Mula Bandha and Raising Awareness about Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Abstract

Imagine you are a fitness and yoga/Pilates instructor with a college degree in exercise physiology and over 20 years of experience including a vast array of professional training as well as continuing education units. Throughout your career, you have worked with hundreds of men and women ranging from 16 to 85 years of age. Around the age of 45, you begin to experience occasional leaking of urine (urinary incontinence or UI) while teaching yoga classes. You are a “practice what you preach” kind of person, so you exercise regularly with the most effective, welltested modalities of yoga, Pilates, cardiovascular and strength exercises. Now, because you are leaking, you focus on mula bandha in your yoga practice, and you begin to perform “Kegel” exercises regularly. In spite of performing what you believe are corrective exercises for your issue, you begin to have constant pain and pressure in the region of your anus. You decide it is time to consult your health care provider, who recommends a colonoscopy, despite your young age and low risk profile. After the diagnostic procedure, the results come back completely normal. Both you and your physician are perplexed. In the meantime, your symptoms of urinary urgency and frequency increase, as well as pain and pressure in the anus and perineum.