When your pelvic floor won't rest

Yesterday we made the case that your pelvic floor is skeletal muscle, and that moving it counts as movement. Today is Women's Health Week's to rest day, and it's the other half of that argument — because for a lot of women, the problem isn't that these muscles are doing too little. It's that they never stop.

Jean Hailes frames Wednesday's theme around sleep and the things that get in its way, and names anxiety, perimenopause, pain, shift work and small children as the usual suspects. We'd add one more that rarely makes the list, because most women have never been told to check it.

A tight muscle can feel like a weak one

Think about how your shoulders feel at 4pm on a bad day. Held up, slightly braced, achy — and if someone asked you to shrug them powerfully, you probably couldn't do much, because there's no range left to travel through. They aren't weak. They're stuck near the top of their range.

The pelvic floor can end up in the same state, and the symptoms it produces overlap uncomfortably with the symptoms of a floor that genuinely is underactive. Discomfort. A sense that something isn't working. A feeling of urgency. The instinct in that situation is to squeeze harder and more often, which for a muscle already sitting in a low-grade contraction is roughly the advice you'd least want to follow.

This is the single most useful thing we can tell you this week: if pelvic floor exercises make you feel worse, stop and get assessed. That response is information, not failure.

What keeps the pelvic floor switched on

The pelvic floor doesn't guard for no reason. Common contributors include:

• Stress and the nervous system. The pelvic floor is a postural and protective muscle group, and it braces alongside jaw, shoulders and abdomen when you're running hot. It is not under conscious control most of the time, so it holds on without telling you.
• Pain, anywhere in the region. Muscles guard around discomfort, and the guarding itself can outlive whatever started it.
• Breath-holding. The diaphragm and pelvic floor move together — down on the in-breath, up on the out-breath. Shallow, held, upper-chest breathing removes that gentle rhythmic movement, all day, every day.
• Hormonal change. Tissue in the pelvic region is oestrogen-sensitive, and perimenopause and menopause change how it behaves.
• Doing a lot of Kegels, badly. Contraction without full release, repeated for months, teaches a muscle to live in the shortened position.

Three ways to help it let go

1. Breathe into it

The most direct route, and it costs nothing. Lie down with knees bent. One hand on your ribs, one on your belly.

Inhale through your nose for a count of four, longer if you can. Feel your lower ribs widen sideways rather than your chest lifting, and let the base of your pelvis soften and drop as they do. Exhale slowly through loosely pursed lips for a count of six. Ten breaths.

The imagery that makes this click for most people: as you inhale, think of the feeling of letting go just before you urinate. That specific sensation is the release you're after — and it is notably different from simply not squeezing.

You are not contracting at any point. If you catch yourself squeezing, that in itself tells you something useful about your resting tone.

2. Change position

Open positions of the pelvis let these muscles lengthen. Butterfly — on your back, soles of the feet together, knees dropping open, a pillow under each knee if that's more comfortable. Happy baby — on your back, knees drawn wide towards your chest. Or child's pose, or a supported deep squat.

All of them take the postural demand off the region, and all of them pair well with the breathing above — do the ten breaths in one of these positions rather than flat, and you're doing both things at once. Two minutes is enough to be worth doing.

3. Warmth and circulation

Muscle tissue tends to release more readily when blood is moving through it, which is the plain-language reason warmth has been standard advice for pelvic discomfort for about a century.

This is also where light and vibration therapy sits. Red and near-infrared light are absorbed by mitochondria and have been reviewed for their role in cellular energy production in skin, and in a preclinical model have been shown to trigger release of a vasodilator. In healthy volunteers, ten minutes of whole-body vibration increased lower-limb skin blood flow.

We name the modality and the population deliberately. None of that work was done on a handheld pelvic device, and it does not 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), intended to promote blood circulation, support pelvic pain reduction and aid muscle relaxation. It combines 630nm red, 830nm near-infrared and 415nm blue light across 117 LED chips at 20–40mW/cm² — comparable to the red and near-infrared component of daylight, with optional vibration at 10, 50, 90 or 120Hz. The session timer stops at ten minutes, which is deliberate. Light therapy has a biphasic dose response: beyond a certain point, more intensity stops adding benefit and may reduce it.

If you're using it in the evening, the lower vibration settings are the place to start — and the device pairs naturally with the breathing above rather than replacing it. Ten minutes, then put it away.

One safety note that matters more than the rest: if symptoms get worse, or you get pain that lingers after a session, stop. And don't use it at all if you've been advised against vaginal penetration for any reason, including a high-risk pregnancy.

When to get help rather than a device

Please see a pelvic health physiotherapist or your GP if you have pain with intercourse, ongoing pelvic or vulval pain, difficulty emptying your bladder or bowel, or if pelvic floor exercises consistently make things worse. In Australia you can book a pelvic health physio directly, without a GP referral — the Australian Physiotherapy Association's directory lists practitioners by location and speciality.

Nothing in this article, and no device we make, is a substitute for that appointment.

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.