's too much tension. And giggling will just make that tension more and more pronounced, which means when you sneeze a little bit, there's some leaking, which means when you laugh out loud a little bit because a tight muscle is not a strong muscle.

All right. So we have this beautiful hammock sitting inside of our pelvis. Do geographically, right above that hammock is our diaphragm, which is like an open umbrella or a mushroom cap. And it actually lives right in the rib cage. All right. Like at the in the crust of the ribs, when we watch a newborn baby breathe, that baby's belly rises and falls with every breath. It's beautiful, right? Then we become teenagers, young women. We buy into those societal beliefs. So we we we suck in. We suck in our belly.

We wear clothes that are tied around our waistband. And guess what happens? There's all this intra abdominal pressure. We release about two liters of gas a day through all the all the orifices in our body. So that pressure, when it's taken away from the center, it has to go either up or down. And so a lot of women experience pelvic floor issues even without having had a baby, even without, you know, being in their 50, 6070s. It just it encompasses all of us, really. So once we realize that the pelvic floor looks for leadership from the diaphragm, if we are not breathing with our diaphragm, the body is so smart it transfers the breathwork to these little muscles in our neck.

They're called the scalene in the Sternocleidomastoid They're like little strips of beef jerky. So this big mushroom cap umbrella has been replaced with these skinny little muscles that already have a job. They hold our head up on our spine. So now our diaphragm, that main muscle of respiration is not moving. The pelvic floor notices it and it also just goes on a little bit of a vacation. So we're going to I'm going to show you how it simply by breathing with your diaphragm. Not only do you take in 600% more oxygen by breathing diaphragmatic late, you give your person pathetic, nervous system, which is the rest, and digest that yummy, juicy part that teaches us to chill out.

You give that a big hug. You're also giving CPR to your pelvic floor. And if you could find 30 seconds three times a day to breathe, like I'm going to show you it actually can start the healing process, the functional improvement process of your pelvic floor.

Diaphragmatic Breathing for Pelvic Floor Support 8:43

And everybody is worth everybody is worth that. We deserve to have a body that is oxygenated. We don't live in that brain fog. We don't live with that chronic exhaustion or, you know, I had a good sleep, but it's ten in the morning and I'm dragging my butt. Why is that right? That's that's an oxygen. That's an oxygen issue. So can we learn how to breathe? Yes. But first, what I want you to do is coach people. How do you have them? Remember, are they. Where we setting a timer on our phone three times?

Yes, 30 seconds. I think some of us go, oh, that's just 30 seconds. I'll get around to it or I'll do it and then the data. But we haven't done it. So how exactly do we connect it to brush in our teeth? Do we set a timer before we do it? Great question. So yeah, stack it or attach it to something else. So for me, when I open my eyes in the morning, usually it's usually my body that's waking me up to go to the bathroom. So I'll go to the bathroom. And then the next thing that I do is I do my breath work and sometimes I'll go down stairs and get my feet on on the grass, do some grounding hands on body, do my gratitude like I'm actually in that 30 seconds.

I'm not just breathing, but I'm doing my gratitude. You know, I might be looking, you know, at the sound or looking at the I'm I'm welcoming my day, basically. Then I do it midday habit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'll do it midday. I my favorite lunch right now I go through these phases but I love making our sables right now. That's just my thing. So as I'm making my bowl, I will do my breathing and then I like to do it in the evening. I don't drive much right now. I'm in Mexico, so I ride my bike to a lot of places.

But another great place to stack it is if you are driving when you're at a red light, it's a perfect time to practice some breathing. Or if you're more of that, I'm going to set a timer or I like to be I like to be more spontaneous. Well, then just set three random timers during your day. It really helps when you can connect it to something because then you'll be accountable. I always say to my clients, If you were to brush your teeth once a month, would you have good dental hygiene? No. Right. So this is something gift this to yourself.

You will notice within seven days a change in your body. You'll notice something and your brain will thank you, because it often can be in this state of of oxygen deprivation, unbeknownst to you. So that's how I would create the strategy. That is just so you have accountability during your day. Yeah, there's a way to actually make it practically work. Okay, I'm ready. How do we. How do we get ready? Okay, I'm going to sit, just so you can see. So here is that here's that mushroom cap on my shirt, by the way.

So I like putting one hand on the belly and one hand on this flat bone here called your sternum. All right, so I want you without much coaching. I just want you to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Let's do that two times, and then I'm going to layer on some information. So inhale through your nose, exhale out of your mouth. Now, on this second breath, notice which of your two hands moves more. Inhale through your nose and exhale out of your mouth. All right, so, doctor Heather, which hand of yours move more?

My stomach. Okay, perfect. And that's actually exactly what we want. We want this lower hand, the hand on your belly button to be moving more. What that tells me is you're actually utilizing this diaphragm muscle as part of the breathing process. I know there are some of you who would be like, Oh, shoot, my top hand was moving more. And you know what? Here's the thing. I love to call you my little goldfish because basically you're using your gills or those little muscles in your neck to breathe, not the end of the world.

Right. We just need to remind this big muscle here what his or her job is. So now with that information, what I want you to do is I want you to feel the waistband of your pants around your body, because our core is 360 degrees. I want you to breathe into the entirety of your core. So on the inhale, breathe into the waistband of your pants and on the exhale, try and melt away on 360 degrees. Try and pull the body. Melt the body away from the waistband of your pants. Do it again. Inhale. Filling that body, filling that bottom hand and on the exhale.

Think of drawing the bottom of the belly button away from that bottom hand. All right, it is three more times. Inhale out of the mouth, exhale. And it's like a little bit of an H sound with the exhale. Do it again. Inhale and exhale. And if you're doing this, if you have the luxury of being in front of a mirror, I want you to watch that. The shoulders are not moving at all on this one. Inhale and exhale. All right. That is literally as simple as it is if you can do that for 30 to 60 seconds. First of all, this is new to you.

You might be a little bit lightheaded right now. You are taking in big doses of oxygen and your brain may not be used to it. And it might be thinking like you might feel like maybe you had a glass of wine. And that's just a physiological response to the breath. And I want you to be humbled by your body. Don't be disappointed. Like, how could I let this happen? How can I get dizzy after four breaths? It's it's humbling. The body is beautiful. And this is now a new communication system that you have with your body, because it's going to learn that when you're breathing in this diaphragmatic way, that it is it is like this yummy, juicy, nurturing time you might call on this breath before a crucial conversation with a family member or someone you work with, the moments you feel like your life is spinning out of control, that you just can't even think about the next minute, never mind the next day or the next week.

Connect to the breath. It is a beautiful way just to give your entire heart and soul a big hug. And I hear that sometimes feeling like, Oh, I'm dizzy, maybe I shouldn't be doing this, but this is empowering, right? We can take this simple, free, very quick thing and we can change our physiology and we notice a difference. So we can use that as we can start to direct the difference. Right, and become a little more acclimated to it and really use this for our benefit. So this helps our pelvic floor a little bit indirectly, though, are there any things that you specific what do what do you layer on to our our lady who's struggling with incontinence?

What else do you tell her to do if she's like, I ran, I got the breathing down. What's next? Okay, so what? I will also usually tell her I'll ask her question how much how much water are you drinking? And normally she'll say, Well, I have a little bit of water, I'll have my cup of tea. But at 5:00 I don't take in any more fluids because I don't want to be up all night going to the bathroom. All right. So here's what's actually happening with that strategy. When you are not hydrated, your urine becomes extremely concentrated.

The urine ends up in the bladder, the tissues of the bladder get inflamed. They're like, I got to get this liquid out of me because it's not comfortable. It's so concentrated. It's like I said it, it's burning, it's inflammatory. So when a woman thinks she's doing herself a favor by dialing back on her hydration, she's actually creating a new yet different issue in her body, which is going to be the urge because the bladder doesn't want to hold that urine. So you're going to find yourself going to the bathroom more often.

And now this feels and sounds counterintuitive, right? I drink less water, but I have to go to the bathroom more. Well, it's simply because, like I said, of of the concentration. So here's my strategy for that. You don't need to go from 0 to 60 with your hydration. All right? It's this means that you're going to play with your body a little bit. You're going to have some fun. And it might mean yes, for the first couple of weeks, getting up to go to the bathroom, maybe an extra time. But when you can reach for your water like we both are doing.

Hydration, Posture, and Daily Habits 17:28

And you're talking about it, I've got to I know it makes me thirsty just thinking about it. Well. And there's a couple of strategies around drinking water right there is the sip versus chug, first of all. And when we sip, it gives that hydration. And if we were, add a little bit of Himalayan pink Himalayan sea salt, that's going to help us cellular absorption even more. So we want this water to get into our tissues. The tissues of our body are organ tissues, our muscles are joints. Our body uses water in a priority system.

It first goes to hydrate the brain and then our vital organs and then the tissues of our joints and muscles and fascia. So if we're like there's, there's the hydration strategy from a pelvic floor perspective, but then there's the hydration strategy from just an overall wellness, right? If we're not taking it enough water and our brain is like, you know, like a raisin that is totally dehydrated, then for sure our vital organs are not properly hydrated and for sure that chronic plantar fasciitis or that chronic bursitis or that chronic sciatica, it's the healing for those pieces of our of our puzzle is going to be much more the healing isn't going to happen in a in a beautiful, systematic way.

It just can't. Right. It can't we can't heal in a desert. Well, we need a beautiful jungle oasis. Right. That's that's a really easy way of saying it with the palm trees behind me. So so that's the hydration piece. Is that sipping versus chugging room temperature versus cold, a little bit of Himalayan sea salt. Those those simple little, you know, tools can go a long way. And maybe maybe today you take a couple extra sips after 5:00, just a couple, and then next week, maybe you wait till after six and take a few more.

So we wanted to just very slowly stretch out that time and and listen to our body. Right. To make sure that when we are going to the bathroom, that it's not just a few little dribbles, because, again, that's just coaching your brain to be like, Oh, that's what a full bladder feels like. Good to know. Next time it's only 10% full. I'm going to send her the message. She better go to the bathroom. Right. So we're we're learning. We're we're reteaching our body, some of those. Do I really have to go?

Well, let me see. Maybe I can extend it 5 minutes. Right. So, like an adult potty training. I mean, totally. It's all just remembering, right? Right. Okay. And so then is there another layer? There's another layer. All right. So we have the breathwork, right? We have the hydration. And I mean, again, these things seem so simple. And I think that's why we discount them, because they're not complicated. What do you mean? What do you mean? Breathing in water and posture. Right, right. And so, you know, as a party instructor, I found Pilates because of my own pain journey.

I was on a over two year pain journey on 11 different medications a day. I was in my early twenties just to be told by my medical team that they believed the pain was in my head and I was seeking attention, and that's when I felt like my lifeline was cut. I was like, This is my life. Will I ever be a mom? Will I ever have you know, I wanted to run my own business, marry my high school sweetheart. And so what I learned through Pilates is because after I took Pilates, after my first class, six weeks after I was off all of my medications, I didn't understand why, but I was intrigued and curious enough to find out.

And here we are so many years later, you know, I became a master instructor. I opened my own studio, my own clinic, and have since then helped tens of thousands of people. And so it it is a reminder that movement and posture are medicine. Right. Our body is on this planet with gravity. And you know what it's like when you see a house maybe that's lost its integrity. You see the you know, the walls have shifted our I read this research about six months ago and it shocked me. Dr. Heather So it said that 80% of our life happens within 20 inches of our nose.

And I was like, what? So think about everything that's happening in our world and 80% of our time is spent within 20 inches of our nose. So no wonder we have all of this technique posture that, you know, cuts off oxygen to our body, that, you know, eliminates blood flow, that gives us headaches, it makes us feel exhaust at all the time, posture. You know, and I don't want to go back to like your grade three teacher who would tell you to sit up straight all the time, but she was not wrong. All right.

So if you're sitting here listening, driving your car, sitting and watching us, those bony bones in your butt, their fancy name is they're they're the Ishmael Tube. Frosties, there are sit bones. When we're sitting, our sit bones essentially become like our feet. We want to sit up on them. We want to root them like like roots of a tree downward so that our body, our spine can be lifted upward. So we can leave space for all of our organs, our circulation, our digestion, our elimination. We want our limbs to move freely right when we are hunched over and small and frozen forward.

None of that can happen. All right. So when we have those sick bones rooted down, the body always wants movement, wants to be in opposition. So if something is connected down, there's something that wants to go this way. That's our spine. All right. When we're standing, the magic number, everyone is 60% of our weight in our heels, 40% across the widest part of our foot and zero under the pads of the toes. All right. When we live with about 80% of our weight forward, it actually ages us more rapidly because our entire body's shifts.

And again, so I'm going to sound like a broken record of circulation, digestion, lymphatic like all of those things slow down and we age quicker than we should. So the breathwork hydration and posture and even posture plays into pelvic floor health. When we're standing with our 6040, that beautiful hammock is is in its optimal position when we have too much weight forward or we're schlumpy when we're sitting, it puts this unnecessary force downward and over time that becomes pelvic floor dysfunction.

So you've mentioned Pilates my own experience with Polaris after having my baby. That was that was how I got back into exercise. And I was surprised by how much less pain I experience day to day, how I was able to tolerate sitting more, how much more energized I felt. But the thing that surprised me most was the community actually was going to these classes. I felt really lucky. There was a studio down the street from my house about it was 3 minutes from my house to being on the on the reformer.

And I saw the same woman, you know, a couple of times, two or three or four times a week. And we got to know each other and we supported each other. There was encouragement. People wondered where you were when you weren't there, and there was this really wonderful sense of commune nity. And that was a side effect, I think, of how an unexpected and really positive side effect of going to Pilates. I'm wondering if you've seen something similar. Oh, my gosh. Like, I can't wait. I so I started my studio out of my basement and I have clients that were still coming to my brick and mortar studio like ten years later, still talking about the basement.

PALLADIO Days like there is this there is this beautiful when you are working on your own body, when you are reconnecting to self through this form of movement, there is just this openness about those others who are around you. And yeah, it's almost immediate. And I think I mean, you alluded to it earlier in our in our chat that, you know, social isolation and loneliness has so many impacts and outcomes on our body. So when you can find that community as a bonus on top of the breathing and the blood flow and the beautiful movement and, you know, getting your joints well oiled, it's like it's really like it's like the perfect storm when it comes to movement as medicine.

We were talking about elephants in the room and how you know, talking about pelvic floor health incontinence.

Pilates, Alignment, and Fall Prevention 26:38

This can be one of those elephants in the room, something that people don't want to talk about because of shame and anxiety and all, you know, just the dignity that you you lose as you become incontinent. Yeah. Another elephant in the room is is, of course, cognitive decline and not wanting to talk about that, the fear around that, the shame around that. And so I really appreciate you making this accessible and supporting women and finding solutions. You know, the other piece of aging that we fear of course, we fear incontinence and cognitive decline, but also falling and Pilates and movement can be one of the the best things that we can do to avoid falls.

Can you talk about how Pilates supports balance and fall prevention? Yes. So, oh, my gosh, you are just speaking to my soul here with all these questions. Dr. Heather I love it. All right. So Pilates truly is about a line bent, right? Joseph Pilates, who created this form of movement, said that the spine, the health of the spine dictates the health of the body. And you might think, well, how does my spine help me in fall prevention? Well, the spine has these beautiful natural curves to it. Pilates really focuses on the alignment of not just the spine, but of our arms, our legs, you know, the neutrality of a neutral pelvis.

All plays into this. Now, I want to challenge you if you're here listening to this conversation, the next time you are out and about, I want you to watch just people watch for a minute. And if you can be in a location where you are watching people standing so in line at the grocery store or maybe, you know, in line at the ATM, I want you to look at their feet. All right. Most of us stand if these if these are my feet, most of us stand like a duck. Poppins just habitually over time, anatomically correct, is about 10% to turn out.

So, yes, we need a little bit of turnout. But here is what happens over time. We start to get too much turnout in our legs. All right. When our bones start to rotate outward, the soft tissue is going to follow our muscle tissue, our facial tissue. And we end up with this migration of this twist. You know, when you when you wear a long sleeve, kind of a tighter shirt or you put on a pair of leggings and the seams aren't quite lined up and it just feels weird, you know, when you have like a little bit of a twist in your in your clothing and you're like, oh, I got to I got to line up my seams.

That's actually what your facial tissue is doing. It is it is wrapping around, following your bones. When we are out of alignment, our structure becomes compromised. All right? Our core isn't able to support us. Our pelvic floor is unable to support us. Our head posture changes. Everything changes. Ladies and gentlemen, our feet are like the stage of our performance. No one has life. I want your stage to be as strong and stable and supple as it can be. Our feet, 26 bones in each foot. They need to move. Right.

We should be just as dexterous with our toes as we are with our fingers. So when we notice it, notice yourself, like walk around your house and just stop, see where your feet stop. And I guarantee you're going to have to dial them in. That's what politics teaches you. It teaches you where that alignment should be. It's going to feel weird at first. Like, I don't like living there. I like living here, right? This is what I'm used to. And when it comes to fall, prevention or strength and pelvic floor strength are absolutely critical.

And when our lower body is out of position, what's going on above it just simply can't support you like it wants to. And so if someone listening is like, All right, I get it, I want to get on board, but I don't have a potty studio down the street. I don't know if anybody I've never heard of a reformer. These Pilates machines, do I need this machine or can I get the benefit from home? And with Zoom and with online courses, is there a way that this has become more accessible? The answer is yes. So obviously, I mean, in this world live zoom now it has become more accessible and sometimes Pilates can get confused with yoga because there is mat pilates and some of it might look like yoga.

The biggest difference I feel is that and I know there's different kinds of yoga and I'm not a yoga aficionado with all the different names, but in places we don't hold poses, right? In places we move through the ranges of motion, which really is what life is like. Right? We we pick up our bags of groceries and we put them down. We open a door and we close a door. We stand up and we sit down. There's ranges of motion. And so you can get the benefit from, you know, doing movement on Zoom. If there was if there was any way at all that you could do, you know, get to a studio or have someone come into your home just a couple of times to watch you, because sometimes we don't know.

We don't know. Right. And making that investment just to have someone with their eyes on you be like, oh, see? See that foot or see that shoulder or that and that. That also can be done over zoom. That is that that part is really critical because if you can get a good base in Pilates and in movement and the breath, then you're well you're well on your way. That's so helpful to kind of hear that there's ways to get that individualized attention, because I also notice that I would go to group Pilates classes and I would get what level of soreness, and then I would have a one on one session occasionally and I would have I would notice that different muscles would be activated just because of her level of expertize.

Things like you said that you don't know what you don't know. But we also get so used to the way we move. We almost don't even notice when our flashes are twisted up. The way you were describing, we don't even feel it anymore because it's our normal. And so then bringing that awareness and having a professional who can work with you, I think helps us to prevent injury, but also helps us to get even more out of our activity, not just day to day, but out of that that Pilates class or that yoga class potentially, or whatever it is that you have access to.

And so how how about working with you? How do people find out more about what you have to offer? So the best place to connect with me is either in info at Qualcomm or head over to Qualcomm. That is my my main website. And you might be thinking like what? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What is it useful? And you know, just really quickly, when I when I was teaching parties and when I would talk about pelvic floor health because it's such an innate part of Pilates and and the core Dr. Heather and I were talking before we hit the record, and I said there would be this weird energy all of a sudden in my in my studio, like no one would make eye contact with me.

It just it got just awkward. And I was like, what is happening? Why can't we? You know, you trust me with your body. You've been here for years. Why can't we talk about the pelvic floor? And and I learned a few things. First of all, so many women think they're going through this on their own, and that's not true. We talk about that already. And, you know, the second really cool thing that I learned about a year and a half ago is the prudential nerve, which is the main nerve that runs from the brain to the pelvic floor.

It's a motor nerve. So it sends communication to and from and it's a sensory nerve. So it's all the senses.

Accessible Pilates and the Cooch Ball 34:48

Pleasure through pain, the Latin root of the word few dental means ashamed. And I was like, what in the heck? Like that was for me. That was like out jaw on the floor like, oh my God. Okay, that explains. Into the language. Like it's built exactly. It is built into the language, the nerve that is the communicator. And the feeler is rooted in this frequency of ashamed ness. And so what I did with that was I thought, I need to find a fun way and make something I can use in my Pilates classes that my pelvic star physical therapists that were working in my clinic could also, you know, we could this could be a bridge between therapy and Pilates.

So I created the Cooch Ball. And if you're watching you're going to see the Cooch Ball. Is this little it's a five inch ball. What you don't see is what's inside. The magic is inside. There's this beautiful nylon thread that we found that's kind of stretchy that we wrapped around the bladder of the ball, and the ball was kind of squishy. So when you sit on it, the nylon thread inside gives the ball a little more substance, a little more support. So when you sit on this ball, first of all, if it was rock hard, your nervous system would be like, heck no, get me off of this thing, right?

And if it was too soft, it wouldn't impact the way I wanted to. So this is like the Goldilocks and the three bears. This is the just right porridge. So when you sit on it, the weight of your body on the ball for 3 minutes. Adding that breath we talked about earlier in our conversation creates this melting of the facial tissue, which is connective tissue, which eliminates blood flow from muscle. So it kind of hugs fascia hugs, muscle like a ball constrictor snake. And then the muscle or the the life force of the muscle, which is the oxygen and the nutrients that our blood flow carries, is not accessible by that muscle.

When we sit on the Cooch Ball, do our breathing, melt through those fascia restrictions, we bring blood flow to the area and then we can start to improve it through our Breathwork So that's where you can find me info@coochball on all the socials at the Cooch Ball, please reach out simply because again, you know, you've heard me say this before, you're not on your own. And sometimes a little bit of information. I have been saying this a lot lately, a little bit of information that becomes actionable, becomes education, right?

So Information you don't act on is just information like, oh, that was nice to know. But when you take information and you act on it, it becomes education. And now it it's learnable. There's more value to it. And then the cherry on top, if you can take what you learned and share it with someone else, now it becomes wisdom. And, you know, connecting us back to that divine feminine wisdom is one of my passions that I have, because we do have such beautiful, innate, you know, this body is just beautiful.

And when we remember how to work with her or him and really it's amazing how it can support the healing that that we crave. So I am so inspired. You know, thank you so much for making this conversation a little bit more normal because as you just mentioned, it becomes wisdom when we share it with someone else. And I think when we model and when we have these conversations that are more matter of fact and not not dressed up in shame, then we can start to have these conversations with other people.

I've seen this happen in the menopause, right around menopause. Women, we're so ashamed to talk about their sleep or their mood or their hot flashes. And as we've kind of normalized that conversation, more and more people can have it. And then more and more people get access to the help that they need to find solutions and not suffer. And so please, I hope all of you listening will maybe be open to starting a conversation. Or if you notice a friend rushing off to the bathroom or saying that she can't join you for lunch because she's having the health issues or something, maybe broaching the subject and letting her know, or especially if you've had the privilege and the relief yourself, have you gone through this and gotten some relief?

Share that with other people because there are too many women suffering unnecessarily. So please. And Jana, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your wisdom, for making it fun and easy and accessible. We really, really, really appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.