Your pelvic floor is a muscle too: what "to move" really means

It is estimated that 30 to 50% of women don't know how to actively contract their pelvic floor muscles — not because they can't, but because nobody ever showed them. Almost none of us were taught what the pelvic floor actually is, where it sits, or what it does on an ordinary Tuesday.

This week is Jean Hailes Women's Health Week, and Tuesday's theme is to move — a deliberate push back against the idea that movement has to mean a gym, an hour, or a plan. Small counts. Which makes it the right day to talk about a group of muscles most women have never consciously moved in their lives.

In this article, we'll cover what the pelvic floor is, why it behaves like every other skeletal muscle you own, what "training" it actually involves, and where light and vibration therapy may fit alongside — not instead of — the work.

What is the pelvic floor?

The pelvic floor is a hammock of muscle and connective tissue slung between your pubic bone at the front, your tailbone at the back, and your sitting bones either side. It closes the base of the pelvis. Above it sit the bladder, the bowel and, in women, the uterus.

It has three jobs, and they run constantly in the background:

• Support. It holds the weight of the pelvic organs, and it takes the load every time pressure rises inside your abdomen — a cough, a sneeze, a laugh, a heavy shopping bag.
• Control. The sphincters that manage the bladder and bowel are part of this system.
• Stability and circulation. It works with the deep abdominal muscles, the diaphragm and the muscles along the spine as part of the core, and it's richly supplied with blood vessels and nerves.

Here's the part that tends to land: the pelvic floor is skeletal muscle. The same tissue type as your calves and your shoulders. It fatigues. It holds tension. It responds to load, to blood flow, to rest, and to being asked to do something regularly.

Why "to move" applies to a muscle you can't see

When people hear "move more", they picture something they don't have time for. The pelvic floor is the clearest possible argument for the opposite reading of that instruction — because a useful session here is measured in minutes, done sitting down, and invisible to everyone around you.

It's also a muscle group with an unusual quirk. Most muscles get talked about in one direction: get stronger. The pelvic floor needs both directions.

Contracting

A pelvic floor contraction — the classic "squeeze and lift", often called a Kegel — is a genuine, voluntary muscle action, and supervised pelvic floor muscle training has one of the better evidence bases in women's health. It is routinely the first thing a clinician recommends for several common pelvic floor conditions, rather than something added on later. Continence Health Australia and Jean Hailes both publish free, plain-English guidance on how to do it properly.

Releasing

The part that gets skipped. A muscle that can only tighten is not a healthy muscle — full range means being able to let go as completely as you can grip. A pelvic floor that sits in a permanently guarded, low-grade contraction can feel weak precisely because it never fully rests, in the same way a shoulder held up around your ears all day ends up aching rather than strong.

If squeezing feels like the whole answer, it's worth knowing that for a meaningful number of women it's the wrong answer. This is exactly the kind of thing a pelvic health physiotherapist can assess in a single appointment, and there is no way to work it out reliably from an article.

What moving it actually looks like

Two or three minutes. Lying down is easiest to start with, because gravity isn't part of the problem yet — knees bent, a pillow under your head.

First, get oriented. Pelvic health physiotherapists often use a clock face for this: your pubic bone is 12 o'clock, your tailbone is 6 o'clock, and your sitting bones are 3 and 9. It sounds unnecessary until you try to locate a muscle you've never consciously used, at which point having a map helps enormously.

1. Find it. Imagine stopping yourself from passing wind, then draw that sensation forward and up, as though lifting something gently inside.
2. Breathe out as you squeeze. This is the part almost every guide leaves out. Inhale through your nose and let the pelvic floor drop; exhale slowly through softly pursed lips as you contract. The breath and the muscle work together, and holding your breath is the most common way to do this badly.
3. Hold for three to five seconds at first — or however long you can hold it before you feel the muscle quietly let go on its own. That point is your actual starting number. Aim for one second more next time.
4. Let go completely. Inhale as you release. This is the half that matters: the release should feel like something dropping and softening, not just the absence of squeezing.
5. Repeat eight to ten times, once or twice a day, working up over weeks — not days — to three sets of ten.

Nothing should be visible from the outside. Your buttocks, inner thighs and tummy stay relaxed and still. These are deep internal stabilising muscles; if something is moving where someone could see it, you're recruiting the wrong thing.

And the one physios wish more people knew: "the knack"

The slow holds above build endurance. But the pelvic floor's other job is reacting fast — bracing in the split second before pressure hits it.

The knack is training for exactly that. A quick, strong contraction held for about two seconds, then a full release as you breathe in, up to ten times. And then the useful part: do that quick squeeze deliberately, just before you cough, sneeze, laugh or lift something. No mat, no set, no time put aside — you're simply using the muscle at the moment it was designed to work.

Attach it to something you already do without thinking. Kettle boiling. Ad break. Stopped at a red light. That's the whole trick — the barrier to pelvic floor training has never been the difficulty, it's the remembering.

Please see a pelvic health physiotherapist if you have pain, if you can't tell whether you're doing it, if you're pregnant or postnatal, or if you notice leaking, heaviness or dragging. In Australia you can see one directly, without a GP referral. The Australian Physiotherapy Association's directory will find one near you.

Where light and vibration may fit

Nothing here replaces the exercise, and we want to be plain about that. But the pelvic floor is muscle and connective tissue with a blood supply, and both of those respond to things other than contraction.

Red and near-infrared light are absorbed by the mitochondria inside your cells — the structures that produce cellular energy. Photobiomodulation, the technical name for this effect, has been reviewed for its influence on cellular energy production in skin, and red and near-infrared light have been shown in a preclinical model to trigger the release of a vasodilator — a substance that widens blood vessels. Vibration has its own literature: in healthy volunteers, ten minutes of whole-body vibration increased lower-limb skin blood flow.

We're being specific about the modality and the population on purpose. None of that research was done on a handheld pelvic device, and it doesn't tell you what will happen in your body.

The Red Light Pelvic Wand is included on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods as a Class IIa medical device (ARTG 528523). It is intended to promote blood circulation, support pelvic pain reduction and aid muscle relaxation. It carries 117 LED chips across three wavelengths — 630nm red, 830nm near-infrared and 415nm blue — at 20–40mW/cm² — comparable to the red and near-infrared component of daylight, with optional vibration at 10, 50, 90 or 120Hz and a timer that ends the session at ten minutes.

The timer is set at ten minutes because that is the session length the device is designed around. It does a different job to the exercises above, and it is not a substitute for them.

The realistic version of a pelvic health routine

If you did nothing else this week:

• Two minutes of contract-and-fully-release, once a day, tied to something you already do.
• Book the physio appointment you've been putting off. Direct access, no referral needed.
• Notice the tension. Jaw, shoulders, pelvic floor — they tend to travel together, and the pelvic floor is usually the last one you'd think to check.

Jean Hailes built this year's Women's Health Week around the phrase do it anyway. Not do it perfectly, not do it for an hour. The pelvic floor is a genuinely good place to test that idea, because the entry price is about two minutes and nobody can tell you're doing it.

The contents of this blog, such as text, content and graphics, are intended for educational purposes only. The content is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your healthcare provider. Consult your healthcare provider before use if you are pregnant, are sensitive to light, or are taking medications that may increase light sensitivity. The Red Light Pelvic Wand is included on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG 528523). Always read the label and follow the directions for use.