Wellness: Pilates, Posture & Pelvic Floor

Dr. Sharon Stills

Hello, hello, everyone. It’s Dr. Sharon Stills back with you for the Mastering the Menopause Transition Summit. I am fresh out of the shower, took a nice hike today, and I’m so excited. I’ve been waiting all day to do this interview because it is such an important topic, and I am excited to learn along with all of you. And my guest today is Jana. And I know I’m saying it right, ’cause it’s Jana like banana. And her last name is Danielson. And I’m gonna just read her short bio. She’s an award-winning wellness entrepreneur who through her own experience with physical pain, turned her mess into her message, I love that, which has now become her mission. She’s an Amazon bestselling author, owner of Lead Pilates and Lead Integrated Health Therapies, her brick and mortar business in the Metta District, her online wellness community. She’s the creator of the Cooch Ball, which we are gonna learn all about that, which is the world’s first patented pelvic floor fitness tool for women. She has coached and consulted with thousands of women from all over the world to help improve their quality of life, their confidence, and their impact. Such a beautiful bio. Such a cool tool. I’m super excited that I got my own. So welcome. It’s so nice to have you here, Jana.

Jana Danielson

Thank you, Dr. Sharon.

Dr. Sharon Stills

And, gosh, I mean, I love turning your mess into your message. I feel like we could do a whole talk on just the philosophy of that mindset. So maybe just briefly, just introduce yourself and let us know who you are and what you do because we have a lot of amazing info to cover with you today.

Jana Danielson

Absolutely. Well, hi ladies, thanks so much for being here and your interest in learning about mastering menopause, your body, and how, just because I’m such a firm believer that just because we have another candle on our birthday cake does not mean that our quality of life or our energy, our vitality, our sensuality and confidence should be decreasing as those candles increase. So I did turn my mess into my message, and then into my mission as, you know, late in my teens and early in my twenties, I started experiencing physical pain. Mine was in and around my, like, it was around my belly button, digestive pain. I chalked it up to being a first born, very driven farm girl that just wanted to excel at everything, and who also wanted to be the first in her family to move away from the farm and go to the city, go to university, and have a different lifestyle. 

And I started experiencing this pain more and more as, like I said, as I went through my twenties. I went to see my doctor as I think so many people do. And from doctor to specialist, had a pain journey of over about 18 months and found myself just finishing my undergraduate degree on about 11 different medications and just not having the answers that I was looking for. And through that healing process, learned a lot about myself, but felt that, I started making up these stories that, I wonder what I did early on in my life to deserve this. And, you know, did God give me like the short straw? And like all those things that I was trying to understand my pain. And I actually named my pain. I called my pain, my edge, and it helped me personify my pain in a way that I almost welcomed it like, oh, it’s a big exam today. Oh, there’s my pain. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. And so what I actually did, I had a medical experience that was not overly positive. At the end of my 18 months was told that, my medical team believed the pain was in my head, I was seeking attention and I should have a nice life. And I did go into a bit of a depression because I felt like, how will this body have babies? I wanted to be a mom. 

How will this body…. I was newly engaged to my high school sweetheart. How will I give this man and our life together joy so we could travel and do all these amazing things? And growing up in an entrepreneurial family, I thought, how will I run my own business and inspire others and grow a team? And so my aha moment came when one of my pop stars… I saw Madonna on the cover of a Fitness Magazine in 1999, ladies, a long time ago. I was in the grocery store. You know how they have the magazine stands when you’re waiting in line? And there she was. And the word Pilates was smattered across the magazine cover. And I bought that magazine and I read the article about 10 times that night, because in my mind, and I taught fitness. I mean, when you grow up in a small town you know that you play all the sports, and I was active and I looked healthy, but on the inside, I was not. And so as I read this article about this form of movement called Pilates, which kind of felt like yoga, but it focused on breath and posture and spinal movement, my brain couldn’t make the connection between fitness and Pilates. It just seemed like something that you would do to relax your body. Part of the article also talked about the pain, the pain that people had grown out of doing Pilates. And so I was like, what do I really have to lose? 

And so I bought a new Pilates mat, a new pair of leggings, and a new water bottle, and I found a Pilates mat class, walked into that class in September of 1999. And by the time I celebrated Christmas and my birthday that year, 16 weeks later, I weaned myself off of all my medication. And what I actually learned the gift was that, I was looking outside of myself to heal, and really where I needed. And I needed help, but where the main healing was within me. And once I believed that, and once I… You know, I couldn’t even breathe in my first class the way my instructor was queuing us to breathe. And, ladies, we’re gonna go into some of the anatomy and how breath is such a life force in us. And so that’s what I did. I got just hooked on this movement and I wanted to learn more. Like, why does breathing heal? Why is posture so critical? How is this very simple movement not only changing my body inside, but my physique started to change? I started to look different, and people noticed. Like, at 22 years old, they were asking me, are you getting taller? And so then what happened is I did my undergraduate degree and my graduate degree in business, and I worked for about 13 years in human resource consulting, started my own consulting firm, but that little voice in my head kept coming around like, there’s something here. You need to help others move their body and live their life with a different set of lenses. 

And so after I had, when we had a family and our three boys who are now 17, 19 and 21, I decided to do my Pilates training. And when the universe speaks to you, she speaks loud and clear because I lived in a small city in Canada. I would’ve had to have gone to Toronto or Vancouver to do my training, and lo and behold, a woman from Phoenix was coming to my city, of all places on the globe, to do her mat and Pilates comprehensive certification. I did that, and started teaching outta my home, to my friends and family, my husband wrangled up eight of his buddies, we did guy’s class twice a week. Within 16 months, I was teaching 16 classes a week, we invested in some Pilates equipment, and my hobby became my passion. And my husband quit his corporate job, took over the consulting business that I had built, and I opened my first studio in 2010. We expanded in 2015 to include an integrated health therapies clinic, ’cause I found that the movement was amazing, but when you partnered it with treatments like massage or chiro or physio or naturopathic medicine or energy work like reiki reflexology, magic actually happened. 

And that’s what I did. And then I grew my business to join the online world to expand my reach. And then pelvic floor health and women’s health is such a passion of mine ’cause I could see the lack of confidence and sensuality in the women I was working with, and I wanted to make a change. And so that’s when the idea for the Cooch and Cooch Ball popped into my head one night. And that’s how I show up these days. I love to educate and I love to inspire women to understand that our body is meant to move. Movement is a form of medicine, and when you bring that together, we can live the most life full of beautiful vitality, well into our sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Mmm, and above, and beyond. What a fabulous story and just so inspiring. And I love… You said so many things and I’m like, oh, I say that. Oh, yes, I agree, I agree. I think it’s just the way you think is so inclusive, and that movement is medicine, that the breath… I always say, the breath is our best medicine and it, and it’s right here within us. And, yes, we need outside help, but the answers are always within when we quiet down. And so we have a lot to talk about. And just your mindset. I wanna talk about the pelvic floor and all that, but I’m thinking, gosh, we could just talk about mindset. You have such a beautiful mindset and is so inspiring for women listening who maybe are feeling stuck or unfulfilled, that you give hope that it’s possible. You can turn your passion into your business and into your career, and there’s always an option to kind of step back, look at what you’re doing and where are you or are you not sharing your gifts and kind of recalibrate. So thank you for just bringing that out there.

Jana Danielson

You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

Dr. Sharon Stills

So where shall we start? Shall we start with the pelvic floor and maybe a little…

Jana Danielson

Yeah, we can start with the pelvic floor. You know, I just wanna touch on something that you said that just twigged for me. And I know this session together is not necessarily on mindset, but the body is so multi-dimensional that the physicality of who we are just meshes with the emotionality and the spirituality. And so, I love to drop like these little nuggets of like stats or things that you can really like sink your teeth into. And, ladies, if you are feeling stuck or you’re feeling disconnected from your body or you’re feeling like relationships in your life need a little bit of a boost or a kickstart, did you know that in a 24=hour period, the 60 to 70,000 thoughts that go through our mind, 80 to 90% of those are exactly the same as they were yesterday, which were the exact same as they were last week, and last month, and last year. And so if you’re here on this summit with Dr. Sharon to learn something new or become inspired, I want you to remember that one… 

We’re gonna give you lots of little gems today, but if you could just remember that one thing and understand that, how can we start to change our mindset when 80 to 90% of our thoughts are the same as they were yesterday? Something has to just pivot a little bit. And that’s one of the things that I’ve really taken to heart and how I coach a lot of my clients is that, we think there needs to be this big drastic change or the 21 day fill in the blank. And on day 22, the pixie dust is gonna just sparkle around us and our life is gonna be completely different, and then it’s not. And then we think, oh, well that’s typical Jana. I didn’t see it through again. And then we just, we play in these cycles and it does impact our posture, it impacts our digestion, it impacts our elimination, our libido, like, all these systems. If we think we’re like potato head dolls, that we can put on our sexy arms for date night, we’re not. We are this being of multisystems. And so as we move into talking more about the physical body and the anatomy and the pelvic floor, I want you to understand that, the strongest muscle that we have really is up here, and if we understand how to just shift, a simple shift can be exponentially transformational, and understanding that the outcome is the outcome, but if you allow yourself to be in the flow of the process, beautiful things can be learned and can actually happen in that. So I wanted just to pull that in before we got to the pelvic floor piece.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Yes, that’s so true. These thoughts are, they’re subconscious. Most of what’s going through our brain is subconscious. And so it really does, to me, it’s about the breath. It’s about breathing and stepping into the moment, as you said, and really examining the thought. It does take some time to change that muscle, but examining, is this true? Where did this come from? Because most of our subconscious programming comes from when we’re children. Up until the age of five or seven is where we start creating these beliefs around the world, and most of us, myself included, have had to go back and still, it’s a constant process of looking at examining, deciding is this really true? Is this my belief? Where did it come from? Can I let it go? Can I replace it with another belief? And I love, love, love what you said. It doesn’t happen on the 22nd day. And so we give you all permission to know that it’s a journey and it isn’t magic. It’s taking time to listen to talks like this to integrate something, to work on it to know, you go forward, you go a little backwards, you go forward, you go a little backwards. And that, as long as you’re going a little more forward than backwards, you’re moving in the right direction. So, such important piece. All right, so now let’s talk anatomy, and let me sit up straight.

Jana Danielson

Okay, so, I wanted… I think I wanted to start by debunking a few myths, okay? So first of all, let’s talk about the core. And you might think, why are we talking about the core when this is, you know, we wanna bring in the pelvic floor? Well, your core is actually a three dimensional structure. All right? So when you eat an apple, you say, oh, I’m gonna throw the core away. You have the core. It has a top with the stem, it has a bottom, and then it has the cylindrical part of the core that you have eaten the meat of the apple around. It’s just like in your body, right? We have four sets of abdominals. And under the skin, we have the rectus abdominis, which the fitness industry has had us chasing the six pack. Like, we’ve been chasing it for decades. And here’s what I wanna tell you. You have the rectus abdominis that lives under the skin, you’ve got the internal and external obliques that kind of make an X shape, kind of like a sling system, so when you pick something up off the floor, or you’re doing a shoulder check on the freeway, your obliques are what are moving you, those slings. And then deepest to that is a muscle called the transverse abdominis. 

The transverse abdominis is the closest abdominal muscle to your organs and your spine. And it actually starts in your low back, and it wraps around to the front of the body, coming up to the crest of the ribs and down toward the pubic bone. So if you think about like fashion in the 1500s, like Maria Antoinette with her corset, and they would get like tied in, you know, they could hardly breathe, that essentially, we have that within us, and it’s called the transverse abdominis. And if those four abdominals were stocks and you were an investor, I bet without knowing any better, 90% of us would bet, would put our money on that six pack muscle, because it’s been what, we’ve been dangling this carrot for it. Actually, you would not get a huge return on your investment. It actually is the opposite. It’s the deepest muscle to the organs and the spine that we wanna strengthen, which is the transverse abs. Six pack is important, yeah, but those muscles are used to sit you up when waking up in the morning out of bed, they stand you up when you are tying your shoes. So from a functional perspective, they get way more attention for their physique than they actually should. The transverse abs are really what is key, and that’s what we tap into when we’re improving our posture, which we’re gonna touch on in a little bit. 

So now we’ve built the cylinder, let’s build the roof and let’s build the floor. So the roof of the core is your diaphragm muscle. Okay? A little bit on the diaphragm. The diaphragm is our main muscle of respiration. We also have secondary breathing muscles that live in our neck. They’re called your sternocleidomastoids and your scalenes. And I just wanted a little side note here, ladies. Any of you who live with chronic neck tension, like you count down the days till you’re massage, you get your massage or your acupuncture and you’re like, ugh, I feel like a new woman, and then 72 hours later, you’re like jacked up again, can’t wait till the next massage. There’s a very high probability that you have actually trained these little secondary breathing muscles, which already have an important job to hold your head up on your spine, you may have just taught them how to be primary breathers. So I lovingly call you my little goldfish, okay? You’re my little goldfish, my little angel fish using your gills to breathe. 

What you are not accessing is your diaphragm. And, ladies, your diaphragm is this big, huge muscle. It sits in the crest of the ribcage. It’s like a mushroom cap or the top of a jellyfish or an open umbrella, so just visualize, and you are underutilizing it. It’s just sitting there. And you know what happens to muscle tissue that doesn’t get utilized? It starts to atrophy. And atrophy is another word for die. Those muscle fibers think they don’t need to be utilized, so they just kind of sit there. All right? And here’s the thing that, one of the most important things that happens is, when we’re not using our diaphragm to breathe, from a women’s health and pelvic floor perspective, if you are not using your diaphragm to breathe, it’s not, if you will experience pelvic floor dysfunction down the road, it’s, when will you experience pelvic floor dysfunction down the road. Because the roof of your core, which is your diaphragm, and the floor, which is your pelvic floor, these two muscles, because of just simply where they are situated, they have a direct relationship to each other, they speak to each other. And when one is not working, neither is the other. So once you start to wake up your diaphragm simply by learning how to breathe more impactfully, your pelvic floor will start to respond in a more positive way. Now, can breathing alone move you out of a grade four, level four prolapse where you’re getting needing to get a mesh pinup surgery? No, all right? 

However, it can slow the progress, that breathing can start to wake up the transverse abdominis muscle, right? Because when we breathe diaphragmatically, that deepest ab muscle starts to wake up. And when we breathe diaphragmatically, we’re taking in 600% more oxygen. So the 75 trillion cells that make you who you are from a cellular level, it’s like you’re blowing up a beach ball, and these cells are now full of oxygen and they are ready to be vital in the systems that they are a part of. So, I could go on and on in how it impacts the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest. And, ladies, in the 86,000 times you breathe in a day, it’s like 10 to 15 diaphragmatic breaths in the morning, 10 to 15 in the middle of the day, and 10 to 15 at night. And once you understand that that’s what your core is made up of and from and how it functions, you’ve just completely, like I said, you’re starting to function from a new paradigm because now it doesn’t cost you anything, but a few seconds, and putting that breathing on your radar can absolutely change your quality of life.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Hmm. So could you… I’m sure there are women going, how do I know if I’m breathing into my diaphragm, and how do I do that? Could you walk us through that? ‘Cause that is so, so powerful and something that the ladies listening can institute right away.

Jana Danielson

Yep, so let’s do this, okay? So unless you’re driving in your vehicle, obviously don’t do this. If you’re just listening to this. But I want you to put one hand here. I’m just gonna change the angle of my camera from one. So this is your sternum. This flat bone here is your sternum, all right? I want you to put one hand on your sternum, and then you won’t see the other one, but it’s gonna be on, it’s gonna go on your belly button, right? So you’re gonna inhale through your nose like you’re smelling a fresh baked apple pie that just came outta the oven, and I want you to breathe until you feel like you can take another ounce of air into your nose. All right, so here we go. Nice and smooth and calm, not a great big dramatic breath. Inhale. And as you exhale out your mouth, like you’re fogging up a mirror. So the bottom jaw relaxes. It’s like an H-A sound. So not like you’re blowing all those birthday candles. 

Okay? Relax the jaw. It’s like an H-A. Let’s try that again. Inhale. And exhale. And I just habitually shut my eyes ’cause I like to get rid of the visual stimulation. If you wanna join me, I’m gonna add on some education. Inhale through your nose. And as you exhale, notice which hand is moving more after that inhale. Now, on this one again, notice which hand is moving more, top or bottom? Okay, just notice. Keep breathing. I’m adding on more information. I want you to inhale and try and feel the palm of the bottom hand with air. And I want you to exhale and just think of pulling the belly button away from the palm of your hand. Do it again. Inhale into the palm of your hand, and exhale into the palm of your hand. And we have three more like this. Do it again. Inhale into the palm of your hand, the bottom palm. And exhale. Think of drying that belly button away from the palm, away from the front panel of your pants or shorts. 

Two more times. Inhale, breathe into that bottom palm. And you might be getting a little bit lightheaded, and I’ll talk about that in a second. And exhale. That little audible exhale. Relax the bottom jaw. Last time, ladies. Inhale into your nose, fill that bottom palm with air. And then exhale. Okay, so, eyes open if they were closed, and I want you just to… Let’s just take like five seconds and just feel. Okay, so a couple of things. If you are feeling a little bit lightheaded, what is happening physiologically in your body is that, because you are living, you’re currently living in a state of oxygen deprivation around the brain, we took in those big bouts, those big gulps of air, and your brain is like, what just happened? You might feel like you just had your second glass of wine and you drank it too fast to the first glass of wine, but like it’s an actual physiological response. So if you are feeling lightheaded, just be mindful, and understand that if you’re someone who lives with some brain fog or is like, where is my phone? There’s those people in our lives that are a little bit forgetful and just not owning their life, but just kind of going through it. If your brain is lacking oxygen, that could actually be the root cause of a lot of that brain fog. 

You had a seemingly good sleep, but halfway through the day, you’re exhausted, right? So this is a really important strategy for us. Now, while we were doing that, I wonder how many of us felt the top hand move more than the bottom hand? And remember, I called you my little goldfish. If your top hand was moving more, you’ve actually trained your body to use your neck to breathe, and you haven’t yet reminded yourself. ‘Cause think of how a newborn baby breathes, when they’re laying on their back, their bellies are rising and falling with every breath they take. They are the optimal diaphragmatic breathers, right? They are. And then we become teenage girls, and we learn about sucking in to make ourselves look narrow or tiny, right? Or we’re the tallest girl in class, so we hide a little bit. And all of that postural stuff that we have through our teens, it sticks with us. All right? So what we need to do is, Joseph Pilates, who is the creator of Pilates said, one of my favorite quotes, “Breath is the first and the last act of life. And somewhere in the middle, we forget and become disconnected from how to do it.” 

And it’s such a powerful quote because, I mean, you think, well, you don’t even think about breathing, you just do it, right? But there’s a way to optimize it. And so what’s happening, if you are that little fish breather of mine, you’re gonna teach your body, over the next three or four weeks, how to take bigger breaths and how to move that air down into that belly button because when you feel that bottom hand kind of filling and then melting back in, that’s how you know, with confidence, that your diaphragm is working. And I wanna encourage you to do this in front of a mirror to start because sometimes we do this. I’m over exaggerating, right? But we’ll actually start to move our little angel wings, right? 

Our little shoulder blades will start to move in a response, like the body’s like, oh, she wants us to do something, so let’s make her feel like we’re really doing it. You should actually be able to do it without no one even knowing that you’re doing it. So one of my favorite places to breathe like that is when I’m in my vehicle, ’cause your seatbelt with the… Obviously, don’t do it while you’re still in that lightheaded phase. After that. After your brain is oxygenated. ‘Cause you have your lap belt and your shoulder belt strap of the seatbelt and you can actually breathe into and out of your seatbelt, and it’s a very, you know, you can stack it while you’re driving to an appointment or picking up your kids or going for groceries, and it becomes just a part of, of your lifestyle. So that’s the simple way to breathe.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Hmm. I love the doing it with your seatbelt and using that. So that is so important. I always say, get your Buddha belly on. It’s okay. It’s the opposite of what we’re taught, ’cause we’re taught, breathe in and suck it in. And actually when you’re breathing in, you’re expanding. And, yeah, just find a baby and have them teach you how.

Jana Danielson

Well, and that’s exactly . And the second part of the breath is like, if we were gonna add on, so remember, that was the roof of the pelvic floor. Now, if we… Or the roof of the core. So now if we add the floor, it is a little bit… My clients always say, oh, that’s so counterintuitive to what I thought. Because what I like to teach, I like to call it beyond the Kegel. So, ladies, as you’re sitting where you are, if you were to stop the flow of urine, create that sensation in your body, and then start the flow of urine, and then stop, and start, okay? So those muscles are contracting and relaxing in response to your visualization of starting and stopping the flow of urine. Here’s where that framework kind of falls flat, is that when we move our body, whether it’s just functionally, cutting the grass or washing the floor or picking up our kids or grandkids, walking the dog, we move in and out of ranges of motion, okay? A muscle isn’t like a light switch. On, off, on, off, on off, right? If that was the case, if you wanted strong arms, I would say, make me a bicep, turn it off, make me a bicep, turn it off. And that’s not how we get stronger, right? 

So why would we use that same mindset with our pelvic floor? So when you’re breathing, here’s how this works. And I don’t expect you to understand this right off the get-go. It does take some time, but here’s the framework, here’s the roadmap. When you’re inhaling through your nose, your lungs are filling with air. So that diaphragm, that mushroom cap muscle, actually has to like duck and get outta the way. There’s no room for it, okay? Remember how I told you that the diaphragm and the pelvic floor, they’re like best friends, and what one does the other does? So when our lungs are feeling with air and our diaphragm is getting out of the way, it’s at rest, the pelvic floor is also at rest. Okay? And when we’re exhaling, and the lungs are emptying, and the diaphragm can come back into it’s umbrella glory, that’s when our pelvic floor is ready to work. So if you’re willing to come along on this journey with me, let me try and help you feel this in your body. Again, I don’t expect it to be right off the starting blocks, and you might need to go back into like that Kegel to make sure that, yeah, I do feel it. 

But here’s, I’m gonna give you two visualizations. When you inhale through your nose for the first time, it’s like your pelvic floor is that elevator, it’s at the ground floor, as you exhale, I want you to think of like one of those classic elevators in Macy’s, the lady with the white gloves, and on your exhale, I want you to ascend that elevator up to the second or third floor. Now, as you inhale, let’s let the pelvic floor descend back to the ground floor. It’s calm, it’s subtle, it’s pretty… It’s actually quite beautiful and magical. So as you exhale, again, think of that elevator, lifting up. If the elevator tissue type visualization isn’t working for you, let’s do this from a bony landmark perspective. You’ve got those two bony butt bones called your ischial tuberosities, all right? I want you to inhale and just visualize where those two but bones that you’re sitting on, notice the space in between them. And as you exhale, visualize drawing or sliding those two but bones closer to each other. And on the inhale, let them go back apart. On the exhale, let them slide together. And on the inhale, let them melt apart. One more visualization. 

On the inhale, I want you be at rest. It’s kind of a funny visualization. On the exhale, I want you to think of picking up a grape with your vagina, but don’t squash that grape. And then on the inhale, put the grape back down. One more time. Gently pick up that grape on the exhale, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, and then I want you to exhale and place it back down. All right. So, there are three very different ways to know how to start building that connection with our body. And it’s not simple at first. It can be like you’re learning a different language. And especially if you’ve had trauma in and around the pelvis. And that trauma can come in lots of different forms. It can be from birth, it can be sexual trauma, it can just be years of negative posture, right? Women carry attention in our necks. Top two spots, neck and pelvis. All right? And we protect. We protect here, and we protect here. So if you’ve been locked down, and the pelvic floor can be hypertonic, which means like a rock wall, and it can be hypotonic, which means there’s a lack of tone. And, you know, I’m just gonna mention this, ladies. Men have pelvic floors too. Sometimes they don’t realize they do. But let me tell you an important kind of little stat that I learned from Dr. Bruce Crawford who I did some training with. He’s a urogynecologist from Reno, Nevada. 

And he said that in nine out of 10 cases… With men with erectile dysfunction, 90% of those men, it is not a medical issue. It’s actually a pelvic floor that’s too tight, that does not allow blood flow into the penis. And so pelvic floor physiotherapy, and I have a pelvic floor physiotherapist at my clinic and I see her often. And even something as simple as, if you have a cold and you’re coughing a lot, that can actually take a healthy pelvic floor into like a grade one or a level one prolapse. It happened to me just before Christmas. I got a cold, and I just happened to have a treatment of pelvic floor physio treatment. And Olivia was checking me and she’s like, what’s going on here? She’s like, there is some tension here, and there is the start of a prolapse, And I’ve never had that before. And I said, well, I’m just getting over this ridiculous cough. And she’s like, that intra-abdominal pressure that’s coming in on your pelvic floor from simply coughing is enough to create a bit of dysfunction. So I was able to correct it by the time I saw her again in February, it was better because I was using my Cooch Ball and doing my breathing. But I want you to understand that the pelvic floors is dynamic, and if you catch it and you’re in that prevention phase, you can have a very beautiful, sensual, confident group of muscles. And if you happen to be on the journey of a prolapse, pelvic organ prolapse, depending on where you are and how you’ve been managing it, we can improve. We may not be able to fix it, but even just the simple breath concept can actually improve it.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Wow. I love the… I’m definitely an elevator and grape kind of gal. I love those visualizations. Those are fantastic and so helpful. So different than just doing regular Kegels and really connecting the breath with it. I love that. So let’s talk about the Cooch Ball, ’cause you were so kind and sent me one. And I just got it, and I just inflated it, and so I wanna know… Tell me. What do I do with this?

Jana Danielson

So the birth of the Cooch Ball. This really was my answer to a tool that I felt was lacking in the industry that I was looking for for my own clients, and really, for my own body. It’s a patented ball. And why it’s built for our body is because inside this ball, there’s of course the bladder of the ball, but then there’s this beautiful nylon covering over the ball that allows the body and the ball to really interact with each other. So here’s how it works. Did you know that muscle tissue to thrive needs to be surrounded by oxygen rich and nutrient rich blood? It’s the environment that those muscle tissues need to thrive. It’s like, if you’re growing a garden and you don’t water it, you’re leaving it to the mercy of mother nature, and maybe you have a great season of rain and it flourishes without any extra intervention. However, if you pay attention and you water it and maybe you give it some fertilizer, you’re gonna bear more fruit. It’s the exact same thing with our body. If the tissues of our body are not given the environment to flourish, they’re not, they’re gonna be lacking, there’s gonna be a scarcity of what those tissues need to thrive. And so blood flow to any of our muscles, maybe some of you ladies use a foam roller on… 

If you’re a runner, you might use a foam roller on your legs or on the back of your neck, or a little tennis ball sometimes we put in our shoulders, same concept, we’re bringing blood flow to areas that are lacking. The problem I was trying to solve is, how do we bring blood flow to the pelvic floor from a noninvasive way, that we could just throw in our backpacks or in a suitcase if we’re traveling? And this is what I came up with. I called it the Cooch Ball, ’cause I got, to be honest, I got sick and tired of women not owning their bodies and not even calling our vagina, our vagina, but like they would say, I’m having some issues down there, Jana. And I’m like, where is down there? Like, what do you… You know. And I know this is like lots of values and belief systems, but I wanted to call it something fun and sassy and chic that kind of made people say, it’s the what ball, right? And then I co-wrap for the guys in our life as the Cooch Ball. And so here’s how it works. When you blow your ball up, you want it to be about two thirds full. You want it to be squishy.

Dr. Sharon Stills

I think too much then.

Jana Danielson

You know what, all you have to do, Dr. Sharon, just the little needle that comes with your pump, take the needle out of the handle, slide the needle back into the valve and just squeeze some of the air out of the ball. Yeah, don’t attach the needle to your pump, just the needle itself, and that’s how you can customize your experience. So what you’re gonna do to create blood flow is you’re gonna sit on the ball, and the daily kind of advice is three minutes a day. Now, let me tell you, we all should be able to carve out 180 seconds for ourselves. And for some women, not three minutes, but sometimes three seconds is all they can start with. There’s something I call the ouch factor. Now the ouch factor is the biofeedback that you get when you sit on this ball, and if your pelvic floor is so unhealthy and that environment is so lacking blood flow, the ouch factor gonna be pretty intense. And so what I say to women at that point, takes some air out or use your ball on your couch or on your bed, like on your mattress, and let the couch or mattress take a little bit of the brunt of the ball, the volume of the ball, and start. 

The ball comes with a course called, Create Your Pelvic Floor Upgrade because education is queen, learning how to properly breathe. You can sit on this ball on the floor, on a chair. If you can’t get down on the floor, it’s no big deal. But what happens is, when you’re sitting, the pubic bones is in front, the anus is behind, and then those bony sit bones are kind of flanking the ball, the tissues of the body are interacting with the ball, and that’s the release. The weight of our body on the ball creates the release, which is the blood flow. The diaphragmatic breathing when layered on the ball, when you’re sitting on the ball, creates the work. So you’re getting this beautiful release and work experience. So whether you are hypertonic, hypotonic, or somewhere in between, your body’s getting what it needs to almost like… It’s like CPR for our pelvic floor, right? We’re giving it those puffs of air and those chest compressions to bring life to it. When you come off the ball, you might feel like the grand canyon is between your legs if you sit on the floor, you might feel this warm, tingly sensation, which is blood flow. Some women take weeks to feel that because they are so protected and so locked down. And so it is a very much a personal experience. 

There is meant to be a little bit of that ouch factor. And as you become more consistent with your practice, that’s how you’re gonna know you’re changing the inside of your body because ouch factor is gonna start to diminish, and you’re gonna have the confidence like, we can’t see in there, unless you’re doing pelvic floor physiotherapy or your doctor can go in and do an internal exam before you start, and then maybe three months later. But that’s the beautiful part of the Cooch Ball is that, it creates that blood flow, which is so necessary for those tissues. The breathing creates the functional strength, and that’s just the start of it all, right? You can use the Cooch Ball, I have clients that use it for digestive discomfort, ’cause we do a release through the ascending transverse and descending colon. I have a little series where I actually use it on the face for anti-aging to bring blood flow to your face, or we work through the hips and thighs for like a cellulite blast. So it really is meant to become like, just like your very best friend and not that fitness tool that you’ve bought and just sits in the corner or that your kids play with or your dog ended up chewing and biting a hole in it, which I’ve had people tell me. So that that’s that’s the fundamental kind of framework around a Cooch Ball practice.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Ooh, I am so excited. I am super excited. And I think it’s just even, I don’t have pelvic floor issues, but this seems like something I can just be using. So as I continue aging, I don’t have pelvic floor issues.

Jana Danielson

Exactly.

Dr. Sharon Stills

It’s a preventative tool as well as helping to treat and reverse.

Jana Danielson

So just like you mentioned earlier in our chat today that you had gone for a hike, the Cooch Ball is not just like a one trick pony. When you’re sitting on the Cooch Ball, you are gonna get… Because of where the other muscles and joints are located, you’re gonna get a really nice opening in through the hips. I’ve had so many people that have said, as I’ve been doing this, my low grade back pain seems to have melted away. And so that’s what’s really another value add with this, is because of the anatomy of our body and how, like I said earlier, we’re not those potato head dolls, our systems work together, you are going to get multiple benefits from this little tool in just three minutes a day.

Dr. Sharon Stills

And so, optimally, where do I wanna be sitting on it? Do I wanna be sitting on the floor?

Jana Danielson

I mean, so many of my clients, I mean, I prefer the floor because I like to get… I spend too much time sitting at a desk, so when I can get onto the floor and have gravity work in a different way through my hips, I will choose that all the time. But for a lot of women where getting down on the floor is a challenge, or getting up, then yeah. I mean a chair… If you’re just starting out, couch is great. And then once the ouch factor starts to kind of diminish, you can go to maybe your kitchen chair that’s a little bit of a harder surface, that’s going to give you a little more of a challenge. So that’s how I always recommend women start. Try it on a hard surface first. And if it’s a no go, don’t just put the ball away and say, well, it’s not gonna work for me. Kind of reverse engineer it. How can you find, or get a cushion, get a bunch of blankets, and start that way? So it’s really personalized and customized, and that’s what I love about it, is that if you have osteoporosis, that’s okay. If you have a bulging disc, it’s okay. Like, it doesn’t preclude anybody from the benefit of the Cooch Ball.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Fantastic. So you mentioned how Pilates was so life changing, we’ve talked about the pelvic floor, what about the third P, posture, and how does posture affect you? And I think you mentioned something to me before about it can make, you know, your posture can add weight or lose weight or…

Jana Danielson

Absolutely can. Yeah.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Tell us about that.

Jana Danielson

Let’s do the quick and dirty on posture. All right so… I mean, posture is simply, the definition of posture is just where our bones are living in relation to each other, right? So, this is posture, and this is posture, and this is posture, but what is optimal posture? If you think of how we build a house, we frame the house first, we make sure that it has structural integrity, and then we add the roof and the walls, and then of course you add all of your decorations and your paint, the structural integrity of our body is the exact same way. We live on a planet with gravity, and even though we don’t feel the force of gravity on us every second of the day, we can feel the impact of the force of gravity. So about 80% of working Americans will deal with some sort of postural issue that will turn into some sort of spinal, low back discomfort, neck pain or dysfunction, and it’s simply because in most people, one to two inches of forward head carriage is our norm. It reminds me of like the Velociraptor dinosaur from “Jurassic Park.” We’re kind of walking around like these Velociraptor, right? And what I say to people is, pretend, or if you’re in your vehicle, get your head back on that headrest. And even just sitting at your desk right now and careful that it’s not like this, okay? You’re kinda just…

Dr. Sharon Stills

This?

Jana Danielson

Yeah, exactly. So your chin is parallel to the floor and it’s more of like this head wrap. So instead of bringing your head back in space like this, it’s more like you’re almost trying to make a bit of a double chin, and when we position our head properly, can you notice how all of a sudden, if you kind of like poke at your core, that there’s a little bit of activation going on, subtle, more so than when you’re in your Velociraptor position. Like, I just feel fold in my skin, right? Okay? So when you’re sitting at your desk, if you can think of those bony butt bones and even move the flesh away and try and really get connected with those bony butt bones, when you’re sitting, those are like your feet, and you want to, I’ve got a lot of golfers in my family, those butt bones are like the golf tee when you’re on that tee box, ready to drive down the fairway, you wanna make sure the golf ball, which is your body, is on top of that tee. 

Your chin is just dropped a tiny little bit, and it’s almost like you’re yawning the back of your neck toward the wall behind you. This is optimal head posture. And when you can get your optimal head posture, do you see how your body follows? And now you can be at your desk doing your thing on your Zoom calls and you know that this is part of your movement as medicine, ’cause now you have structural integrity, and you know that because you actually feel your muscles holding your bones. When you don’t feel your muscles engaged, your bones are actually hanging off your muscles. So utilizing the musculature of our body is really important. And when you do that properly, it can, it can make you look like you’re 10 pounds lighter. And especially when you’re standing, here’s a little posture tip. When you’re standing, our feet have 26 bones in each foot, some of the bones… So that’s lots of bones in a foot, right? Our heel bone is called our calcaneus. It is the big, heavy, solid bone of our foot. The other 25 bones are small and they’re like weird shape. So knowing what we know, and you don’t have to be an engineer, what bones do you think should bear weight, and what bones do you think are meant to be movement or mobility? 

There’s stability bones, and there’s mobility bones. Well, if you’re standing and you live with your weight into the balls of your feet, you’re what I call one of my little ski jumpers from the Olympics. And what you’re actually doing in that ski jumping position is you’re loading, you’re moving bones in your feet, you’re loading them unnecessarily, and all of a sudden they’re like, oh wait, are we holding bones? Like, are we stable bones now? And then we get things like arthritis or we get plantar fasciitis or we get bone spurs, we get Achilles tendonitis because we’re loading the feet inappropriately. And we’re turning off our core, and we’re getting back pain ’cause our quads are loaded and our hamstrings do nothing. If we bring our weight back into that big heel bone, so when you… Or if you wanna just even do it now, all right, let’s do it if we can. If you bring 60% of your weight into your heels and 40% across the widest part of your foot, not your toe pads, but the widest part of your foot, those metatarsals, those knuckles where our toes meet our foot, that is optimal standing posture, 60/40. 

Not 80/40, 20 back, 60 back on that big bone and 40% through the widest part of the foot. Now you’re actually loading your body properly, your structural integrity is intact, your muscles are doing what they should, and you’ve got this beautiful structure that is living with ease instead of dis-ease. Dis hyphen ease. I use that term all the time. When something is not easy, it’s dis-easy. All right, dis-ease. So this is gonna ensure that you have proper blood flow, that your organs have the space that they need to do their work in a day. When we are collapsed forward like so many of us are, our organs are like all smushed into like an elevator and they can’t do their job properly. So we don’t eliminate properly, we don’t digest properly, we don’t breathe properly. And so when we actually find a way to utilize our posture in an optimal way, it creates space. The space that gravity takes away from us during a day, that’s what brings it back. And that’s what brings life and energy into our body because we’re not loading only 20% of our body with the work of the entirety, we’re actually loading the entire body. 

So we do. When you’re done work for the day, you do have energy left for your family when you get home and to do those things that you love to do. And so for me, posture, you think of something like osteoarthritis, we can’t reverse it, but we can prevent it. Osteoarthritis is not like a genetically programmed disease. It is a function of a lack of optimal posture and the forces of our planet and the activities of our lives have put some wear and tear in our joints, and then that’s what starts to happen. So for me, these three Ps of Pilates and pelvic floor and posture are just, they’re just like this beautiful tripod, this trifecta. And you can substitute Pilates for any kind of movement. I just happen to love Pilates. You can anti-age yourself in a beautiful way, you can have a great night’s sleep, and just enjoy the lives that we should as we do age.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Hmm. I have a few things to say and questions. First thing, I was thinking when you were standing up, because I often tell women to do like the wonder woman posture, you know, when you stand up, it raises your testosterone, it lowers your stress hormone, but as you were doing that, I was thinking, wow, this adds such amazing layer to it, ’cause if you’re actually standing properly, ’cause I definitely am one of your little ski jumpers, I’m sitting here going, ooh, I’m gonna start walking differently. So that was just really an enlightening. And then what do you recommend because so many of us sit at a desk all day? So, do you recommend one of those sit-stand desks? How should your computer be like for posture? Because I think… You know, I’m asking for myself, but I know I’m asking for the ladies asking too. Like, where should a computer be? ‘Cause I think mine’s too low.

Jana Danielson

Well, you know, when I’m like, so on this Zoom call right now where you and I are not typing, right? Like, if our camera is just kind of at brow line or a little bit ahead, that’s great. If we’re typing though, like if we’re working on our computer, we wanna make sure that we have the ability to kind of roll our shoulders back in space and then have our keyboard so that we’re not jacked up. I’m not a huge fan of the… I’m a huge fan of standing and sitting to work, I’m not a huge fan of having to invest in a bunch of office equipment because here’s the thing, if the person behind that sit stand desk is still not optimizing their position, it doesn’t… You can have a treadmill desk, you can have one of those ball chairs, it doesn’t matter. If the body’s not doing what it should, that equipment is just a kind of a bandaid, and then eventually you’re just gonna…

You’ll feel better initially, ’cause it’s something new and your body’s like, oh what’s this? But if you continue to have your slouchy shoulders or your Velociraptor neck, it’s only a matter of time before your neck’s on fire again. All right? Here’s what I recommend. After we’ve been sitting for 60 minutes, 50% of the blood flow to our legs has decreased. What did we talk about earlier? Blood flow is clean. We need blood flow throughout our body. So you know what? Two minutes of movement every hour negates that 50% decrease in blood flow. Get up, go to the bathroom, go get a breath of fresh air, give your eyes a break, look outside at the horizon, do some diaphragmatic breathing. And then in two minutes you come back, and you’re good to go. It’s like you just, you know, those old school Etch A Sketches. You just shook that Etch A Sketch, all you could make are stairs and squares really, and it was amazing back in the ’80s. Nonetheless, you gently shook it and you got to make another set of stairs, right? That’s basically what you’re doing by getting up every 60 minutes and moving for two minutes. That’s what I like to recommend.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Perfect. Thank you. I hope everyone feels as amazing as I do. We spend so much time in our heads, and it’s important to get the education, but just those couple of exercises you took us through just changed my whole being. I feel so much centered, I feel so much balanced, I feel less dinosaur like. I’m gonna get rid of my inner Velociraptor. I’m excited to be finished and stand up and walk differently, and go start a relationship with my Cooch Ball. It’s just such a good reminder that these physical bodies need love, they need attention. We need to be doing things putting us back into our bodies, and all that you shared is just precious information for everyone listening and learning with us, and so I’m so grateful for the work you do in the world and who you are, and that we got to connect, and you’re part of this because you bring such an important piece to mastering the menopause transition. So how can women keep on with you?

Jana Danielson

Yeah. You know, just… I mean, if you’re a social media person, you can go to Cooch Ball on Facebook or Instagram. My online Pilates studio is called Metta District, so it’s at Metta District. Metta with two Ts. Metta means, it’s a Buddhist word, a place of love, benevolence and non-judgment. So you can catch me there, or if you want a little bit of one on one time, just [email protected]. If you’ve got anything that you would like to ask me about in a less than public forum, then that’s the best way to get ahold of me.

Dr. Sharon Stills

And so I know that women are gonna wanna keep on keeping with you, so is there a free gift that you have for them? And if so, what is it and tell us a little bit.

Jana Danielson

Yeah, there is, Dr. Sharon. So I have for you, ladies, it’s called the Metta Movement Starter Pack, and think of it like the Costco sampler of what I do, okay? It has eight different videos, there are some movement sessions with me, there’s a basic Pilates mat workout that is great for anybody, there’s a little bit of work on fascia release, which we didn’t get a chance to talk about today, but you’ll be able to experience that, I threw in a fun workout that I do called Pilates Bar, and then I actually have a few videos that are like mini, just think of them like mini webinars on the breath and our nervous system. And then I’ve got my friends, three of my really good friends gifted me some bonuses that I’m gifting to you. So there’s one on stress hacks, there’s one on the emotional side of fascia, and there’s one that is all about tapping in our body and bringing kind of clearing some of our energy blockages. So that’s what the Metta Movement Starter Pack is all about. I hope you enjoy it.

Dr. Sharon Stills

Oh my gosh. I can’t wait. I love tapping. I tap every morning. It’s one of my favorite things to do to kind of clear the day and get ready for it. And the fascia is so important. And wow, that’s very generous of you, so thank you. I’m looking forward to indulging myself. I personally have never done Pilates. I’ve done so many things, so you have got me putting Pilates at the top of my list now of things I need to check out, so I’m super excited.

Jana Danielson 

Great.

Dr. Sharon Stills

So, Thank you so much. Thank you for who you are and what you do and what you share in the world. What a gift you are. And I know that everyone got as much out of this I hope as I did ’cause it was just beautiful. So, be well, everyone. I look forward to being back with you at the next talk.