pilates

Took a quick peek at your history here- you've been here about a year, your last post was 8 months ago. In your last post you were about 75% better with the help of yoga and the kegel master. Now you are feeling great due to pilates.
That is super great news and I'm so happy for you. I'm glad that you found pilates to be the way to go for you.
I agree with you that strengthening the weak muscles in the body is in the best interest of the body!
When you talk about *the core* are you talking about the 'pilates core' or the 'whole woman core"? They are not quite the same.
Whole woman exercises are designed to strengthen the whole body, not just one area in exclusion.
As this is the whole woman website and what we are promoting here is whole woman posture and the whole woman products, I wonder what you are suggesting when you say 'for us older women, I think pilates is the way to go' ? Did you intend to suggest that whole woman is not the way to go?
I ask because I could be mistakenly reading that message into your comment and I bet others might as well. Would you be willing to clarify for me what you mean?

Hi doglover - Yoga and pilates were designed by and for male bodies, and there are many traditional moves that are extremely destabilizing for women's pelvic organs. Women have a different spinal shape and a different core.

Christine has a series of yoga DVD's (two so far, and one about to pop out) that provide safe and really effective workouts to women who have prolapse, or are hoping to avoid it (I think all of us fit into one of those categories). I just wanted to point this out for the benefit of other readers here. - Surviving

(Thanks Alemama, your post popped in just as I was hitting "save")

Dear doglovertoronto

Thanks for answering Alemama's questions, it does clarify things. If you have the time I feel sure it would be of general interest if you could specify which moves you have integrated from Pilates and Christine's yoga which have served you so well. I do think that depending upon the particular type of prolapse(s), and other personal physical attributes certain exercises will prove more beneficial in the short term than perhaps others which can more profitably be delayed to later.

I find feedback like this invaluable.

Your being an older lady (you said it) gives much encouragement to us all for when young we think we can heal quickly although this may not always prove to be the case and when we are old we fear that healing will automatically be slow because of the slackening of tone of skin and muscle which again does not always prove to be true to the individual case.

Cheers Fab

Dear Doglover....yes, I hope that you can share with us what you are doing. From my limited experience, I am thinking that many of the Pilates exercises are a great strain on our pelvic organs. Which ones are you able to do, still honoring our WW posture and concepts? Thank you for sharing and the very best to you!

Hi Michele – If you study the work of Christine Kent, you will realize that the pelvic “floor” is not a soft-tissue hammock upon which the organs rest. Prolapse happens when the organs fall away from their normal positions behind the abdominal wall. It’s OK if you want to pick and choose moves from her DVD’s and incorporate them into your practice. However, it doesn’t sound to me as if you realize what WW work is all about. You might want to consider teacher training, because you may have missed the central message of Whole Woman. - Surviving

Michele,
I was reading along and nodding until the very end where you said "After all what is going on is that the pelvic floor has weakened and we need to work at getting it stronger". Then I face palmed!
You must be aware (?) that Christine teaches that there really is no *pelvic floor*
If prolapse was caused by weakness alone, quite frankly, I'm going to guess that 99% of us would not have it. I remember reading early on in this journey something Granolamom wrote. I'll paraphrase, it was something like 'my muscles are so strong I could crack nuts with them'.
There are many factors that go into creating the *perfect storm* for most women. Weakness may be one of those factors, but certainly does not explain why prolapse happens. Getting stronger may help you feel better, but it's realigning your posture that allows your organs to return to their optimal positions.

Not wanting to start a fight here but ...

Hasn't Michele found something that works for her, and shared it here? Isn't that what we're all about here? Learning about our own bodies and finding what works? If getting stronger helps Michele feel better, isn't that a good thing?

Yes, I think many of us let out a collective scream when we got to her last sentence (doing fine up until then). As Alemana put it....she face-palmed!

It's such a long road to getting women to recognize their true anatomy and the true dynamics of prolapse. Every time we hear someone on here still "getting it wrong", it feels like a setback.

This does not in any way diminish the good results Michele is getting from her workouts. One has nothing to do with the other. - Surviving

It is very amazing that you have found a pilates teacher who is endorsing Whole Woman. I would like one of those, or a yoga teacher who endorses it. I mentioned it to my yoga teacher and she said we should start a class for prolapsed women.....I said we should start a class for women. Looks like maybe you have found such a thing. The reactions to your original post are lovely and charming and very protective, like we women can be. Best wishes to you.

First of all, thank you MsNightingale, for looking on the bright side of this thread!

Maybe we should just leave it at that. However, I believe a few additional points need to be brought to light (this is when I always get into trouble, so I apologize in advance!)

I see a woman (Doglovertoronto) who is coming from within a medical framework, has a very conventional view of prolapse causes (slack ligaments and weak pelvic floor) and treatments, who started her own prolapse workshop for women, who wears an estrogen ring as a pessary, who has advertised her gynecologist and urogynecologist here on the site, as well as the kegelmaster, yoga, pilates and PT.

I do want to say congratulations, Doglovertoronto, on your success in reversing your prolapse. The yoga postures you describe are all great, and even the tabletop-knees Pilates move doesn’t sound too stressful. I’m glad you’ve found the WW posture and some of our exercises useful.

I guess what I find curious (as I imagine others who responded to this thread did) is your sort of subtle dissing of WW. I think it’s great that you’ve added these other moves. I got a lot of my (re-designed for WW) exercises from yoga too!

What I don’t understand are comments like “alot of my friends here in Toronto, Canada have switched to Pilates and have found improvement with their prolapses.” That implies they have “switched” from a WW framework to a Pilates framework, even though you clarified that you use the concept of a WW core and simply integrated all these exercises together. Your initial post was simply confrontational, given how much WW seems to have influenced your routine and your early improvement. There seemed to be a deeper message other than simply telling us you’ve added a few ab exercises to your routine and are feeling better.

In looking back through your history I found posts from another Canadian, Marie Marie, which are quite shocking to read at this point, given the fact that she was at the time actively recruiting WW members for another website that strongly disparages WW. I only bring this up because whether we like it or not, prolapse is a deeply political issue.

Unlike any other group with prolapse, we are trying to wake the world of women up to their true anatomy and the natural history of prolapse. It is discouraging when members (intentionally or not) work against our aims by discounting these teachings.

The differences in WW principles and conventional frameworks of anatomy, posture and exercise are subtle, but very important. For instance, many of our disparagers harp on the falsehood that we let our bellies hang out, have weak abs and hyperextended spines. In reality, there is only one female pelvic anatomy and whether any posture or exercise is effective in reversing prolapse symptoms depends upon to what extent it moves the organs forward. The organs have not fallen down, they have fallen back. Tight, short abdominals are not a desirable goal in prolapse reversal. This is not an “individual” matter, but one of human female anatomy. However, a toned and lengthened abdominal wall can only help the round ligaments of the uterus pull the entire pelvic contents forward.

Again, I do wish you well, Doglovertoronto. Please feel free to share anything you want on the WW forums, but understand that we will always provide commentary. From my perspective, this isn’t about WW exercises vs any other. That’s missing the point entirely. What is important is that women understand why they have prolapse and what to do to reverse it, which urogynecology, Dr. Kegel, PT, Pilates and yoga have historically been very ill-informed about.

Christine

We probably should this leave this here (:-)), but I would just like to add that I didn't read any dissing of WW at all from the original post and ensuing conversation. What I got was that Doglovertoronto had successfully incorporated WW into pilates or pilates into WW (whichever way you like to look at it), that she was endorsing WW to her pilates teacher and that she making great progress with her POP and that she was happy and excited about that and wanted to share.

And with “alot of my friends here in Toronto, Canada have switched to Pilates and have found improvement with their prolapses,” I didn't automatically think they had switched from WW. It could have been yoga or Jane Fonda or nothing or anything really.

Anyway it's very hard to convey tone in written communication and we definitely all have our own points of view. I was happy to hear a success story and like Ms Nightingale said, wouldn't it be wonderful if all pilates and yoga teachers (and physios and doctors and surgeons) were so receptive.

Doglover: Pilates contains many moves that are really bad for women. To recommend pilates for prolapse, in general terms and without warnings or limitations, is to disregard the extensive work Christine has done to modify this practice for women. This is the error in your first post.

Your second post was great until you concluded by defining the causes of prolapse in such a way as to make it unclear whether you've actually read Christine’s work at all. You may have the posture, but not the underlying concepts. Consider WW teacher training if you want to advise others at this level.

I agree with Surviving - Pilates has a lot of Obtuse Angle moves that are really bad for women. Also the last sentence of your second post was clearly wrong about the pelvice floor.

when Pilates teachers have recognised the mythical nature of the neutral spine, ditched the obtuse angle exercises or changed them enough that they are supportive of female anatomy, and are barely recognisable as Pilates. I think we will see Pilates for Women develop as a system in itself, and it will incorporate WW principles of exercise. That's scary. Pilates is a brand which is very variable, according to who is teaching it. Like all Brands it is leveraged in different directions by different teachers, some of whom may be already getting it right. All sorts of strange hybrid names for exercise systems enter the exercise lexicon.

Do you think we will see Wholates any time soon??? ;-D

Louise