By: Joy Stephenson-Laws, Holistic Coach, J.D., Founder

Some parts of healing we don't talk about.

Not because they're unimportant. But because they're private. Vulnerable. Wrapped in silence and sometimes shame.

Your pelvic floor is one of those places.

It holds more than you might realize—not just organs and muscles, but tension, trauma, and the physical memory of everything your body has been through. When this foundation is strong and flexible, you feel grounded, capable, in control. When it's weak or locked in protection, everything else is affected.

This article is about reclaiming that foundation. Gently. Without force. And without shame.

What Is the Pelvic Floor?

Your pelvic floor is a group of muscles that stretch like a hammock across the bottom of your pelvis. These muscles support your bladder, bowel, and reproductive organs. They help you control when you go to the bathroom. They're involved in sexual function, core stability, and even how you breathe.

You don't usually think about these muscles—until something goes wrong.

When the pelvic floor is healthy, it does its job quietly in the background. When it's weakened, damaged, or chronically tense, the effects ripple outward into every part of your life.

How the Pelvic Floor Gets Compromised

The pelvic floor can be affected by many things:

Pregnancy and childbirth. Carrying a baby puts enormous pressure on the pelvic floor. Vaginal delivery stretches and sometimes tears these muscles. Even C-sections affect pelvic floor function, because of the months of pressure beforehand. Many women are never taught how to rehabilitate this area after birth.

Aging. Like all muscles, the pelvic floor naturally weakens with age. Hormonal changes—especially during menopause—can accelerate this process, affecting tissue elasticity and muscle tone.

Surgery. Prostate surgery, hysterectomy, and other pelvic procedures can damage or weaken the muscles and nerves in this area.

Chronic stress and trauma. This is the piece most people miss. The pelvic floor is deeply connected to your nervous system. When you're in survival mode—fight, flight, or freeze—the pelvic floor often clenches and holds. Chronic stress keeps it locked. Trauma, especially trauma involving the body or boundaries, can live in these tissues for years.

Habitual patterns. Sitting all day, chronic constipation, heavy lifting with poor form, high-impact exercise—all of these can strain or weaken the pelvic floor over time.

Not using the muscles. Like any muscle, the pelvic floor weakens when it's not engaged. Many people have lost the ability to consciously activate these muscles at all.

The result isn't just physical. A compromised pelvic floor affects your confidence, your comfort, your intimacy, and your sense of being at home in your own body.

The Symptoms No One Talks About

Pelvic floor dysfunction can show up in many ways:

Urinary incontinence. Leaking when you cough, sneeze, laugh, or exercise. Or feeling an urgent need to go and not making it in time. This is incredibly common—and incredibly under-discussed.

Bowel issues. Difficulty controlling gas or bowel movements. Constipation. A sense of incomplete emptying.

Pelvic pain. Chronic pain in the pelvis, lower back, hips, or tailbone that doesn't respond to other treatments. Pain during or after sitting.

Sexual dysfunction. Pain during intercourse. Difficulty with arousal or orgasm. Erectile dysfunction. Decreased sensation.

Prolapse. A feeling of heaviness or bulging in the vaginal or rectal area, where organs have dropped due to weakened support.

Core weakness. Persistent lower back pain. Poor posture. A sense that your midsection has no stability.

These symptoms are common, but they're not normal—and they're not something you have to live with. The pelvic floor can be retrained and strengthened at any age.

The Nervous System Connection

Here's what most pelvic floor treatments miss: the connection to your nervous system.

Your pelvic floor doesn't operate in isolation. It's intimately connected to your autonomic nervous system—the part of you that regulates stress responses, safety, and survival.

When you feel safe, the pelvic floor is relaxed and responsive. It can contract when needed and release when appropriate. There's flexibility and control.

When you feel unsafe—whether from immediate threat or from old patterns stored in your body—the pelvic floor often responds in one of two ways:

Clenching and holding. A chronically tight pelvic floor that won't release. This can cause pain, tension, and difficulty with both bladder function and intimacy. It's the body bracing for danger that may have passed long ago.

Weakness and collapse. A pelvic floor that has given up holding. This can result from exhaustion, from being overwhelmed, or from a nervous system stuck in shutdown. The muscles simply don't have the energy or the tone to do their job.

Either pattern—too tight or too weak—reflects a nervous system that's struggling to regulate. And neither pattern can be fully resolved without addressing that underlying dysregulation.

This is why Kegel exercises alone often don't work. You can't strengthen your way out of a nervous system problem. The muscles need to feel safe enough to let go before they can rebuild.

A Different Approach: Strength Without Force

Traditional pelvic floor therapy often focuses on manual exercises—Kegels—that require you to consciously contract and release the muscles. For some people, this works well.

But for many others, especially those with trauma histories or chronic tension, it doesn't. The muscles are either too tight to contract further, or the person has lost the ability to feel and activate this area at all. Asking someone to "squeeze and release" when they can't even locate the muscles is frustrating at best and retraumatizing at worst.

Electromagnetic pelvic floor therapy offers another way.

The TheraVive Pelvic Therapy system uses high-intensity focused electromagnetic (HI-FEM) technology to stimulate the pelvic floor muscles directly. You sit fully clothed in a specialized chair while electromagnetic pulses cause the muscles to contract—deeply, powerfully, and completely involuntarily.

A single 30-minute session delivers thousands of contractions. That's far more than you could ever achieve on your own, even with perfect technique.

But here's what makes this approach different: you don't have to do anything.

You don't have to figure out which muscles to engage. You don't have to push through pain or resistance. You don't have to override your body's protective patterns. You just sit there while the technology does the work.

For people whose pelvic floor has been holding trauma, this is significant. The muscles get strengthened without the person having to mentally engage with a vulnerable area. The nervous system can stay settled because there's no demand, no performance, no pressure.

Strength without force. Rehabilitation without retraumatization.

What Happens During Treatment

A session with the TheraVive Pelvic Therapy chair is simple and private:

You stay fully clothed. There's no undressing, no exposure, no physical contact with a practitioner. This alone makes it accessible for people who find traditional pelvic floor therapy too vulnerable.

You sit in a specialized chair. It looks like a normal chair with a seat that contains the electromagnetic technology.

The treatment begins. You'll feel your pelvic floor muscles contracting—strongly and rhythmically. It's an unusual sensation at first, but not painful. Most people adjust within a few minutes.

The contractions do the work. Over 15–30 minutes, the system delivers thousands of deep muscle contractions. These contractions strengthen the muscles, improve blood flow, and begin to retrain the neuromuscular connection.

You walk out and continue your day. There's no recovery time, no soreness, no side effects for most people.

Most treatment plans involve 6–8 sessions over a few weeks. Many people notice improvement after just 2–3 sessions—better control, less leaking, more strength.

Benefits Beyond the Physical

When you strengthen your pelvic floor and restore its connection to your nervous system, the effects extend far beyond bladder control:

A sense of groundedness. The pelvic floor is your literal foundation. When it's strong, you feel more rooted, more stable, more present in your body.

Reduced anxiety. Chronic pelvic tension is often linked to chronic anxiety. As the muscles learn to release, many people notice their baseline anxiety decreasing.

Improved intimacy. Strength and sensation often improve together. Many people report more satisfying intimate experiences—not just physically, but emotionally, because they feel more connected to this part of themselves.

Better core function. The pelvic floor is the base of your core. When it works properly, your whole midsection is more stable. Back pain often improves. Posture gets easier.

Reclaimed confidence. Not having to worry about leaks or urgency changes how you move through the world. You can exercise, laugh, travel, and live without constant anxiety about your body.

A felt sense of safety. This is perhaps the most profound benefit. When your pelvic floor can hold you—when it's strong, flexible, and responsive—something in your nervous system relaxes. You feel more at home in your body.

For Women

Women's pelvic floors go through enormous changes—puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause. Each transition affects these muscles.

Pelvic floor therapy can help with:

Postpartum recovery and weakness
Stress incontinence (leaking with coughing, sneezing, exercise)
Urge incontinence (sudden, intense need to go)
Pelvic organ prolapse
Pain during intercourse
Decreased sexual sensation
Chronic pelvic pain
Core weakness and lower back pain

Many women accept these symptoms as "normal"—just part of being a woman, of having babies, of getting older. They're not. They're common, but they're not inevitable. And they can often be significantly improved or resolved.

For Men

Pelvic floor issues aren't just a women's problem. Men have pelvic floors too, and they can weaken or become dysfunctional for many of the same reasons.

Pelvic floor therapy can help men with:

Urinary incontinence (especially after prostate surgery)
Frequent urination
Erectile dysfunction
Premature ejaculation
Chronic pelvic pain syndrome
Lower back pain related to core weakness

Men are often even less likely to seek help for these issues because of stigma. But the pelvic floor doesn't care about gender. It responds to treatment the same way.

The Safety of Not Having to Try

For people with trauma histories—especially those involving the body, boundaries, or sexuality—the pelvic floor can be a loaded area. Traditional treatments that require undressing, manual internal work, or conscious engagement with these muscles can feel invasive or triggering.

Electromagnetic pelvic floor therapy offers something different: the safety of not having to try.

You don't have to undress. You don't have to be touched. You don't have to figure out how to engage muscles that might be numb or locked. You don't have to override your nervous system's protective patterns.

You just sit in a chair, fully clothed, while technology does what your muscles haven't been able to do on their own.

This isn't bypassing the body's wisdom. It's supporting it. The muscles get stronger. The neuromuscular connections get retrained. And you get to stay settled throughout the process.

For many people, this is the first pelvic floor treatment they've been able to tolerate—and the one that finally works.

Who Shouldn't Use This Treatment

Electromagnetic pelvic floor therapy is safe for most people, but it's not appropriate for everyone:

Pacemakers or implanted defibrillators — the electromagnetic pulses can interfere with these devices
Other electronic implants — insulin pumps, cochlear implants, etc.
Pregnancy — as a precaution
Active infections or cancer in the pelvic area

Metal IUDs and hip replacements are generally not a contraindication, but please let us know about any implants so we can confirm safety.

One Last Thought

Your pelvic floor has been holding you up your whole life.

It's carried the weight of organs, of babies, of stress, of trauma, of all the times you braced yourself against the world. It's done its job quietly, without recognition, without support.

Maybe it's time to give something back.

Pelvic floor therapy isn't about fixing something broken. It's about restoring something essential—your foundation, your stability, your sense of groundedness in your own body.

You don't have to push through. You don't have to figure it out alone. You just have to sit down and let healing happen.

Joy Stephenson-Laws, J.D., is a healthcare attorney with over 40 years of experience championing fairness in the healthcare system. She is the founder of Proactive Health Labs (pH Labs), a national non-profit that now embraces a holistic approach to well-being—body, mind, heart, and spirit. As a certified holistic wellness coach, she helps individuals and families create practical, lasting health strategies. Her own experiences as a mother inspired her to write resources that spark important conversations about safety and wellness.

She is the author of Minerals – The Forgotten Nutrient: Your Secret Weapon for Getting and Staying Healthy.Her children’s book, Secrets That Sparkle (and Secrets That Sting), empowers kids to recognize safe vs. unsafe secrets in a gentle, age-appropriate way.

Her latest book, From Chains to Wings, offers compassionate tools for resilience, healing, and emotional freedom.

References

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Cohen D, et al. Magnetic stimulation of the pelvic floor for treatment of urinary incontinence. Journal of Urology. 2005;174(1):159-163.
Samuels JB, et al. High-intensity focused electromagnetic technology (HIFEM) for non-invasive treatment of urinary incontinence. Lasers in Surgery and Medicine. 2019;51(6):467-474.
Siegel AL. Pelvic floor muscle training in males: practical applications. Urology. 2014;84(1):1-7.
Rosenbaum TY. Pelvic floor involvement in male and female sexual dysfunction and the role of pelvic floor rehabilitation in treatment: a literature review. Journal of Sexual Medicine. 2007;4(1):4-13.
van der Velde J, Everaerd W. The relationship between involuntary pelvic floor muscle activity, muscle awareness and experienced threat in women with and without vaginismus. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 2001;39(4):395-408.
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Berghmans B. Pelvic floor muscle training: what is the evidence? European Urology Focus. 2018;4(4):505-508.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. If you're experiencing pelvic floor dysfunction, please consult with a qualified healthcare provider to discuss your options.

Pelvic Floor Therapy for Nervous System Healing: Reclaiming Your Foundation