{This article is written in partnership with Yarlap®—they’re dedicated to helping us enjoy the benefits of better pelvic floor health and we’re honored to work with them. ~ ed.}

I turned forty-five this year. And with it, came a newfound awareness and wisdom of my body’s needs as well as it’s fragility and limits.

If you’re a Girl Boss like me, growing and prioritizing your career alongside the extraordinary demands of this current economy, then you know how difficult work-life balance can be to achieve. It can be spotted in the way women vent to each other and enthusiastically share helpful hacks that make our routines more efficient.

Here’s my contribution to the cause…for starters strengthen your pelvic floor like a Girl Boss >>

When I came out of COVID, I hit the ground sprinting as a fresh Paralegal graduate. I did my legal internship in Elder Law and then became a “Yes Girl” to law firms that would give me experience to build my legal resume.

My work experience and checking account went up while my fitness and physical health went down.

Short walks and jogs, when I had time, were replacing my five-mile runs and I hadn’t hit my yoga mat in months. I do a few arm reps with dumbbells every morning in between brushing my teeth and getting dressed, but my longer fitness routines were slipping.

I had some particularly stressful events in one year demanding excessive physical work, while the musculature of my body wasn’t getting the time or attention it needed.

Then one afternoon, I felt a lower back spasm at work.

By the weekend, I was in the ER with extreme lower back pain along with lower abdominal pain and I couldn’t stand or sit. They didn’t know if it was appendicitis or a muscular strain or something else. After imaging cleared the major stuff, I was off of work and swiftly into the Doctor’s office to treat multiple areas of muscle pain.

The next few months my whole life was about pain management. I thought it would be a short bout of physical therapy with some muscle relaxers and I’d be back at work within three months. Boy, was I wrong!

I swear my brain fell out of my head when the Nurse Practitioner said I’d start with chiropractic, pelvic adjustments. My body was terrifically unaligned and wonky. And I hardly noticed. That was the most scary, painful part but I actually got used to them with deep breathing exercises.

After chiro, I gently got on my yoga mat and I could not believe how tight my muscles were, just sitting on my heels was painful. I had never experienced muscle tightness like this.

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Then came physical therapy. Even with a very skilled physical therapist who also had the gift of myofascial release (so basically a magician), my muscles were so stubbornly tight. I needed multiple rounds with him in addition to muscle relaxers. He taught me deeper stretching to gain access to target the tightness in my deepest core muscles—the ones the most difficult to isolate.

When my body was seventy-five percent healed, I discovered Yarlap; an AutoKegel, pelvic floor muscle stimulator device to strengthen the postural muscles of the pelvic floor. Being seventy-five percent healed means my abdominal, hip, and glute muscles would tighten up still and make it difficult to stand up straight sometimes. When your psoas or piriformis muscle tightens, the pain can present in the lower back.

To say I was excited to try Yarlap is an understatement because the only way I knew how to strengthen the pelvic floor and isolate my most internal muscles, is pilates, which requires equipment. Now, the only way I know how to keep my problematic muscles loose is deeper stretching hacks I learned in PT, pilates exercises, ballet, yoga, and Yarlap. It’s truly taking a brilliant cross-training recipe to keep me healthy, toned and mobile.

This is what someone like me needs, a go-getter who also won a personal legal case against negligent capitalism during my rehabilitation, because I’m all about justice. Let me tell you, Big Girl Jobs bring on Big Girl Stress, so this girl needs Big, Brilliant Solutions!!

I’ve been using Yarlap 3-4 times a week for a month. Last night I got it out for a twenty minute round of voluntary, AutoKegel, pelvic muscle contractions. I took out the palm-size device. Then I got out the 4-inch vaginal electrode wand that has two silver electromagnetic panels on each side with a one meter, lead wire attached. I plugged the wire into the device. Then, I applied a water-based lube (that came with it) to the white, non-metal sides of the wand and inserted it with the two metal electrodes facing my hips, exactly like you would a tampon. Then I turned on the device up to the sweet spot I like at 44 milliamps for twenty minutes.

A Strong Pelvic Floor, Gives Strong Orgasms

An orgasm is a muscle contraction that builds muscle tone as well as a hormone release which relieves pain. An orgasm is created via various forms of arousal that peaks with involuntary, muscular contractions, much like a sneeze. The pelvic floor muscles are some of the same muscles that contract during an orgasm.

My vagina might be a little more advanced as I spent time in my thirties learning Orgasmic Meditation. This is also the reason I thoroughly read the directions before using Yarlap’s e-stimulator.

My clitoris isn’t desensitized, it’s fully awake, strong, and sensitized.

You know that deep sensitivity in a desensitized clitoris that may make you push your lover away? Behind that wall, is an insanely deep well of pleasure and pain-relief via clitoral orgasm. I’ve scaled that wall and I know the worlds of sensation behind it. The clitoris and vagina are a functional unit that aids the clitourethrovaginal complex in arousal.

The Yalap wand sitting just beyond the entrance of the pelvic floor sends electrical waves into the same muscles but it is an electrical, voluntary muscle contraction, much like a Kegel contraction that my brain can instruct my pelvic floor to do. See the difference between voluntary and involuntary contractions? Involuntary is from arousal while voluntary is muscle control. The Yarlap device isn’t creating a juicy sexual response, which is why you need a water-based lube.

I view Yarlap as fitness, like my Pilates equipment. And right now, during my Yarlap sesh, I’m totally amazed that the pelvic floor contractions are actually being felt and pulled in my piriformis and hamstring where my muscles are tight. Everything is connected!

It’s a new sensation for me, as I add pelvic floor reps to my fitness and physical therapy regime at home. Stretching and strengthening are paramount.

For so long, the role of the pelvis in women’s lives has been viewed from a historical, patriarchal lens as: periods, sexual intimacy, pregnancy, and childbirth. In that order.

Like, I never went to the gym thinking, “I want to target my pelvis today!”

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It was usually my arms, core, legs, and bum. This needs to change and evolve to better women’s lives, as pelvic strength is literally the center our bodies rely on for structural load management and effective mobility.

Think about all the musculature, bones and organs sitting atop the pelvis, in addition to being the location where the body splits into our lower limbs and extremities. We need a strong pelvic floor for good posture, to support all the surrounding muscles, for strong musculoskeletal structure, to keep our organs in place, to control our bladders and for the ability to add tone, both voluntary and involuntary muscle contractions.

I’m not near the stage where incontinence is plaguing my life. I haven’t had any babies yet to affect my body, but incontinence can stem from more than just childbirth. There are three types of incontinence from lack of muscle tone: stress, urge and, mixed incontinence.

Women who have ample stress in their lives, like me, are a candidate to use Yarlap’s AutoKegel device. A Girl Boss Needs Yarlap for Fitness and Preventive Medicine!

I hope to continue making Yarlap a regular part of my fitness routine, so incontinence is never something I have to go through, with or without having babies. So far, I’m a proud Auntie, not a Mother, and I feel I need this life-saving device in my life as part of stress-management as well. I’m so grateful to have crossed paths with it, and how timely for me!

I implore women to learn from my injury and take preventive action to add more pelvic tone into their lives lest they end up in the ER or on the chiro table/PT table like I did in my career. In my recreational pursuits, I have been hit by a van on my bicycle and pummeled by waves with surfing injuries but my sacroiliac injury with tight muscles was by far the most painful injury yet…even being stung by bees on horseback in Mexico or removing sea urchin spines from my hand do not compare to how painful pelvic adjustments are.

Just getting out of bed from horizontal to vertical can be strenuous and excruciating, since the pain runs deeply. My research has yielded from multiple sources that pain and injury are not simply consequences of aging, but from lack of mobility, deep stretching, resistance exercises and skipping natural, hormone-based pain relief, like orgasm.

I’ve been on an enlightening journey of self-care aiming to make my pelvic floor stronger than ever.

What steps are you taking in your life to increase tone in your pelvic floor to better prepare your body and yourself for the future?

A very special Thank You to Yarlap, Elephant Journal, and my Care Team for giving me access to wellness products and knowledge I didn’t know existed, that I never knew I needed! You truly are of benefit, please keep up the wonderfully healing work in the bright New Year!!