Episode #93- How I Cured My Incontinence

I wanted to share this episode about the techniques I have found helpful in getting rid of my urinary incontinence. 

 

As well, you can see the process of my journey- being curious, open to information, taking what worked for me, and being open to my own inspiration for new ideas.  

 

For me, there were a combination of physical and mental techniques I used to get this result.  

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 93, How I Cured My Incontinence. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind.
Hello, my loves. This is going to be an episode that I've been wanting to do for a while, but haven't felt totally comfortable with, but I think it's very, very important. I do want to let you know in advance that I will be talking about female anatomy and female incontinence, which is urinary incontinence.
And if this is not calling to you, it might not be an episode that interests you. But incontinence does affect the majority of women. There can be different kinds.
Urge incontinence is when you have the urge to go suddenly and you don't make it to the bathroom in time. And there's also stress incontinence, which is with like jumping or sneezing or running with impact. So it's actually very, very common, and there's not much done to treat it.
And what's typically suggested for incontinence is to strengthen the pelvic floor doing Kegels, so contracting the pelvic floor muscles. But one of the problems is that some of the incontinence can actually be caused from the muscles being chronically too tight, too much tone. So I had both types of incontinence, and sometimes in my life, it was worse than others, which actually makes sense now that I know about the emotional component to these physical manifestations.
And there were times in my life, I think even before I had kids, I have had four kids, but I think even before that, I had some incontinence with like sneezing or laughing or like falling. And maybe even some urgent continence, too. So I think it is a very common thing with women and something that's not very commonly talked about.
It took me a while, like I said, to even record this podcast. But really, it's not a shameful thing to talk about. It's definitely something that I can help you understand, at least what has helped for me.
And my approach has been kind of a journey of things I was led to and taken little pieces from here and there and what worked for me. But what I teach my clients and I want to offer to you is that you will have your own best answers and trust in that. So if you want to start on this journey of working on this, you can start to open your mind to information on the subject and what sounds good for you to try and how you are drawn to maybe a certain aspect of something and what seems to be working for you.
Just have this attitude of curiosity that you are going to be able to learn from yourself what works best. But I do want to give you what worked for me as an idea, and you can kind of see the process that I went through. So I would say during the time of my divorce, there was a lot going on.
Emotionally, I was very unstable, and I remember experiencing a lot of incontinence at that time. The metaphysical explanation of incontinence, if you read Louise Hay, is emotional overflow, years of controlling emotions. So I do think that that played a part, and at that time, I was also really learning a lot about mind-body.
And so I read in Dr. Sarno's book, The Divided Mind, that genitourinary issues are TMS, or mind-body. So I started getting curious. As I always suggest with my clients, when you start to learn about this approach, just start by getting curious.
Just observe what's already there. So I noticed that I would get a very strong urge to urinate certain times. And it was usually during transitions, when I would be saying goodbye to someone and about to get in my car, when I would be pulling up to the house and about to go inside.
So that was interesting to me. I also noticed I'd had a belief that caffeine made that urgency worse, and that that wasn't always true. And so I started getting curious about that.
So I could see how there were some subconscious thoughts or emotions that seemed to trigger this urge for me to use the restroom when my bladder wasn't even really full. Because I also noticed if the urge went away, then often I wouldn't have to use the restroom for a while. So sometimes I'd have an urge like a wave, and then it would go away, and I wouldn't even really need to urinate for another half hour or hour or something.
So I started getting really, really curious and noticing what was going on. I was drawn to a course from a former PT about pelvic health, and so I learned from her that concept of contracting and actually fully relaxing those muscles. So I learned to combine the contraction and relaxation of the pelvic floor with my breath.
So for example, breathing in, clenching the pelvic floor muscles, and then breathing out, not only relaxing the pelvic floor, but almost like pushing out. And then I did another course by Kim Anami, who taught about the Yoni egg. So she calls it a jade egg, but there can be, mine is a rose quartz egg.
You can get it in different kinds of gemstones. And using the egg in your vagina gives feedback to that area, so you can establish a brain-body connection. And as well, you're able to have some feedback, some resistance, rather than a Kegel, where you're just contracting the muscles with nothing in there to actually squeeze.
So what I did, and this is what worked the best for me, and I think I was inspired to do it. No one directly taught it to me. But being a multitasker at heart, I really like this incorporation, and I feel like it has really helped with the incontinence.
Now, of course, there is the emotional aspect, which I am going to talk a little bit more about later, but just from the physical side, I think that there, you know, maybe there wasn't necessarily a weakness or a overtightness, but I think there was definitely just a lack of connection and a lack of awareness. And so what I do with my practice is I use the egg, it's inserted into the vagina, and then if you imagine the vagina like a tube, like a cylinder, you can divide it into six different sections. There's the right half and the left half.
And that is actually even a good place to start, contracting just the right half of the vagina, just the left half. And I had never heard of trying that before. And so when I did that, it was crazy, because the right side of my pelvic floor didn't contract at all.
Like I had to start with kind of imagining a contraction and then getting stronger and stronger with that. So it was really eye-opening to me that when I'd been doing a Kegel, activating the whole pelvic floor, I missed that awareness that the whole right side was really not even getting activated. So then to further divide into six sections, you would think of the lower third, the middle third, and the top third of the vagina.
So what I did is started combining it with breathing and taking turns contracting each area of the pelvic floor from the vagina. So as I would breathe in, I would contract the right lower section. And then as I would breathe out, I would relax the whole pelvic floor.
And then as I would breathe in, I would contract the left lower section. And then as I breathe out, relax. And then the middle on the right, middle on the left, top right, top left, going through each of the six sections, contracting each little muscle group, connecting it with the breath.
So the reason I think it works for me is because in meditating, the point is to clear the mind, to not have the brain chatter, the stream of conscious thought. And when I'm able to really just connect with the breath and the body and the contraction and the focus on my internal being, then I am not having that resistance and that brain chatter and the monkey mind. And when I do start to notice myself, just like with meditation, because I do it as my meditative practice, as I do start to notice my mind wandering, that's when I try to let that go and return to the breath and the body.
So I would say for me, this kind of evolved, and I wasn't necessarily trying to work on the incontinence, but that was something that I just noticed changed after I'd been meditating. Now, maybe that has to do with the emotional component as well, and so I will tell you about that, because the truth is that I would say my chronic condition of having incontinence is cured, but there are still times that I don't make it to the bathroom in time. I can't believe I just said that on my podcast, but okay, we're all adults here.
It only happens when there's that emotional overflow. It's that cue to me that there's something I'm neglecting within myself. Usually, all it takes is for me to sit down, write down, just start a free flow thought dump and download all my thoughts and just let myself write about whatever I'm feeling emotional about, feel the emotions, and then it's gone.
So it's possible that it's the meditating that has helped calm my nervous system, and that that's why I don't have the incontinence issues as much. So anyway, for whatever reason, all of the things for me, that has been the magic combination. And I'm not saying that it will be for you, but I want you to start to get some ideas from my ideas and from my process of tuning into my body and listening for the next right step.
And I wasn't feeling a lot of compulsion to do it. I was curious. I was playful.
It was like a science experiment. And ultimately, it became just part of my emotional barometer. So I know what's going on subconsciously.
Or you can think about it like in a nervous system state. I know that there's something activated that I need to soothe or pay attention to or just allow. So although this was very personal and vulnerable, it's also just very normal and natural.
And so I wanted to share this with you. The more we understand our bodies and do not fear them, then when these things do come up, you can address them the proper way and they go away. So whether this particular issue is something that you struggle with or not, you can use the same principle of getting very curious, starting to notice what emotionally is going on for you, and starting to trust that you will come across the right resources, that you will have the right inspirations.
You can trust what your body is telling you about what feels like the next best action to take, or maybe it's just to rest and to learn more about your nervous system and calming it overall. And speaking of that, if you are interested in finding out about more tools to understand and calm your nervous system, then be sure and check in the show notes, where I'll have a link where you can receive all four of these modules. They are the modules I created about the nervous system for my group coaching program.
It is some of my favorite work that I've done. And although it is part of my core curriculum, it's something that I wanted to share, because I think it is so valuable. It's about an hour and 20 minutes total for the four modules.
So plan on investing a little bit of time in yourself, if you're drawn to this, to learn more about how to regulate and calm your nervous system more, so that you can be in more of that aligned, parasympathetic calm state, where your inner healer knows what your body needs, where your cells can repair. It's called the rest and digest or the rest and repair state. It's the calm state of your body when you're not activated to fight or flight or freeze or fawn.
You are able to connect to people, be playful. You're able to best use your prefrontal cortex. You're able to learn and receive your creative, your inspired.
That is the parasympathetic calm state. And that is what I teach you about and how to get into more and more and more so that you can reverse your chronic pain, your chronic disease, these chronic conditions that are showing you when you're not in alignment with your true self. And if you're curious about this type of coaching and if it might help you, you can also look in the show notes for a link to a free consult with me.
All right, you guys, have a great day. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me.
Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.