Nauli

The best advice I can give is to be patient, both about moving your organs to their correct places and about getting pregnant. It seems to me that if your uterus isn't in the right place, you could be asking for trouble to get pregnant, if indeed you could get pregnant. Three weeks doesn't seem long enough to get results from WW work, right Louise?

Hi Optomistic,
Just to send some further encouragement. I've vastly improved my symptoms over the last year and am probably one of those inspriational stories. However I can definately relate to your demoralised feelings. The fact is it does take time and patience. My expereince is that the mixture of things help to sustain improvement. Use ww posture at all times. I sometimes realise I'm not doing it and have to adjust myself. It takes time to move from conscious competence to unconscious competence. If you can, follow the ww dvd exercises regularly. Maintain a healthy diet and avoid constipation or straining on the loo...
Re nauli, to be honest I have trouble with this too. I've seen the utubes, read the books and my husband practices nauli every morning!, but I have trouble accessing it for some reason. However like a lot of ww stuff, I just think I'll continue doing it and gradually my nauli will improve. In the meantime I also do fire breathing, which I find a lot easier and it seems to really help a lot. So I don't think nauli holds the single golden key to recovery. If you can't do it yer I really wouldn't worry. If you do the ww posture, diet, fire breathing every day, ww exercises regularly if you can, bend over when you cough or sneeze and all the other ww suggestions... I will be very surprised if you don't find some improvement over a period of time. Also do remember that you can physically gently push your cervix up if it has dropped, followed by bending forward to encourage it to stay there. The pelvic organs are quite moveable and can change position quite easily.
Wishing you all the best.
wholewomanuk

I have a strange experience. I felt I improved so much in first weeks of staying in posture and doing exercises (that time I was doing beginners workshop from First Aid).
And it all stopped, I am not improving any further and I am not patient any more; more frustrated and disappointed with myself...
I am now following Yoga First Wheel, doing it daily.
Maybe First Aid was better for me? I don't know...Is there any difference?
Why it all stopped?
Should I be doing exercises few times a day?
I cannot figure out nauli, I also don't know if I really do fire breathing properly...Is there anything in my body I should feel when I do it?
Ivonush

Everyone experiences ups and downs. Some women on this forum have had major breakthroughs after months and months. You, Ivonush, are too focused on your day-to-day variations. If you don't see changes right away, you want to try something else, or buy a new product to experiment with. For many of us, progress was slow but what counted was just knowing that we weren't going to fall apart if we didn't have surgery; that we had some control over things and that we could continue to live our lives without that fear that we started out with. I feel my prolapse every day! I have bowel issues every day. I accept it.

As for the exercises, they are all for the purpose of reinforcing the posture principles. If you really understand and practice those principles all throughout your day, it isn't critical whether you are doing 3 routines a day or none at all. I would recommend fire-breathing. If you don't understand it, study up and get your questions answered. It is a powerful move and you should feel your organs moving up into your belly somewhat. I haven't tried nauli yet myself (still perfecting fire-breathing). Keep working, but don't let it consume you!

I can understand very well what Surviving 60 is saying to Ivanush....we have to keep our eyes on the Big Picture of our improvement. If I look back and see that I'm better than I was a month ago, that's gratifying. Being something of a perfectionist myself, and wanting "instant" results, I have to remind myself daily of the overall improvement and to try not to focus on daily changes or setbacks. Our minds can get lost in details and we miss the forest for the trees. Look outward at the horizon and keep your eyes on your long term goal....reducing symptoms and putting our pelvic organs back where they belong!

Hi there. I am curious about this comment by gfkspicoli..."It seems to me that if your uterus isn't in the right place, you could be asking for trouble to get pregnant, if indeed you could get pregnant".
From what I have read in previous posts, it is a good idea to be comfortable with the WW posture BEFORE getting pregnant again, but am wondering if there are risks with being pregnant with stage 1 or 2 prolapse. I'd appreciate any comments on this.
From what a couple of doctors and a gyno have told me, ALOT of women have prolapses that they are unaware of, and I assume many of those become pregnant again without experiencing complications with their pregnancy. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks!

Moodle, I really had no right to say what I said....I'm not a doctor nor that knowledgeable about prolapse. I'm just learning about it myself! I guess what I was thinking was that if you're working on improving the prolapse, and depending on how extreme it is, that pregnancy would be a complication you may not need until you feel you have a handle on stabilizing the prolapse. When I read some of the troubles that women here are having with their POPs, I personally would not want to be facing a pregnancy and delivery on top of it. But then, for me now at age 67, I wouldn't want to be facing a pregnancy and delivery under any circumstances!!

To Optimistic,

Are you in Melbourne? If so I can give you contact details of yoga teachers who are skilled at teaching nauli. However, from my experience, very few yoga teachers really know what prolapse is and they definitely don't know about WW.

Hi gfkspicoli
Thanks for your clarification. I completely understand what you are saying, and my intention was not to upset you but to get some more info on any added risks that pregnancy with prolapse may bring.
Cheers.

Oh, and just responding to the last couple of comments, I'm pregnant and my doctor was not remotely concerned about any complications in pregnancy with my prolapse. So far it's not feeling any worse, but I've still got a few months to go...

Hi Kiko and Optimistic

Our email contact tabs have disappeared from our profiles

Would both of you Please email me froginthespa at yahoo dot com and give me permission to give each of you the other's email address, then you can sort it out between you. Alternately, Kiko, feel free to put the names of the relevant Yoga studios in Melbourne on the Forums for everyone's reference. As you are a third party and just making suggestions for contacts that is not advertising.

Louise

Surviving60, thanks, I still have problem with accepting it. And I think this is the main area I need to work on...
I have had a bad set back and there are times again when I get into a panic mode. I have been more in pain again, but maybe because I had to stop acupuncture (I had it on weekly basis for over half a year). Also my symptoms seems different, I have more sagging feeling + much more feelings from my vagina...
Ivonush

Hi girls,

Sorry I didn't respond quicker.

As I said before, yoga teachers are NOT knowledgeable regarding prolapse and will generally encourage kegels or the yogic version of them (mula bhanda). This was one of the reasons I quit yoga teacher training after a year. My teaching mentor told me to stop firebreathing or following the whole woman routine and work on lifting the pelvic floor instead....nauli was not recommended.

Nauli is one of the shatkarmas, or yogic cleansing techniques. In yoga teacher training we're taught that it "massages the internal organs", and apart from this site I've never heard it being practised to aid prolapse. From what I can gather from the women on this site it is very effective, and I also find it a useful aid. Christine teaches it slightly differently to the classical yoga practice, I would suggest.

Shadow-style yoga schools are most likely to teach nauli as part of a regular practice. Look for City Yoga (male teacher) in Melbourne, or Yoga Moves (female teachers) in Balaclava. Both of these places are likely to want to teach a full yoga course rather than just isolate the practice of nauli. Another offshoot of shadow yoga is sakshin gatashtha yoga - the school is called Yoga Arts Academy (male teacher) and is based in Little Collins Street.

In answer to Optimistic's question, my doctor wouldn't tell me what stage of prolapse I had, only that it was bladder and uterus. Just going on feeling, at worst it was stage 2 and now stage 1 or even better. I'm 14 weeks pregnant and not practising nauli. When not pregnant, I generally avoid yoga classes and stick to my home yoga practice, which also generally doesn't include nauli - it's not something I feel the need to do regularly. Instead I do it as part of the WW FAFP workout.

Optimistic, I have also sent you an email about this.

Kiko

PS - I only avoid general yoga classes because I find many yoga teachers are underqualified and just don't know enough to teach safely. However, every so often you can find a teacher who is made of gold, so I don't encourage everyone to stay away from classes.

Oh, and I meant to add that shadow yoga is quite an intense, active form of yoga! Some people love the intensity!

Thanks for your lovely comment. I would say I was at my worst around August 2011, three years after my daughter was born, but by November it was much much better. I'm fully expecting the prolapse to reassert itself after this second birth, but at the moment I get the feeling the pregnancy itself has caused the uterus to move. I'm making the most of this improvement while it lasts.

Harbinger,
only recently I have started my sessions with PT; she is trained in a pelvic area. She assessed me fully and said my rectocele is quite small (I don't understand still why I feel it so big?). During my session with her she keeps her two fingers in my vagina, assessing if the exercise makes me less tense there. She said that I have very tight muscles there and have problems with relaxing them...
I have the feeling that what obstructs my pooing process are those tight muscles that actually keep everything on some level (I feel it higher up than rectocele itself). I need to splint each time I go to toilet but it never helps with this "high up" obstruction...
I hope that when I will eventually manage to relax, my pooing will get easier...
At present I relay mostly on diet, so I keep my stools easy to pass...
Interestingly, when my coccyx pain stopped I have started feeling my recocele more. I dislike this "poo-feeling" in a vagina so much...it usually happens well before the normal defecation starts. I try to stay with it/before I was trying to speed the process up, ending with more symptoms...But it is not easy...
I wonder what can help you feeling better? Hopefully, nothing drastic...Have you tried getting back to- as you said more rigorous- exercise program for the WW?
Ivonush

A relaxed belly is the focus of Whole Woman principles - it is basically how you keep the lumbar curve in place and make a space in front for your prolapsed organs to go. I would think that any muscle tension anywhere in the pelvic region is going to compromise your results. If the exercises are not being done in excellent WW posture (belly relaxed, chest pulled up) then you aren't really "doing" WW exercises. - Surviving

Harbinger, I'm sorry to hear of your struggles amidst all the success stories here. For untold reasons, some women simply cannot do this work.

To everyone else, keep up the good work!

The March edition of the Village Post comes out tomorrow and I'm just finishing an insightful article about anatomic posture - which is WW posture (you knew that ;) The conventional postures being taught, all of which revolve around the "neutral pelvis", are nonsense from a strictly anatomic (real, factual) point of view. However, the desire to hang on to the tight belly (which always equates to a tight pelvic floor) is so strong in our culture that outlandish anatomical justifications must be fabricated. Stay tuned for End of the Neutral Pelvis - Part 1.

Christine

Understood, Harbinger....I was reacting to your comments re: trouble relaxing the pelvic floor.

It is so calming to read everyone's words - that they have such similar experiences ... that in itself makes this feel more normal.
I would like to know how a doctor or PT knows how large a rectocele is if the rectum is empty when they do an internal? It's only when there is something in the rectum that it is obvious - and I am similar to others where the stool bulges well into the vagina ... unfortunately it's never long and thin - I feel like it heads right out into a ball as it exits - swelling the perineum, anal area etc. Sometimes I wonder how it will go out that small space but amazingly it does ... I could not have a complete finish without splinting.
Harbinger I hope you can solve this puzzle.

And Christine I would love to see more diagrams of the posture - or photos - just to reinforce ... the words are very important however sometimes a diagram makes it really sink in.

Wholewoman is on youtube!