Your Pelvic Floor Made the News. Ayurveda Got There First.

This week The Australian ran a piece on three expert-backed ways to improve your pelvic floor: work the muscles daily, skip the expensive gadgets, and eat more pulses and wholegrains.¹

 It's good advice for any gender. It's also remarkably familiar. Because a system of medicine written down centuries before the word "Kegel" existed said precisely these three things — and then said something the article didn't, which may be the most important part of all.

 Let's take them in order.

First, the news: what the experts said

The article makes three points. One: we lose around one per cent of muscle mass a year as we age, pelvic floor included, so both women and men should do daily strengthening — sustained squeezes and quick lifts, three times a day.¹ Two: a review of 41 studies found biofeedback gadgets added no advantage over doing the exercises yourself.¹ Three: there's a strong two-way relationship between your gut and your pelvic floor — chronic constipation strains these muscles, and a poorly functioning pelvic floor worsens constipation and bloating — so aim for 30 grams of fibre a day from wholegrains, vegetables, pulses, nuts and seeds, plus probiotic foods, especially around menopause when falling oestrogen changes the vaginal microbiome.¹

 All sound. All worth doing. And all of it has an older address.

The root of the matter: what Ayurveda has always known

Long before pelvic floor physiotherapy existed as a profession, the yogic and Ayurvedic traditions mapped this territory with startling precision.

The practice is called mula bandha — the root lock. Described in Hatha yoga texts dating back centuries, it is the conscious drawing up of the muscles at the base of the pelvis — the same lift-and-hold a pelvic health physiotherapist teaches today.² The Ashwini mudra in Yoga is based on this principle. Classical sources credit the practice with toning the pelvic musculature, supporting bladder and bowel function, and steadying the mind.²·³ Dr Arnold Kegel published his famous exercises in 1948. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika beat him to print by roughly five thousand years.

But Ayurveda's map goes further than muscle. It describes the pelvis as the home of apana vata — the downward-moving intelligence of the body that governs elimination, menstruation, birth and letting go.⁴ When apana flows well, bladder, bowel and cycle behave themselves. When it's disturbed — by stress, irregular eating, ignoring the body's natural urges, or the sheer pace of modern life — the first signs show up exactly where the article points: constipation, urgency, pelvic heaviness.⁴·⁵

In other words: the pelvic floor was never seen as an isolated muscle group to be drilled. It was understood as part of a rhythm — of digestion, elimination, breath and nervous system — that either supports it or strains it. Modern research on the gut–pelvic floor relationship is, quite elegantly, catching up to that view.

Dal and grains: the original pelvic floor prescription

Here's where the convergence becomes almost amusing. The article's dietary advice — pulses, wholegrains, 30 grams of fibre, fermented foods — describes an Ayurvedic kitchen.

The foundational meal of Ayurvedic cooking is kitchari: mung dal and rice, spiced, warm, easy to digest. Pulses and wholegrains, in one bowl, eaten daily — not as a wellness trend but as the baseline of nourishment. Classical texts also prescribe takra, a light spiced buttermilk taken with meals, as a daily digestive support — a traditional fermented food centuries before kimchi reached Australian supermarket shelves.

The reasoning differs in language but not in substance. Ayurveda holds that strong, regular digestion (agni) and smooth elimination (apana) protect the pelvic organs from the straining and pressure that weaken them over time. Modern pelvic health says chronic constipation is one of the major loads on the pelvic floor.⁵·⁶ Same territory. The tradition simply arrived by observation, a few thousand years early.

For the practical translation: warm, cooked meals over cold and raw where digestion is sluggish. Dal, lentils and some beans (excluding those with Vata prakriti) most days. Wholegrains — rice, oats, barley — over refined. Cooked vegetables, soaked nuts and seeds. Fermented foods in least amounts. Eaten at consistent times, without a screen, without rushing. The rhythm matters as much as the fibre count. That’s Food as Medicine.

The gadget question — or, attention is the technology

The article's second point deserves a moment, because it's quietly radical: the review of 41 studies found the devices added nothing.¹

Ayurveda would not be surprised. The tradition's tools for the pelvic floor are breath, attention and consistent daily practice — mula bandha is done with nothing but awareness. In a wellness market determined to sell you a sensor for every body part, it's worth saying plainly: the most sophisticated biofeedback device ever built is your own attention, and you already own it.

This is the difference between optimisation and rhythm. Optimisation buys the gadget. Rhythm does the quiet daily practice and lets time compound it.

The part the article didn't say: some pelvic floors need to let go

Now the piece we'd add — and it matters, especially if you're a woman in your forties or fifties running on stress.

A pelvic floor can become weak. It can also be too tight. Pelvic health professionals describe the overactive or hypertonic pelvic floor: muscles held in constant low-grade contraction that never fully release.⁶·⁷ It's associated with pelvic pain, urgency, pain with intimacy and — counterintuitively — some of the same leakage symptoms as weakness, because a muscle that never relaxes can't contract well either.⁶

Think about what a chronically switched-on nervous system does to your jaw and shoulders. The pelvic floor clenches the same way. It is, quite literally, where many women hold their bracing. For these women, endless Kegels aren't just unhelpful — they can make things worse.⁷

So which is yours? No article can tell you for certain — but the patterns tend to look different. A floor that needs strengthening often shows up as leaking with coughs, sneezes or laughter, urgency without much warning, difficulty fully emptying, a sense of heaviness or dragging and symptoms that improve as the muscles get conditioned. That’s area of pelvic floor physiotherapists specialize in. A floor that needs to release tends to tell a stress story: pelvic tension or ache, discomfort with intimacy, an unknown guarding or a low back and hips that never quite loosen no matter how much you stretch. It's the floor of a woman who clenches her jaw at her desk, grips her stomach without noticing, breathes high in her chest, and lies in bed at night still holding — tired, but wired. Often the tell is timing: symptoms flare in the weeks life gets loud.

And plenty of women, especially through perimenopause, carry both at once: muscles that are tired and held. If any of this sounds like you, a pelvic health physiotherapist can assess the need for strengthening — it's a simple appointment, and it takes the guesswork out entirely.

For many, the prescription isn't more squeezing. It's release: slow diaphragmatic breath (the diaphragm and pelvic floor move together — as you inhale, the floor naturally lengthens⁷), restorative practice, and genuine downregulation of the stress response.

This is where Ayurvedic and somatic bodywork earn their place in the conversation. Practices like abhyanga — slow, rhythmic, warm-oil bodywork — and pelvic area focused somatic therapies work with the nervous system's capacity to move from bracing into rest.⁸ When the whole body learns to release chronic holding, the pelvis is not exempt. We see this in the treatment room constantly: women who arrive "tired but wired," shoulders heavy, breath high in the chest and guarded in pelvis — and whose entire lower body softens as the nervous system finally gets the signal that it's safe to stand down.

Your pelvic floor isn't a project. It's a rhythm.

So yes — do the daily practice the experts recommend. Eat the dal and the wholegrains. Save your money on the gadget.

But hold the bigger frame: your pelvic floor isn't failing you, and it isn't a problem to be optimised. It's responding — to your digestion, your breath, your stress, your pace. Tend the rhythm and the floor tends to follow.

Squeeze, release, or both — the answer lives in your body, and it's more findable than you've been led to believe. A tradition that has watched women's bodies, minds, nutrition closely for a very long time built its entire approach on that observation. This week, the headlines agreed.

At Ayusha, we work with women navigating pelvic pain, perimenopause, burnout and the long tail of chronic stress — through Ayurvedic consultation, pelvic area focused somatic bodywork and unhurried, individualised care in Newcastle.

If your body has been asking you to pay attention, we'd be glad to help you listen.

Book a pelvic health consultation →

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This article is educational and general in nature, and is not a substitute for individual medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. To be clear about what that is and isn't: bodywork is not a treatment for incontinence or prolapse, and this article isn't a diagnosis. Persistent leakage, heaviness or pelvic pain deserves proper assessment — a GP or a specialist can tell you what your floor needs. That distinction is exactly why cookie-cutter advice falls short, and why knowing your own body's pattern is worth more than any protocol.

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References

 ¹ Bee, P. "Three simple, expert-backed ways to improve your pelvic floor." The Australian / The Times, 2026.

² "Mulabandha: A Potential Way to Protect Uterine Prolapse." World Journal of Pharmaceutical Research, 2018.

³ Ayushdhara. "Anatomical Aspect of Moola Bandha and Its Benefits."

⁴ Kottakkal Ayurveda. "Apana Vata – Vital Elimination Energy."

⁵ AyurVAID Hospitals. "Relieving Constipation Through Ayurveda: Vega Dharana and Apana Vata," 2024.

⁶ Better Health Channel (Victorian Government). "Pelvic Floor."

⁷ Healthline. "Pelvic Floor Exercises for Hypertonic and Hypotonic Muscles," 2025.

⁸ Continence Health Australia. "Pelvic Floor Exercises for Women," 2026