The Livy Method Podcast - Pelvic Health with Erin Degagne - Winter 2026

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

In this episode, Gina sits down with Registered Physiotherapist and pelvic floor specialist Erin Degagne to talk about a topic many people experience but rarely discuss: bladder leaks, urgency, and pelvic floor health. Together, they challenge the long-standing belief that peeing when you laugh, sneeze, or jump is simply a normal part of aging or having kids, and explain why it’s actually a common but treatable issue. Erin shares why so many women and men silently deal with symptoms like frequent urination or waking multiple times at night, how hydration and lifestyle changes can bring underlying pelvic tension to light, and why seeking support can make a real difference. This empowering conversation reminds listeners that they don’t have to live with these symptoms and that help is available.Where to find Erin:Instagram: @squats.and.coffeewww.lakecountryphysio.comYou can find the full video hosted at: www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2026To learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.livymethod.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams for my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on ACAST, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon music.

We're focusing on sustainable habits, not quick-fixing. It's an opportunity to get curious. We're here, help people get to their health goals. One piece of time. We build and build and bill. Let's talk about pissing our pants every time we laugh, we jump, we sneeze. Oh, my goodness. What about waking up in the middle of the night 15 fucking times?

Erin Degagnet is here. She's a pelvic health physiotherapist. We've had this conversation a million times. Aaron, so I'm going to get right into it. People come to you. What do they want to know? What's the problem? This is for everybody.

What's normal? What's not? What can we do about it? We just get diapers and deal with it seriously. No, so don't get diapers unless you need them right now, but you can get rid of them. Yeah. I think it's just a big misconception, right? We've kind of been fed this information that if you have kids, if as you get older,

if you've had surgery, like you're just going to have leakage. It is what it is. deal with it kind of a thing, right? You can get these pads. Maybe you can't see them under your pants, like all of these things. So it's just seen as normal. But really, it's very common. One in nine women, one in three, or one in three women, one in nine men have some sort

of urinary issue in Canada. And I think most people are reporting and most people are not seeking help. I think it's one in 12s actually seek help because they're either embarrassed or they didn't know it was a thing. So yeah, here we are trying to give you information so you know that it's something, there is something that you can do and you don't have to live like that forever. One in three women. I don't know if it's my generation, right? Like I grew up watching my aunts, my mom, whatever, laugh, laugh their guts out, you know, pee their pants. It was

totally normal. That happened to me. I was with, you know, the team in Bahamas. We were up late at night. We were just dying, laughing over something and literally just peed myself. And we just like this is normal because this is what we've been told. This is what happens when you get old. So deal with it. And do you think this conversation has been more prevalent recently because of menopause and we just feel more open about talking about sort of, and this is for everybody. This is men and women both have pelvic health issues. But do you think we've just been more vocal or? I think our culture is becoming a little more open. I noticed especially with the younger generation, like they're, you know, I'll see somebody and they're like, oh, I told someone at Walmart

today about pelvic physio, whereas like, older. women that I see. It was just really such a private thing that you would have never talked about before. And so our culture, I think, is just evolving, which is a good thing. You want to talk to your friends about this, talk to other people so that you know that you're not alone because it can be really isolating. You can feel like, oh, maybe I'm the only one who has this problem when really like all your friends are probably peeing their pants too. Yeah. Well, yeah, we are. Um, urine, urinary urgency, urinary frequency, waking up at night to pee, bowel issues. You know, I, I, You know, someone had a comment and they were like, well, you know, my friend went to a physio and she was just, they told her they were drinking too much water on the Livy Method.

And I just want to say, no one's asking you to drink more water than you need to be hydrated. We definitely don't want to be guzzling, you know, a gallon of water before you go to bed at night. But we've even talked to, what was his name? What was the doctor who we had on? Dr. Pfeiffer who came on and talked about water. No really such thing is like a small bladder. like weak bladder, can you kind of debunk what people think it is for us?

Let's start there. Right. So some people think that, yeah, they either have a small bladder or have always had to pee. The truth is you probably always have had pelvic tension, right? So even before you have kids, if you've had painful periods of her life or like a history of sexual abuse or injuries,

all of those things can really create a lot of tension. So it just feels like you're normal. Like, oh, I have to pee like three times when my friends only pee once or things like that. So you can just think that. it's normal. And then oftentimes, because of that, it's annoying, you decreased your water intake. And now that you're doing the living method, you're actually hydrating your body. So of course, you're peeing more than you would. But it really is just highlighting a problem that was probably

always there, but you were just so dehydrated that it didn't seem like such a big problem. Right. So maybe you were only peeing eight times a day. And that's pretty normal, but not when you're not well hydrated. Now you're really hydrated. You're peeing 13 times a day. And it's striving you crazy. Okay, let's talk about peeing eight. What is normal? What is normal for going to the normal? Normal is six to eight times a day. And the length of your pee should be more than six seconds. I tend to find, because I treat a lot of patients on the living method actually now. And so because you're so well hydrated, like it doesn't really fit into our norms that we have because most people are walking around dehydrated, right? So if you're on the living method and you're drinking a lot of water,

I tend to say like eight to 10 seconds because it kind of skews up a little bit because you're actually well hydrated, which most people are not. So that when you're counting, when you pee, if you count one one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand, four, one thousand, five, one thousand, six, a thousand, like eight seconds, um, at least. If you're going and it's three seconds, it's a little dribble, you feel like you really have to rush to get there and there's nothing there. That's not your bladder wasn't full. Your body is sending you the signal that you have to pee before you should and we could talk about why that's happening. But yeah, like that shouldn't. So six, eight times a day, once at night is normal. Zero is nice. Once is normal. But no more than that.

Okay. So six to eight times throughout the day and if you're hydrated, your pee stream lasts for about eight seconds. Or more. Like it could be 15, 16. Like all of that's fine. You don't want to be holding your pee. But yeah, like you shouldn't be having to think about where every bathroom. is you shouldn't be, you know, wondering when you're going to be able to pee next. Those are all signs that there could be something going on in your pelvic floor. Six times a day is still a lot. That's like still a lot trying to find a bathroom. So let's normalize that.

Okay, what about night? You said like, because I actually just watched this thing as someone was talking about sleep and how we really shouldn't get up in the middle of the night to sleep. Sometimes if we're a side sleeper, it puts pressure, I guess, on our bladder or whatever. And so if we just kind of roll over, but a lot of us are training ourselves. we're waking up, sometimes through our natural sleep cycle. Some of us through menopause and whatever the fuck that is. But the getting up and going to the bathroom is just adding to it.

So when do we know if we should go to the bathroom, not go to the bathroom? And what's normal at night? So the first time you wake up, if you feel like, oh, I really have to pee, go. That's okay. If you count and you're like, oh, that was, it tends to be longer at night as well because it's been whatever, five hours since you've peed, right? Yeah. So typically it feels like, oh, I really have to go. or I'll have people say, no, I really have to wake up four times a night because there's really urine there.

And there could be urine there, but you should be able to hold it quite a lot longer at night. So go ahead. So sorry, you mean, so when, if I'm getting up four times a night, but I'm only peeing for like two to three seconds, I probably don't really have to go. Is that what you're saying? No, if you're waking up more than once at night, you shouldn't have to go. So the first time, go pee. The first time, get up, unless you're on, like, there's certain situations, right?

if you're on a diuretic or you know you have heart condition something like that you might actually need to get up more than that but if you're not none of those things apply to you then yeah you wake up the first time go pee go back to bed the second time you wake up go like roll over try and go back to sleep if you're laying there for more than five minutes like it's not all in your head there you might have real pelvic floor tension that could be causing this signal to be sent to your body your central nervous system can kind of get overhyped and trying to protect you so that you're not having leakage and sending you this signal sooner than it should. So, you know, if you're laying there, don't stay up all night trying to hold your pee. Like, just go until you figure the rest of it out.

But it's a good sign to see a pelvic physiotherapist because it's a fixable thing. Often it's tension related. And part of it is, so part of it is retraining your bladder. So roll over and go back to sleep, you'll be shocked. Some people are like, oh yeah, I just, once I didn't just listen to that and get up, then I wasn't going all the time. And like you said, sometimes it's a habit. Like you wake up, because your shoulder hurts and you're like, well, I might as well pee. Like, sleep is very important to us. So you think if I just pee now, I'm not going to wake up again later. But really, you're retraining your bladder to think, oh, I need to pee four times in the night.

Okay, love that. There's a couple of comments here I want to get to. I just want to get this first one out of the way. I think we need to start talking about what's healthy versus what's normal. Normal is not always what we should strive for. I do got to preface that, though, that we are having this conversation inside this program, where people are eating good nutrient-rich foods, they're being aware to their body's cues. they're working on stress.

They're trying to get better sleep. They're moving their body. I think it's like I think you have to have context on where we're having this conversation. This isn't just a flimped Instagram post. We are assuming you are already doing all the things that you can do to be as healthy as possible. But what is the line there between like a healthy bladder? I got to drink my water.

A healthy bladder or like normal. Is it the same? Because people talk about normal, but normal is like the bare fucking minimum. Right. Right? Yeah. So we're talking like optimal, right? So we're saying normal.

We're not taking into consideration because there's some people who are peeing 16 times a day, you know, 20 times a day. And there's people who are peeing, you know, once a day, right? Also not good. So we're not just taking the average of those. We're saying this would be ideal. So it doesn't mean you need to be perfect. It doesn't mean that if you go like nine times, oh, that's bad.

Like more is okay. There's a bit of a spectrum. But if you're really noticing a difference, if this is affecting your life, if you were like annoyed by the fact that you have to pee all the time, then it's often a sign that like there is something wrong. Talk to your doctor. You should always, always bring it up to your doctor.

I understand it's like a sensitive topic. People don't want to talk to their family physician about it. But you want to make sure there's nothing else going on too, right? It's not always your pelvic floor, but it really could be some things that seem really like a really big problem in your life thinking how could this just be tension or weakness in my pelvic floor, when really it could be. Like it's, we see some pretty incredible transformations.

Yeah, well, I want to get into what we can do about this to just like, you know, a general upkeep and actually address issues, but we don't want to be walking around wearing diapers. And that whole industry is just growing. Like the diaper aisles are multiplying. And we want to, I don't know about you, but I want to avoid that. There's a couple of questions. I'm going to read them both at the same time. And then we can attack one at the other.

So my bladder has been overactive since I had a hysterect me. Can that happen? Or is it just coincidence? I did see a physiotherapist and she taught me how to retrain my brain. And then Christina asked, what about urgency? I have to stop, cross legs and wait for it to pass. Then I scoot to the bathroom. What is that?

Too tight or too loose pelvic floor? Okay. Great questions. Both related. Both sound like too much tension, which is honestly the most of the time is the case. As women and men, like we hold a lot of stress in our pelvic floor. It's been through a lot, whether you've had kids, surgeries, so the hysterectomy, that would have increased tension in your pelvic floor in the same way

that if you had surgery on your shoulder, like the muscles around it would be tight. So same thing. Those muscles are tight. But I have my pelvis, actually, I'll show you. So this is your pelvis, pubic bone at the front. Your bladder is right behind that. So if we take that out, okay, you have for women, your vagina, your uterus. So your bladder is kind of sitting right here. Okay. And then your rectum as a little bit of. the back. So if we take that out, this is your pelvic floor. So it's a group of muscles that go from your pubic bone to your tailbone. They help to hold up those organs. They help stop with urine and bowel function, like the help urine and bowel continents, and to pump fluid out

of your pelvis. So when you have a surgery, these muscles get tight because they attach from bones that can't move. Like we can't stretch them out. Like we would stretch out other muscles in our body. So that's why it's more likely for tension to build up over time. So painful periods. You hurt your hip. You had a surgery. You had kids. All these things.

That's why it seems like urinary issues become worse as you get older. It's not that you're getting old. It's that these problems have been there for a longer period of time and I've often gotten worse, right? Like the tension has gotten worse over time. So with a hysterectomy and with urgency, it's often that these muscles are so tight that they can't function the way that they need to. So seeing a public physiotherapist, releasing some tension on your own by doing some stretches some deep breathing can be really helpful. But oftentimes it's not a weakness problem.

Some people think urgency is, oh, my pelvic floor is really weak and I need to do more kegles. Really, oftentimes those muscles have been through the wringer and they need to be relaxed. Yeah, we might as well go there with that vest. And I know we got more to talk about that that's what we just been told. You have a weak bladder. You got a weak whatever. You got to do those kegles. I mean, listen, I had a prolapse uterus after my last child, my vagina.

My vagina was literally what felt like hanging out. And I just kegled my fucking face off. And like I just kind of built it all up. And that was a good way to go. But it's not the norm. And we're just taught like sit there. Everyone's teaching kegles. We think that's it.

That actually could add to the problem. Yeah? Yeah. So that's why I know pelvic physiotherapy seems a little bit invasive, right? It's an internal exam, usually a vaginal or rectal exam for men. And most people are like, oh, I don't want to do that. No, of course you know. Yeah, we don't know what's happening with these muscles.

Like you can't see them. Most people have no connection with these muscles. So most people come in thinking, oh, no, I don't have tension. Like no one comes in saying, oh, my pelvic floor is probably really tight. They're like, oh, my pelvic floor is weak. I need exercises. So we do an internal exam to find out what's actually happening. Because they could be weak.

That's possible. More than likely, it's that there's quite a bit of tension there. And there could be weakness on top of that once we release the tension. But you really want to do that piece first. release the tension to the muscles at the normal length so that then you can strengthen it. Sometimes it's a timing issue if you're having leakage with like a cough, sneeze kind of thing. But yeah, that's what's happening there. Well, I'm just thinking if like when my back goes out, right, I'm going to video, I'm going to

Cairo. I'm doing massage. It's no different. You know, anytime there's something structural happening with your body, no one wants fingers up their hoo-ha or the butthole. Like, let's just be honest. No one wants that. But if this is affecting your life where you got to wear.

a diaper, you're afraid to leave the house, you're peeing your pants, and you're waking up in the middle of the night, you're not getting sleep, as uncomfortable as that may be. And I know it from our members who have gone to see you or a physiotherapist after this conversation. And they're like, it's a game changer. Is what is like, is it stress inactivity, sleep? Like you mentioned deep breathing exercises. Is it our lifestyle? Like do people in Europe when they're hanging out gardening and, you know, socializing and just being active. Do they have the same? Is this universal or is just this way we live our lives?

Like, why? It seems like structurally fucked up. Yes. So it's like a multi-pronged problem, right? Like part of it is physical things that have happened to your pelvis, your back, to your hips. It's all connected. Part of it is stress for sure, like a huge part of it.

I see people all the time where, you know, they've just had a death in their family, or they've just had something really stressful happen at work. or they're just constantly stressed, right? Like high strong, go, go, go. You're never taking a second to breathe. Yeah. Europe hasn't figured out for sure, but they also do public physio.

Like, as soon as you have a baby, soon as you have a surgery, you just see a public physiotherapist. You never end up with these people in an old age home who are having leakage because you've dealt with it when it actually happens, right? So, yeah, we're headed in that direction. It just takes a really long time. Like it's a slow, it's slow to change the mindset that is really right now. Like still, it's better, it's better, but it's still keegle, keegle, these are weak, like,

loose muscles. And 95% of the time, that's not the case. Wow. Okay. What can help? You know, we had those, you know, I went somewhere and someone was like, oh, try this thing and you sit on it. It basically gives your, like, a vagina massage.

And it's like, lo, blu-l-l-l-look, is that doing anything? One, and also, they're like, get on it in front of in a public space. And I'm like, then I'm sitting there and everyone's staring at me. And I'm like, okay. No. No. do those work? Someone, someone talked about, there's one that you can get that attaches to your phone or like, what is worth our money? What is not? Should we just go see a physiotherapist first before we sign up for Kegel classes or machines that massage are with JJ? Like, what are we doing?

So, yes, in short, like I really wouldn't do, be even doing Kegles. I wouldn't do the chair situation or like an app on your phone. Those things can be helpful. not like, oh, they're the worst. And obviously I'm biased because this is what I do. But the problem is is that they're not doing an internal exam like we talked about. So sure, I need to take your pants off, but they have no idea what's happening, right? That you could have all of this tension in your pelvic floor. And now they've done 10,000 kegels or whatever in like an hour. I don't even know how long you're there. Actually, my colleague and I are going to go try it next week. So I will report back. because I'm curious if it's actually even contracting your pelvic floor. Like, I don't know.

I can't imagine how it's doing that through your pants. But if it is, it's still too much. Like, even if you had just weakness, which again is more rare, they don't know that. Neither do you. And now you've done all of this. So I do see quite a lot of people who have gone and it wasn't successful. But I've heard of some people where it was successful. And so the biggest issue really is the cost.

Like I think it's a couple thousand dollars when really, if you just, saw a pelvic physiotherapist in your area, like it can range, but like $100 to $200 for an assessment and you can get some things that you can be doing at home is probably so much more effective if you can get past the internal part, which I understand is hard for people, but it's never as bad. Like almost everyone I see, they're like, oh, this wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I don't know what they're expecting, but it's not so bad. Yeah, I someone was just saying, Pat, it was for me worth the embarrassment to get the therapist to do the exam. Someone talked about how they did the chair, but it was under like a supervised therapist.

Someone is asking here in Canada, we have O-HIP. Does O-HIP cover physiotherapy? So no, unfortunately, it doesn't, which is a huge barrier. It really should be, right? Like, they'll pay for you to get a hysterectomy. They'll pay for you to have a bladder sling, but like they will pay for you to have this medication that doesn't work, but they don't pay for pelvic floor physiotherapy. So we're working towards that. We're not there yet for sure. And I understand cost-capism. be a real barrier. But if you consider all the money that you're spending on pads and long term, you know what I mean, like having increased bladder infections, like all of those things. But there's a lot of resources you can get. This podcast's super helpful. If anyone has questions,

they can always reach out and I will answer any of your questions. But yeah, unfortunately, it's not covered. What about your orgasm? Like, if you have private physiotherapy insurance, it's covered under that. Okay, great. What about orgasms? Does that help? Should we all get vibrators? like even if we don't have a partner like I would imagine that has something to do with releasing tension. I'm not an expert. Yeah. But, you know, that's no matter how you feel about that, it is healthy. There are all sorts of benefits from orgasms.

What about that? For sure. So we see people, like I see people every single day who are having pain with intercourse or just vaginal pain, vaginal dryness, which is more related to menopause. But oftentimes they'll tell you, oh, you just have dryness when really it's pain, right? So if you're having pain with intercourse, like that's not dryness. is not going to help. Like, don't like get that figured out, right? Dryness is dryness. So if it was just dryness, lubrication would help. If you're having any pain with intercourse, number one, don't push through. But yeah, if these muscles are tight, they can't contract the way they need to. So they're contracting during

orgasm. So like if they're already super tight, A, you're probably having pain during intercourse. So then like, good luck on an orgasm with that, right? When you're having that much pain. Yeah. And then your body really is trying to protect you. So anytime you think about, oh, maybe I want to have sex? No, like, don't do it, right? Because last time it was painful. Your body remembers all of these things. And so the two are very, very connected.

So it doesn't mean, you know, just never have sex again. But like, figure it out. You want to figure out. If you're having pain with intercourse, there's something you can do. Oh, okay. So that's a separate thing. I'm talking about vibrators, just like doing it on our own. But okay.

Totally fine. As long as you're not having pain. Yeah. That's a great thing. It's great for your public, like you're bringing more blood flow to the area, right? It's a great thing to be doing. That's totally fine. Yeah. What about, you know, I'm just looking at the time. We talked before you shared like a stretching video, bladder diary. What are some things that we can do to be proactive? Obviously checking in with your own health care providers, seeing a physiotherapist. If you have specific issues, lots of women here talking about prolapse uterus, you know, there's a lot going on there. But what are some things that we can do just in general to maintain good pelvic health and wellness? So bladder diarrhea is a great idea. Most people have no idea how many times they're actually peeing or what's,

it's normal. So if you just take, I think we, we sent one to you at some point so we can probably post that again. You can just print it out, but really you could just write it anywhere. Every, every, like, hour down the side. Every time you pee, count how long it is in seconds, right? Write down how long. And so then you'll see how many times in the day you're peeing, how often you can write down what you're drinking. That's super helpful. There's things that are irritating to our bladder lining. So carbonated beverages, coffee, alcohol, all these things. So if you're noticing, oh, yeah, I pee like three times after I have a coffee. It doesn't mean necessarily to give up your coffee.

That's sad. But, you know, you might want to just be aware of like not having three coffees in the day or, you know, limiting certain things while you're figuring it out so that it's not so unmanageable. Yeah, like people think it's drinking more water. Meanwhile, they're having 10 coffees a day. And really your butter's like, bitch, come on. Like it's not the water.

No, maybe like lay off the caffeine. Okay, yeah. Honestly, it's the opposite. Like, if you're not drinking enough. off water, that is what's going to signal to your bladder that like, oh, we need to get rid of this urine. It's really concentrated. That's irritating to your bladder lining as well. Drop that mic. Okay. Great. Great. Right the water. And then, so yeah, a bladder diary. If you fill that out, it just gives you an idea. It's like when we're filling out our food diarrhea on the app, right?

It really helps you become aware of like how much you're peeing and do I really have to go. You want to question it a little bit. So that's where we get into urge delay. So if you are having urgency, you really want to try and get that under control. So what's happening in your bladder is, so normally it would fill up to like 75% full. That would send a message to your brain that says you have to pee. You look around. You're out somewhere. You don't want to pee. Right. Then your pelvic floor muscles would contract. That sends a signal back to your bladder, not right now. And you just pee later. But if your pelvic floor is really tight, it can't send that signal, right? And so that's when all of a sudden your bladder thinks, oh, she's on the toilet. So it starts to contract. That's when you're like

panicking. Oh my gosh, I'm going to pee my pants. You rush to get to the bathroom. Maybe you make it. Maybe you have leakage on the way. Either way, that's really stressful for your body. So it's trying to protect you. So it lowers this line. Now you're getting a signal that you have to pee when your bladder is like half full. It feels real. It feels like it's full. It feels like it's about to explode, but it's not. So the goal of bladder retraining is to bring that line back up. So it's only giving you a signal that you have to pee when like you're pretty close to fall. It's not like you're about to explode, but hey, maybe it's time to go pee now. So. So there's often triggers with urgency.

So it happens more at home because your brain knows there's a bathroom here. If I pee my pants at my house, like, you know, I can change. So if you, let's say you pull up to your driveway, this is a really common one. You pull into your driveway, all of a sudden, boom, like all your bladder's about to explode. You're going to pee your pants. You have to run to your house. You're getting your keys out, like all those things. So stop before you get out of your car.

Do a pelvic floor contraction, right? So think about a ping pong ball at your vaguely. opening or a marble at your rectal opening if you're a man and you want to think about pulling that up inside yourself no one should be able to see you this is a kegel okay pull that up inside of yourself and then you're going to relax those muscles because they can't do anything from here they need to be nice and relaxed then you want to distract your mind our mind is super powerful so if you're thinking like i'm not going to make it i got to get my keys what if i can't get my pants down in time all of that is like ramping up your nervous system yeah your muscles are already tight now they're squeezing as hard

as they can, so they're going to fail more quickly, right, in that situation. So distract yourself. Oh, what am I going to make for lunch? Like, it seems like you're tricking yourself. You are. That's okay. So you want to just think about, like, you can do math, count back or turn 100 by twos. You can do cap phrases in your driveway, like whatever you have to do to distract yourself to get that urge to calm down. It doesn't mean hold your pee. If you peat at Walmart before you left and now you have to go again, get the urge to calm down, don't go. But if you're thinking, reasonable amount of time, that's fine. Slowly walk to the bathroom and pee.

It's not even really the peeing all the time. That's the problem. It's the rushing there that really signals to your body that this is a problem and it comes like this perpetually worse issue. You're kind of training it, that urgency, that stress because you know, you're in the car and you can't stop because you're on the highway. You're going to pee your pants. And then all of a sudden you just, you're like, it passes and you're like, oh my God,

how did I go from like having to pull over to I'm fine? This happens every time I visit my mom. It's like a trigger. I could have gone the back. bathroom half hour before. I pull up in my mom's driveway and I have got a piece so bad I can't even say hello to her. I'm just like, I'm like, what is it about my mom's house? And I probably created that sense of urgency or that trigger point. Okay. So we have a lot of, we do have a lot of control. There are obviously people who really don't have control over this, but your brain plays a big part

in that. And that's what I'm hearing from you. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of it. Part of it's probably tension or there could be weakness and then the other part is yeah your your bladder retraining part what's what's the difference between like holding it don't hold your pee and hold your pee so don't hold your pee if you like if you're in a situation where you have to you're like irreparable damage but no don't hold it if you like you'd be better off just getting the urge to come down and still peeing 12 times a day you have to calm the urge down first Yeah. And then it will become easier. And as you release tension either with like I was talking about, if you can do some deep diaphragmatic breathing, that really does force your pelvic floor down to relax. Stretching, getting stress out of your life, meditation, a breathwork video. Like all of these things can really help to deregulate our like calm down our central nervous system. That's like me like up here all the time. And then you can work on lengthening that time period between. But really, if you can do one thing, it's try to really stop.

the rushing because that is making the problem worse for sure. Okay. What about physical things? Like is there stretches, things like squats? Like is there something we can add into our movement routine on the daily that can help us? Yeah. So any stretches for your hips?

So they're very connected. So there's a muscle that attaches into your pelvic floor that is stretched in that like a figure four stretch. So either in sitting where you put one foot on the opposite knee and stretch or you're laying down and doing the same stretch. Yeah. Gina's got it. Yes.

Perfect. Yeah. So that will stretch one of your pelvic floor muscles that's stretching other muscles in your hip as well. But even if you throw on like a 10 minute hip stretching video. Yeah. Oh, hip stretching video. Okay. Something like that would be great. Yeah. Legs up the wall is a really good one, especially before bed. So lay right close to the wall, legs up. That allows your body to process all the fluid that's in your legs from the day, just gravity. So that then it's not doing that when you lay down so that you're not up peeing as much, especially if you're peeing a lot at night. That would be a good one to do. And then. And then, then yeah, like breath work is key. Like it really is connected to your pelvic floor. Okay. Amazing. Aaron Degongay, thank you so much. Always, every time I have this conversation, I learn something from you.

You can go and follow Aaron and her great tips. She's a whiz in the kitchen. She's also like a pro-nitter. She's got like, she's so cool. Squads and coffee. Squads dot and coffee is her Instagram handle. She also works at lake country physio.com. It's an Aurelia, right?

memory serves. Yes, you don't need to come and see me, but if you live in the area, great. Otherwise, there's a website that you can go to. Yeah, there it is, to find someone in your area who's, you know, well trained. And if you're not watching and you're listening, that is pelvichealthsolutions.com. Thanks, everyone, for joining us live, right? Who knew? This is a conversation you didn't know you needed to have Aaron de Gagne. Always so great. Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone.