942: Fascia and The Pelvic Floor + Deep Core Strength With Erica Ziel

Child: Welcome to my mommy’s podcast!

Katie: Hello and welcome to the wellness mama podcast. I’m Katie, from wellnessmama.com. And I am back today with Erica Ziel to go even deeper on fascia and how it relates to our pelvic floor and deep core and how being aware of our fascia can help resolve some longstanding issues. She’s helped thousands of people with this.

She’s an expert in deep core fascia and pre and postnatal training with over 20 years of experience. And she’s really passionate as you will hear in this episode in helping her clients strengthen their bodies, integrating movement, breathwork, visualization, and detoxification, and with a particular focus on fascia. She is the owner of Core Athletica and Core Athletica Pilates studio.

And she does this work with many women around the world. I’ll link to some resources in the show notes, but let’s jump in and learn about fascia.

Katie: Erica, welcome back. Thank you for being here again.

Erica: Thank you so much, Katie.

Katie: Well, if you guys missed our first conversation together, it was such a helpful conversation that really gave some foundational understanding of fascia and ways we can support it and how this might be really a big missing piece for a lot of us when it comes to pain and movement and even our ability to optimally use our strength.

And this is something I’m very excited to work on integrating and keep learning more about. And Erica in today’s episode, I would love to get even more specific on a couple of points we touched on in our last episode, mainly the pelvic floor and deep core strength, because it seems like for women, especially these can be very relevant.

I’m sure relevant for men too, but it seems things like pregnancy and delivery can be a little rough on the body, especially to the pelvic floor and that there might be ways we don’t yet know that we could be really supporting our body in a way that would be super beneficial. So as an intro, can you explain how the fascia relates to the pelvic floor and to our deep core muscles and what we need to know foundationally about that?

Erica: Yes, I love this conversation. I also want to add too, for ladies listening that have had C-sections because I hear a lot of times questions from C-section moms, well, does this affect me? Right. Because they didn’t have a vaginal birth. And absolutely, exactly everything I’m going to share is really applicable whether you’ve had a vaginal birth, a C-section, or any plans in the future for either, because as women, we need to know this information to help us honestly with prevention of future issues that so many women struggle with, but I see that we don’t need to. So when we’re talking about what is our pelvic floor and our deep core and how does fascia interrelate to all of that?

Well, to me, fascia is the piece that holds it all together. So if we just want to start with the basics of the pelvic floor. So if you guys are sitting right now, and if you’re not, and you want to try this later, I recommend coming back and just kind of going through the visual cues that I’m going to give you, is if you’re sitting on a flat surface, so you can feel your pelvic floor underneath your pelvis. And the first thing I like to teach is how big our pelvic floor really is. So if we just kind of rock forward and find our pubic bone, rock back, find your tailbone, and then like, sits bone to sits bone.

So those four bony points, and I’ll explain it a lot of times as like this visual diamond shape, because when we can get the visualization from our brain to our body, and then the other way around, we can start to find these connections better. So if we can visualize the base of our pelvic floor as like a diamond shape, and now obviously there’s the musculature of the pelvic floor, which is important, but there’s also all the fascial tissue, which I mentioned in our previous episode that wraps around all of our muscles, as well as our muscle spindles.

Every single muscle spindle of every muscle. It’s a very important piece. Now, the other really neat piece about fascia and the pelvic floor, is above the pelvic floor, between our pelvic floor and our lower organs, we have this layer of fascia. Now it might look a little bit different for everybody.

But I have seen it. I’ve did a dissection class once on a cadaver. It was the most emotional moving thing I’ve really ever seen from a professional perspective, but it really opened my eyes. I got to see that there’s this layer of fascia between our pelvic floor and our organs, helping to support our organs. So it’s not just our pelvic floor that’s supporting our organs, it’s actually all that fascia. And then if we keep moving up, and because fascia wraps around all of our organs, a big key piece I like my ladies to start to really visualize and understand is thinking about your organs in your body, your heart, your liver, your intestines, your uterus, all of that being suspended in your body. Not just your pelvic floor holding up our organs. This is a piece why I don’t really like to teach Kegels for example, because Kegels are just taught in a way to like really like tighten and squeeze the pelvic floor. And I know some women can get great results with that, but across the board, I don’t see that we get good results with that because it segments just the pelvic floor on its own.

And for optimal pelvic floor function, which is what we all want, we have to address our entire core. So that involves the base of the pelvis, that pelvic floor. It involves all the muscles and fascia of our abdominal wall, deep in our spine, our inner custles, which go in between our ribs.

And I like to also add the mid back as a part of that deep core, because when we are working to effectively strengthen our pelvic floor, and our deep core, because they do work together simultaneously, we have to think about all of that fascial tissue connecting everything together. And I have discovered over all these years, that when I can get my ladies to lightly activate their pelvic floor…

So in episode one, when we were talking about the shoulders and I was like, if you can get that light mid back lifting and kind of bring your chest forward and up a little bit, you will naturally feel a little lift on the pelvic floor. And then a deeper layer of this too is our diaphragm, right?

This is why breath is so important. And I will always say you can do all the movement in the world and you’re never going to strengthen your pelvic floor, deep core effectively without the breath piece. Breath is the foundation. And the thing is we have to recognize is with that pelvic floor, deep core, we’re working our muscles, yes, a little bit, but we’re working our fascial system so much more for what I just said about how all that fascia is wrapping around your organs. And we’re suspending those organs inside because I think we’ve been so ingrained to like work our abs. So we think, Oh, we should just feel the front of our belly working or just feel that pelvic floor.

When the reality is we should actually feel a gentle pelvic floor lift and we should feel like inside the body, which all that fascial tissue. So kind of going back to our first conversation about back pain, well, this can really also help us get out of back pain because that deep tissue connects to the inside of our spine. And we don’t tend to think about that where we think about our outer muscles and all of that. This is really going deeper in our body and how all of that tissue is so intertwined and connected. And one other piece I like to really add on with activating your pelvic floor, deep core correctly is using your feet more. So those toes, I mentioned a little bit of that with pain in the last episode, but when we can actually think, and this is why I always have people work out barefoot, and maybe if you’re at a gym lifting heavy, right, you want to have your shoes on or minimalist shoes, things like that.

But if you’re at home, you’re in a Pilates studio, yoga, all that, like you should be barefoot and using your toes because we have a fascial line that connects all the way down to our toes runs all the way up through the arches of our feet, up through our midline, up through our pelvis. It even connects, like, to our back, up through our diaphragm, and all the way up to our head. So we can actually start to feel that. And when we can use our toes and pull up on our arches a little bit more, it can help us to simulate that light lift all the way through our pelvis, our pelvic floor, our deep core. And then the breathing piece is really huge here. And I mentioned that a little bit. So to talk a little bit deeper, with the breath piece of this of how to actually activate, we have to breathe diaphragmatically, right? So to truly breathe diaphragmatically, we have to breathe out to the sides of our ribs and into our back.

And a really good practice to work on this is, you guys can do this at night when you get into bed. Just lay on your stomach and visualize your inhale, breathing through your nose and breathing all the way down into your lower back. So those of you that have back pain this can also be really really helpful because what are we doing?

And I just want you to relax when you first do this. This is one of the few things, there’s the occasional exercise where we actually want to relax the body, but we’re doing it from a breath perspective to help to let go of that tissue on the inside of the back. But we’re also in a very supportive position because we’re just laying down doing this, but it’s a really good way to help us with our breath.

So when we can learn to expand and release all the way down towards our sacrum, what is that doing? It’s teaching us to really get into that diaphragm. We’ve been taught for years that diaphragmatic breathing is breathing into our belly. You guys I don’t have an issue with you breathing into your belly, sometimes it can be fine to just relax and breathe into your belly. But if we’re doing it all the time and when we’re working out, then every time we inhale and we breathe into our belly, we’ve let go of that light fascial connection through our core, which means that we’re going to likely get more pressure downward on our pelvic floor into our lower back.

Potentially leading to pelvic floor dysfunction, more back pain, things like that. So what we need to really focus on is that back breathing, that side breathing. And I know people will say, well, Erica, breathing all the way down to my lower back, my lungs don’t go that far. Correct. They don’t, but we can elicit a fascial tissue response to release. And so when we can learn to like, let go of that really tight tissue in that lower back and breathe deeper, then we can actually learn how to connect deeper, but more gently with our exhale. Because when we exhale and we’re truly in that diaphragm, that diaphragm lifts and pulls up gently on that pelvic floor. If we’re just belly breathing all the time, that’s when we tend to elicit that pressure downward more often, and then that pressure pushing downward can lead to pelvic floor issues, not having support of the spine, all those types of things. But the big key pieces here, and I know I hit on this in our first episode was, we have to be gentle with it. So many times it’s like we want to be forceful and when we exhale really forcefully, we’re like pulling the belly in, and that pulling that belly to spine puts pressure downward. And again, I can go way back in my early, early days of training 20 years ago.

And I used to cue a little bit of that, but quickly realized that wasn’t working very well and what it’s doing to our pelvic floor function, our fascial system and all of that. So when we are breathing, it’s a gentle exhale and visualize. That visualization practice is key. It’s really key, especially in the beginning, because so many times this feels so foreign. Because we’re so used to having to feel our muscles like really working or really feeling that pelvic floor like squeezing like crazy. But across the board most women especially in the mom population still having, you know babies and having periods things like that, we are too tight and restricted and locked down in our pelvis. So we have to learn to be gentle with our exhale to get this very gentle fascial lifting through our body.

And so it goes back to what we talked about in part one about fascia likes to be lengthened in a gentle way. And when we can visualize all of this deep tissue helping us out and not just along our spine or just our abs working, right, it’s, we’re not piecemealing our body. It’s like how is it all working together and how is our breath that foundational piece?

Breath work is everything when it comes down to pelvic floor, deep core function.

Katie: I love this. This is so interesting. And as you were explaining that I was wondering how, cause I did a lot of work after a couple of my pregnancies on resolving ab separation, but the intercostals piece, there’s still parts in that that always cramp. If I’m doing like L holds or anything that like fully engages my core, I will get like a visible cramp, like where a muscle will like bulge out and it’s super uncomfortable. So I’m curious if fascia might be kind of part of helping with that.

And also think of how people have described on this podcast before is like breath is sort of the master switch of the nervous system. And so seemingly like if we’re able to build the habit of breathing better, we’re actually supporting our nervous system in a massive way as well.

And even in voice lessons is actually how I started learning some of this, is the process of learning to like breathe and fully expand. Llike you’re talking about, breathe deep into your lower back and your lower core. And also while keeping your lungs from collapsing, And then using very specific movements within that to make the breath stronger, to make your voice stronger.

But I just think if we can remember how much the breath is the master switch for our nervous system, for our stress levels, like we know we can even downshift entirely into parasympathetic using only our breath as a tool. So I feel like not underestimating the power of what you’re talking about with breath, especially.

And I also love talking about the feet more. I would love to go deep on this because I feel like this alone, I’ve seen the difference without even intending to of just as I’ve been more barefoot and also just typically I don’t wear shoes at all. But if I do, they’re minimalist shoes. How my toes have changed so much in the last 10 years from being like really cramped together when I was younger and had like worn heels for a lot of years. And now like I have a friend who was like, how’s your toe spread? And I can like fully spread my toes. And I feel like my feet are so much more comfortable and functional now. But I feel like this part is often also overlooked. So any other tips on either the feet and ways we can be more aware of that in day to day and or how much would you recommend to set aside each day to work on the breath part of this practice, if someone wanted to really see results and start making progress?

Erica: Okay. Great questions, Katie. So the feet. So the first thing with feet is, an exercise I give clients, and you can do this in your house, especially if you have kind of feet with, or issues with your feet, you maybe wear orthotics. This is something like… you have to remember your feet are like any other muscle.

You can’t just go from wearing orthotics, super supportive shoes to be like, Oh, I’m going to be barefoot all the time. Your body’s probably not really going to like that. So it’s like anything, we have to slowly make these changes. And tissue likes to be adjusted slowly. That’s the other thing with all this is doing like a 180 overnight with all of your movement and thinking you’re just going to get there is unrealistic. Because if all of a sudden we make these drastic shifts, then we kind of get that grippy grabbing. The body’s like, wait, I’m not quite ready to go there. And this is why also we have to be gentle with our body and listen to our body and work with our body, right? Not force our body. So with the feet, an exercise I like to give clients to do is just get cheapo flip flops, right?

That just go around… like you put your big and second toe around, right? And then just walk around your house. Just think about using your toes. Because what I find is a lot of women have really stopped using their toes much, especially if they’re wearing heels a lot, or we’ve been taught so much to hang out in our heels that I actually will see women lift their toes when they go into a squat or do a lot of exercise. They’re not even using their feet and it’s no fault of anyone’s.

It’s because we’ve overly taught that in so much fitness stuff. So just the act of flip flops to kind of retrain your brain and your movement patterns. You don’t have to wear them all the time, but it can be a good little exercise to get your brain and your toes and your feet to kind of get on the same page of like, let me use my toes more. And then when you’re doing your movement practice and your exercises, and like I said, that’s why I always tell everyone workout barefoot at home. We want to cue what your toes are doing and get that spreading of those toes and kind of grabbing the toes and pulling up on the arches. It’s going to help you guys also get that pelvic floor deep core to lightly activate. And lightly is really key with this. Does that help Katie with the feet? As far as like…And then of course, going barefoot as much as you can. And one thing I’ll add to that, I know when I was younger, because I grew up with a lot of pain, which is why I do all this work today, it’s how I found all this and helped heal my own body. But, I was in orthotics all the time when I was little. And now today I’m like, I love to be barefoot, which is harder to do in Iowa in the cold winters. When I can, I, you know barefoot is key. I know you were asking about breath a little bit more with the breathing and how often to practice.

So I always like to say 10 to 15 minutes of the breath with movement practice a day yields amazing results. It’s honestly, when I first started teaching my programs online and was teaching and having ladies, I used to have like bigger blocks of things. And then we started realizing really quick that as long as my students and clients were doing consistent most days of the week, like 10 to 15 minute movement practice with the techniques that I teach, it’s yielding amazing results for them. So we promote that all the time now because we’ve been doing this even online. I mean, I’ve been teaching for over 20 years, but we’ve been in the online space with programs that are helping moms since 2016 and it’s been phenomenal to see the results.

And they’re even surprised. They’re like, I’ve been really consistent doing just one movement workout a day. And they’re like, their life has sometimes changed, right? Especially if they’re dealing with severe incontinence, back pain, things like that. And I always recommend to try to do it in the first part of your day, because what is that going to do? It’s helping you to realign your body and lengthen you out. So then when you do go move throughout your day, you’re much more set up with this idea of this fascial, light fascial support, your breath, your pelvic floor, all of that’s a little bit more awake, but it’s not grippy, grabby, right?

So a lot of times when we first wake up in the morning, our tissue tends to be tight. Right. And a lot of people are like, I just want to stretch in the morning. Well, instead of just stretching, start doing this fascial lengthening, finding this opposition in your body. What is your, connecting your breath with your pelvic floor, deep core connection.

What are your feet doing? Like, it’s a lot more mental thinking, but it’s so fascinating to me to see the results that this does. It really is learning a whole new language for how your body is moving, how you’re talking to yourself, what’s going on within your body. And, but it can, and it’s a big statement to say, but it truly can be absolutely life changing when we learn to move this way because of what it does to our nervous system. We end up being so much nicer to ourself, right? Because there’s so many times as women, as moms, like we’re so hard on ourself. We’ve got so much to do. We’ve got all this stuff. And then we tend to take the backseat to our own body and it’s like, we don’t have to spend an hour a day on your movement.

You can, but I know for so many, that’s not the reality. So when we can do 10 to 15 minutes, preferably first thing in the day, sometimes I have ladies that do it at night because that’s what works for them. And it helps calm them for bed. And you can do whatever works for you. Um, but little bits of learning these techniques can really go a long way. That’s fascinating.

Katie: That is so interesting and so encouraging that only like 10 to 15 minutes a day can make such a massive difference, which seemingly lines up with the whole like, don’t force it, be gentle. This is not an extreme workout program. It can actually be probably very fun and relaxing even. I’d also love to talk about how sitting plays into this because we hear a lot about sitting being the new smoking and how sitting and especially text neck is changing all of our posture and even our human like structure they think over time will start changing because of these adaptations to sitting too much.

So, can you speak to how sitting impacts this and how we can undo that sort of sitting being the new smoking problem?

Erica: So I think it’s all in how we’re sitting. I think we need to change up our position more often. So if you are sitting all day, try to stand when you can, or if you get a break here and there, I have some key exercises that I teach that are go tos for our clients that they’re like, Oh, I feel so good.

I get up and I’m reminding my pelvic floor, deep core fascial system to be lengthened and lightly connected. So then when I do go sit back down, then I’m like, Oh, that tissue is on and supporting my body. Right. And just really trying to… I have a standing desk at home, so even just like right now sitting, I bring it up to a level so that I’m looking straight and I’m not feeling like I’m looking down at my computer.

So, doing those things that we can do from a postural perspective, but pay attention to your pelvic position. I know we talked more about pelvic positioning on, session one, but our last episode, but when you’re sitting, you guys… like I sit on just a flat bench when I sit because it reminds me to sit up a little bit taller versus if we sit with chairs that have backs, we tend to slouch and be rounded or those that work at home can tend to sit on couches a lot. Couches are notoriously really, really bad for our posture, for our pelvic floor, because that that pressure goes downward. As soon as we tuck our pelvis, we get that pressure pushes down on our pelvic floor. And instead we want to be up right up on top of those sits bones, right? Go back to where we started this conversation, what are those bony points of our pelvis?

We want to be right up on top of our pelvis. Now, as women, we want that little arch in our low back, but some of you, I know, you’re going to really tend to really pull in that low back, so then you have to think about that really gentle, like maybe bringing the pelvis. I hate, I don’t like the word tucking, but we maybe want to bring that pelvis back under just a little bit, just enough that you feel the movements coming from your core. So remember how I was talking about breathing and breathing out to the sides of our ribs and our back. And so we can, just while we’re holding our body right here, just think about that light kind of, I like the word zipping up sensation. So our diaphragm as we exhale kind of pulls up on our pelvic floor lightly.

We hopefully start to, at some point you may not feel it today, but start to feel this like zipping up sensation from our pubic bone all the way up through to the top of our head. But we want to be able to learn to just lightly hold that, but still breathe. So if you’re trying to hold your body in that position and you’re like noticing you’re holding your breath.

You’re holding too tight. So a lot of times we have to just learn to work our body in a very gentle way to hold our body. So again, when we’re sitting here, like we can move with ease, but we’re using our fascial system to help hold us up, where our fascial system isn’t on, we’re compressing our spine, right?

And compressing those nerves, putting pressure down on the pelvic floor. So just really focus on lengthening up, changing up your position. Putting in some of like my core rehab movements that I like to teach my clients that just feel really good for them. They can even do them in the office.  I get people all the time that will write in and be like, I feel kind of silly doing them, but I feel so good when I do my weave in my little movements.

So it’s not always thinking about movement from an exercise perspective. I actually have shifted years ago. We talk about it from our movement practice. So, I no longer really use the word workout. In all my programs, it’s your movement practice. And just just sitting with how that even feels in your body. I always think the word exercise can tend to maybe heighten that nervous system a little bit, makes you feel a little bit more on edge. Where if we think about just our movement practice, I feel like it’s so lighter and more calming to our nervous system. And just the act of, again, we’ve brought up the nervous system many different times.

And just the act of thinking of things in a little bit different perspective helps us to just feel so much better. And when we can calm that nervous system, we can sit up much taller with just more ease and not trying to force our body to do the work.

Katie: I love this. And like we talked about in our first episode too, I think this is such an exciting thing because a lot of people are not as familiar with fascia as they might be with like muscles and training muscles. And it seemingly like you talked about in that episode, this is so connected that it can make a drastic difference even in how you’re able to use your muscles in the gym.

And I’ve said it, you know, a couple of examples of people I’ve seen that were so fascially connected that even if they had similar strength to someone else, they were able to move more weight over time because they were so connected in their body. And seemingly these people I’m thinking of also, I’ve never seen them deal with an injury.

They can move kind of in any activity they want to pick up. Like they’re able to just pick it up and be great at it because their whole body is connected. And so I think this is super exciting and seemingly super helpful for women. And I know you have a lot of specific resources available, especially for women on improving these areas that we’ve talked about.

Can you give us a little bit of an overview? I know you said obviously don’t do too much at first, like allow the adaptation to occur in a gentle way. But if a woman is listening and really wants to dive in and really start taking care of her fascia, where would be a good place to start and what kind of encouragement would you give her or direction for that path?

Erica: Yeah. So the idea of really working with your body and being gentle is the first place. Like just the sitting example I talked about, just the act of being aware of how you’re holding your body is really a first step. And even when you start in with a movement practice, I always say, take what you’re learning from that and take those concepts and put them into your movement. I start with really simple things with my clients. Like we do, like everyone knows what like a bridge position is, right? We just lay flat on the ground and instead of bridging up and down just to work your glutes, we start with what’s like a pelvic tilt. So we’re really gently working, starting to wake up with your breath, that pelvic floor, deep core that I described throughout this episode.

And then we learn to articulate our spine and going really slow and really small range of motion. And those are the two other big things that I really teach clients is, we have to slow down our movement. We’ve got to move with our breath and we have to have a smaller range of motion, especially if we’re dealing with pain and we’re working to realign and adjust our posture, because we get in these habits, like I always say, our body will always cheat to help to hold us upright. And so this is why this mindful movement practice can really help set us up for success because we start to recognize areas of like, Oh gosh, if I’m doing like, I like to use the example of a sideline Pilates leg lift, right?

A lot of people know what that is. You just lay on your side and lift your leg. And you see in the pictures, like this really long, lifting our leg up towards the sky. Well, I never teach that because people do that and all they do is use their hip flexor and their low back. We want to do a movement, all of our moves feel like space, finding space between our bones and lengthen and lift just a little bit. And so so many times in the beginning, I got to get my ladies to like pull their range down really small. So we’re like, maybe they might even be moving an inch, but then guess what? They’re like, Oh, I’m not in my back anymore, I’m actually feeling my, my hip working, my glute working, right? The right muscles, that’s the key, is we’ve got to get the right areas of the body to work. And then we start to really build up from there. And sometimes in the beginning, I have to encourage my lady’s depending on if you’re dealing with incontinence issues, severe back pain, things like that.

Sometimes we’ve got to really pull down our other physical activities for a while so we can really work to realign and connect our body and then we can build back up. Cause my big goal, is that whatever activity, physical activities in life that you want to be doing, want to be doing better, like I want to help you get there, but sometimes we’ve got to slow those down to realign and reconnect and learn all these new techniques so that we can get back to running or our heavyweight training or, you know, whatever it might be for you. Because ultimately those physical activities are so important. They keep us mobile. They keep us happy. They keep us healthy And so that’s always my big goal for women is to to help get you there.

Katie: Yeah, I love this. This is, I’m excited to keep learning from you and to actually really start being intentional about my fascia and see how that changes movement and how I feel and things in the gym as well. And I know that  your website has a lot of resources for this. I will of course, link to it in the show notes, but can you let people know where to find that and maybe where’s the best place to jump in?

Erica: Perfect. Yes, so you guys my website is ericaziel.com. My last name is spelled Z IEL And there you can find all my programs. My signature program is my core rehab program where you’ll learn so much more beyond even what we’ve talked about today. And then I also have a free pelvic floor guide, which I highly recommend everybody check out.

Cause not only do I talk about pelvic floor like we talked about today, I share a couple of movements as well as we talk about this, the fascial conversation. So it’s great to give you that like action piece. So thank you so much, Katie.

Katie: Well, I love it. Like I said, I will be trying it out and I’ve learned a lot already in our episodes together. I would guess many people listening have as well. And I love that you’re bringing a voice to this not as well known aspect that seemingly touches on overall aspects of health in really, really dramatic ways.

And I think from a very inspiring place of hope and practical solution. So I’m very grateful for your time and for your work. Thank you so much for being here today.

Erica: Thank you, Katie, so much for having me. It’s been an honor to speak with you. So thank you.

Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.