Why Kegels Are Holding You Back: A New Perspective on Prolapse Healing
Part One: Yes, You Can Heal Postpartum Prolapse: A Breath-Led Return to Core Confidence
Part Two: Why Kegels Are Holding You Back: A New Perspective on Prolapse Healing
Part Three: Running After Prolapse: When to Return and What Your Core Needs First
Part Four: Breathe to Lift: Core-Centered Breathing Techniques to Heal Prolapse
Part Five: Posture That Heals: Realigning Your Spine to Support Prolapse Recovery
Part Six: The #1 Exercise for Prolapse Recovery
If you've been diagnosed with prolapse, you've likely heard the advice: "Just do your Kegels." Maybe you've been faithfully squeezing and lifting every day, hoping that heavy, dragging sensation in your pelvis would finally disappear.
But here’s what’s probably happening instead: you're still dealing with that uncomfortable pressure—the feeling like everything is falling out—and maybe even noticing your symptoms getting worse despite all the effort.
I've worked with many women who come to me frustrated and confused because they’ve been doing Kegels religiously, yet their prolapse symptoms persist or have actually worsened. They're still afraid to lift their kids. Still feel like they need to hold everything in. Still worrying about their future.
It’s disheartening when you’ve done what you were told—and your body still feels foreign, unreliable, unsupported. But here’s the truth:
What prolapse requires isn’t more force. It’s not more clenching, squeezing, or "being strong."
It’s a complete reorganization of how your body breathes, supports, and remembers herself. It’s not about trying to hold up a falling ceiling by pushing harder on the beams that are already buckling under pressure. Your pelvic organs don’t need more effort—they need a new architecture of lift, spaciousness, and coordination.
And that transformation? It’s entirely possible. Not through force—but through breath. Through fascia. Through remembering the intelligence of your own core system.
Why Kegels Make Prolapse Worse
Kegels involve consciously contracting and tightening the pelvic floor muscles. It’s an exercise in voluntary muscle control—squeezing and lifting.
But prolapse is not just a problem of voluntary weakness—it’s a result of systemic misalignment, tension, and exhaustion in the fascia and muscle coordination of the entire core. When your organs are descending, Kegels can actually increase the very pressure that caused them to drop in the first place.
The vast majority of prolapse cases involve pelvic floor muscles that are already overworked, tight, and stuck in chronic tension. They’re doing all they can—but without help from the diaphragm, abdominals, intercostals, and spine, they’re collapsing under the load.
So when you add Kegels to the mix, you’re asking already-exhausted muscles to strain harder. This creates more tension and further disconnects the diaphragm from the pelvic floor. That disconnection increases intra-abdominal pressure and pushes your organs downward even more.
Prolapse doesn’t arise from weakness alone—it arises from dyssynergy: poor coordination between the breath, spine, diaphragm, and core fascia. Kegels ignore the need for relaxation, decompression, and systemic re-patterning. They contract a system that is already compressed.
And for many women, this well-intended advice becomes a source of frustration, stagnation, and symptom escalation. What’s needed isn’t more force—it’s recalibration. Breath-led, fascia-based, whole-body recalibration.
Kegels Only Target 20% of Your Pelvic Floor
Your pelvic floor is comprised of 20% voluntary muscle fibers and 80% involuntary muscle fibers. Kegels focus only on the 20% you can consciously contract. That’s not much when it comes to rebuilding the foundation of your core.
Your pelvic organs depend on the other 80%—the involuntary muscle fibers—for constant, reflexive support throughout your day. These fibers activate automatically, without your conscious input.
When you do Kegels, you may be strengthening what you can feel—but you're ignoring the vast majority of the system designed to hold your organs in place. You’re training the 20% while neglecting the 80%.
Even more concerning: focusing on the voluntary fibers can actually interfere with the reflexive function of the pelvic floor. Your body starts to rely on what you can consciously control—and forgets how to respond automatically.
True support for your pelvic organs doesn’t come from manual control. It comes from restoring your body’s natural reflexes—your breath-led, automatic, deeply intelligent core coordination.
And that’s where the real healing begins.
Kegels Miss the Fascia of the Pelvic Floor
What if the very part of your body most responsible for holding your organs in place… wasn’t muscle at all?
Your pelvic floor is actually more fascia than muscle—about 70% fascial connective tissue and only 30% muscle fibers. And of that 30%, Kegels only reach a fraction—just the 20% of muscle fibers you can consciously contract. That means the typical Kegel targets less than 6% of the total pelvic floor structure.
That’s not just incomplete—it’s misleading.
Even more concerning: Kegels can tighten already-contracted muscles, which further restricts circulation and oxygen to the fascia. And fascia that isn’t nourished or decompressed? It weakens. It frays. It loses its tensile integrity. This is why so many women feel worse after months of effort—they’ve been tightening a system that’s begging to be lifted, lengthened, and rehydrated.
All prolapse involves compromised pelvic fascia—and often, the internal fascial slings that support the bladder, uterus, or rectum. But the conventional medical model still operates under an outdated assumption: that once fascia is overstretched or damaged, it can’t regenerate. That healing must come from surgical mesh, not from your body’s own intelligence.
And so, women are handed Kegels like a consolation prize. Told to “try harder” with a method that never addresses the root. And meanwhile, the true solution—fascia-based decompression and core reconnection—is rarely offered, let alone taught.
You were never meant to bear the weight alone. Your body remembers how to lift, to center, to hold you—when given the right input. When fascia is restored, healing becomes not just possible—but inevitable.
Kegels Fail to Incorporate the Rest of the Body
Prolapse is not a localized issue—it’s a systemic pattern.
It unfolds through the body over time: in how you breathe, how you stand, how you carry tension in your spine, diaphragm, and belly. It’s the result of chronically elevated intra-abdominal pressure combined with weakened fascial suspension systems.
And while the symptoms show up in the pelvis, the cause originates far beyond it.
Your pelvic floor never functions in isolation. Every contraction it makes is naturally accompanied by your diaphragm, abdominals, hips, spinal muscles—and the expansive web of fascia that connects them all.
Likewise, your pelvic fascia is not an island. It’s intricately woven into the fascia of your rib cage, throat, shoulders, legs, and even the soles of your feet. It is continuous, responsive, and deeply intelligent.
Kegels ask one part of the system to work alone. They isolate muscles that are already fatigued and disconnected from their broader support network. Over time, this fragmentation creates more dysfunction—not less.
Instead of reintegrating the body, Kegels further separate it.
Healing prolapse requires whole-body recalibration. Breath that lifts from the root. Posture that decompresses the spine. Movement that restores harmony across the fascial matrix. Only then can the pelvic floor remember its role—not as a lone soldier, but as a supported, responsive part of a larger symphony.
Prolapse isn't just about Weak Pelvic Floor Muscles
Kegels assume the pelvic floor operates on its own. But your pelvic floor is not a separate part of you—it’s part of a living system, designed to function in deep relationship with your diaphragm, abdominals, and spine.
It’s not just about “strength.” It’s about coordination.
When you have prolapse, what’s really happening is a loss of harmony within the core system. Breath becomes shallow or misdirected. Posture compresses rather than lifts. Muscles begin working out of sync. And over time, your organs respond to this disharmony—by descending.
Kegels attempt to impose a controlled contraction onto a system that’s crying out for integration. They pull the pelvic floor into a pattern of isolated tension, which actually interrupts the very reflexes your organs depend on for support.
Prolapse recovery isn’t about making one muscle stronger. It’s about helping your entire core system reawaken its natural rhythm—one that breathes, lifts, and stabilizes automatically.
The answer isn’t to control more.
The answer is to restore the environment in which your body remembers how to support itself.
The “New Kegel” is Decompression Breathing
What prolapse truly needs isn’t more force. It’s space. It’s lift. It’s coherence.
Your pelvic floor and organs cannot heal inside a compressed, overloaded system. They need the breath to return. They need pressure to release. They need to be remembered by the rest of your core.
This is where decompression breathing comes in.
Rather than squeezing or clenching, decompression breathing unloads your pelvic floor. It reorganizes the internal landscape of your body so that healing can begin—organically, reflexively, and without strain. I teach this foundational technique inside The Core Recovery Method® because it’s the most powerful and direct way to restore your body’s natural ability to support itself.
With each breath, your body begins to remember.
Why Decompression Breathing Works So Powerfully for Prolapse Recovery
✨ Complete Muscle Activation:
It reaches all of your pelvic floor—100% of it. By activating both voluntary and involuntary fibers, decompression breathing restores the automatic reflexes that hold your organs in place throughout your day.
✨ Creates Space + Lift:
Instead of adding pressure, it reduces it. Decompression breathing lifts from within, creating the vertical spaciousness your organs need to rise naturally back to center.
✨ Reintegrates Core Coordination:
It teaches your pelvic floor to work with your diaphragm, abdominals, and spine—not against them. This whole-system coordination is what allows you to move, live, and feel supported again.
✨ Improves Circulation:
As pressure lessens, blood and lymph flow increase—bringing nourishment to the fascia and tissues that support your organs, accelerating healing from the inside out.
✨ Restores Automatic Function:
You don’t have to think about healing. You just breathe. And as your nervous system relaxes and reorganizes, your body begins to remember what it once knew: how to lift, how to hold, how to thrive.
There Is a Better Way—Your Body Already Knows It
One in three women will experience prolapse—yet most are met with shame, confusion, or ineffective advice. The system tells you to squeeze harder. To stay silent. To settle.
But your body is not broken. And you are not alone.
The truth is, Kegels don’t resolve prolapse—they often reinforce the very pressure patterns that caused it. When muscles are already overworked, when fascia is strained, and breath is out of sync, squeezing harder only deepens the disconnect.
What you need isn’t more effort—it’s alignment.
Decompression breathing and the whole-body fascia-based approach of The Core Recovery Method® give your body the spaciousness to reorganize. To lift. To trust herself again.
You do not need to push through pain.
You do not need to settle for surgery.
You do not need to disappear inside a diagnosis.
Your body is brilliant. She remembers.
And healing begins—not by fighting gravity,
but by restoring the breath that lifts you.
