Strong Foundations: What We Should Have Learned About Our Bodies Sooner

I was nineteen when my body first taught me that silence can hurt more than pain.

A cyst the size of an orange was pressing down on my bladder and uterus, eventually causing a prolapse (though I didn’t know that word at the time). I didn’t know what a pelvic floor was, or that the muscles and connective tissue at the base of the body are designed to support organs, regulate pressure and respond rhythmically to breath. I only knew that something felt wrong, as if my insides were slipping out of place, and I had absolutely no language for it.

Even now, in 2026, I sometimes wonder how many nineteen-year-olds would recognise what was happening. How many would understand that across the varying seasons of womanhood - adolescence, pregnancy, matrescence, perimenopause and menopause - painful sex or leaking when you laugh or jump may be common, but is not something you simply accept as “normal.” How many would feel able to say, without shame, “I think something isn’t right.”

When I finally saw a doctor, gravity quietly rearranged me on the examination table and my body slipped back into place. I was told I was fine. But I wasn’t. I was young, sporty and outwardly strong, yet inside I felt fragile and confused. I did not know how to explain that standing felt different from lying down, nor did I know how to advocate for something I did not yet understand. And like most women my age, I came from a generation where “down there” simply wasn’t discussed - not at home, not at school, not between friends, and often not properly even in medical spaces.

Surgery followed, along with a long and awkward recovery, and when it was all over the advice I was given was brief and definitive: “Do Kegels.”

So I did. Religiously and obsessively, like homework for a body I did not understand. I squeezed in lectures, in the car, brushing my teeth, watching television. I treated my pelvic floor like a faulty mechanism that needed tightening into obedience, driven by fear and the quiet belief that my body had somehow failed - and might fail again unless I controlled it.

It took years of learning (and unlearning) to understand what was really happening.

The pelvic floor is not a small muscle you isolate and grip. It is part of a dynamic pressure system working in partnership with the diaphragm above, the deep abdominal wall around it and the spine behind it. Every breath you take subtly changes intra-abdominal pressure. When the diaphragm descends and expands well, the pelvic floor responds with length and recoil; when breathing becomes shallow, braced or held, that relationship changes.

And the pelvic floor does not only respond to movement; it responds to the nervous system.

When we live in chronic sympathetic activation (low-grade fight-or-flight), the body narrows, the shoulders rise, the jaw tightens and the breath shortens. Global muscle tone increases, and the pelvic floor often mirrors that pattern - not because it is weak, but because it is protective. A muscle living in chronic sympathetic activation does not need more tightening; it needs regulation and variability. It needs the diaphragm above it to move well and the nervous system beneath it to feel safe.

For decades, pelvic floor symptoms have been framed as weakness, so women are told to strengthen, to squeeze, to “do their Kegels.” But hypertonicity (excessive resting tone) is just as common as weakness. Strengthening a muscle that is already gripping can reinforce the very pattern causing the symptoms.

Years later, when I sought help for painful sex, the solution offered was numbing cream. No one asked about my history, my stress levels or my sense of safety. Yet the ability to enjoy intimacy is not simply about desire; it is a parasympathetic response dependent on blood flow, tissue hydration and the body’s capacity to soften. When the system is braced, tissue often follows. Tight muscles hurt. Restricted blood flow reduces natural lubrication. A body that does not feel safe will not easily relax into intimacy, no matter how willing the mind may be.

Understanding that reframed everything.

Hormones layer into this conversation too. Oestrogen plays a crucial role in collagen production, vascular supply and tissue elasticity. When it fluctuates (during adolescence, postpartum recovery or perimenopause), connective tissue can feel less resilient and more sensitive. Without understanding that physiology, women often interpret these changes as personal failure rather than normal adaptation. But adaptation requires support and education, not silence and shame.

This article is not about my story alone. It is about what happens when we misunderstand the body - and what becomes possible when we finally learn to listen to it.

It is also about permission: permission not to tolerate leaking when you walk the dog or bounce on a trampoline; permission not to accept painful sex as inevitable; permission not to numb yourself in order to endure intimacy; permission to ask better questions; permission to expect better care.

When we understand the system rather than just chasing the symptom, we build strong foundations - not clenched or braced, but adaptable and responsive.

If this resonates, please join Dr Sarah Jenkins and me at The Umi Clinic on 25th February for an honest conversation about female health through two complementary lenses: her clinical expertise and my RESeT® movement and nervous system approach. We will be discussing pelvic health alongside perimenopause and menopause as integrated systems rather than isolated problems to quietly endure. You can book here.

And if you feel this belongs in mainstream teenage wellbeing education - not whispered about, not left to Google at midnight - please share it with your community and the schools shaping the next generation.

Because, i really do believe, our bodies aren’t something to fix; they are something to understand.

With you,

Sophie x