Vaginal opening loose and wide, perineum slack - please help

Hi Peridot, have you been doing WW during this past year? How is that going? - Surviving

Dear Peridot,

For tightening of your vagina, apart from adopting WW posture, I find an exercise helps.

You lie flat on your stomach, with your legs together straight down. Bend your arms at your elbows and hold them along the floor/bed straight out from your shoulders. Place your hands one on top of the other to rest under your forehead.

Your neck, spine and head are now in a straight line with your arms held at ninety degrees.

Cross one foot over the sole of the other, draw your feet as far up over your buttocks as is comfortable to you. This action lifts your pelvic area and you should feel a tightening. Your weight has been redistributed to just above your knees, and to your ribs and your elbows. Hold that position. You will also feel the muscles in your calves, lower back, shoulders and back of neck tighten. When you tire, lower your feet back to the floor/bed. Then cross feet alternatively and raise them again and hold for as long as comfortable. Repeat this three or four times.

This is also a terrific exercise to pass wind, but not spontaneously enough to embarrass.

Cheers Fab

I am interested in your exercise Fab and keen to give it a go. One question - are your knees straight of bent when you lift your feet?

I don't see my previous post anywhere so I will ask this question again. My vaginal opening has stretched due to pressure from prolapse to about two fingers width from my anal opening. Is this life-threatening or is it something I can correct? I never understood how to properly do firebreathing. I wish there was in the video a demonstration of the firebreathing technique. I did not see it if there is. Help! I am frightened and desperate. Do I need to see a gyn and consider surgery. I would like to keep everything intact.

To Peridot

No need to be ashamed about not opening the DVD. Some of it is quite technical, but once you understand how your body works you will more intuitively understand why WW posture works. So get viewing, darling! :-)

Much of this work is work. It is reading, visualising and getting to know your body, and how it works. It is also about changing the way you use your body. Old habits die hard. Just to make it harder many of the diagrams you will find have to be turned upside down to get an idea of the lie of the land. Gyns examine women lying on their back so that is why the diagrams are the way around that they are.

... and Misteri too. Fab's exercise is one I am not familiar with. Fab, where did you find it? A link?

The Wholewoman exercises are on Christine's DVDs, excerpts of which can be seen on Youtube, wholewomaninc channel.

Yes, while there are pelvic organs being pressed down on the perineum it will slowly sag. wholewoman posture moves all your pelvic organs forwards and in, taking the weight off your perineum so it can expand and contract and become stronger. If it is always distended it cannot strengthen itself because it cannot move. In WW posture your are expanding and contracting all your pelvic floor muscles as you move around and walk during the day. No exercise equals no movement, equals slack pelvic floor, including perineum. Movement of the whole body is what your pelvic floor needs. My retroverted uterus flipped over to normal presentation about a year before menopause, after being seriously retroverted all my adult life. Talk about relief from period pain and heavy bleeding! It was heaven.

Firebreathing is explained in Appendix 2 of the second (current) edition of the book, Saving the Whole Woman, the most comprehensive work.

You can also Search the Forums. There are almost eight years worth of posts on every relevant topic under the sun. You will also find a few descriptions of firebreathing.

There is also an Advanced Google searching method for searching a particular website for keywords.

That should keep both of you occupied for a few weeks. Call back again with questions.

Louise

Dear Ozmama,

Yes, you are on your stomach and you bend your knees in order for your feet to come up and over your buttocks (or near as you can). I have not the flexibility of the young, and so my feet are some height above my buttocks certainly not flat on them, but just the tension that you create as you reach up as far as you can strains the muscles nicely.

Dear Louise,

I honestly don’t know where this exercise came from. It may have welded up from something I read thirty years ago when I was doing Callanetics. But I have long ago given that away and the book. I was mucking around trying to relieve a cramp in my toes. Just lifting my legs (not crossed and lying flat on my stomach and otherwise as described earlier) back over my thighs (in this case) and leaving them in the air relaxed at 90 degrees to my knees and it did relieve the cramp, and then just mucking around after that (thank the insomnia when I can do some of my best work). If I crossed my feet and pulled up as far as I could parallel to my buttocks, I found it relieved flatulence (my embarrassing obsession). Further experimentation and I realised a further possibility of tightening and hopefully strengthening muscles along the line of my body as my pelvis was lifted and my lumbar was well held.

Cheers Fab