Pelvic Floor: What It Is, Where It Is, And Why Too Tight Matters As Much As Too Weak

Pelvic floor: the short answer

The pelvic floor is a hammock of muscles at the base of your pelvis. It holds up your bladder, womb and bowel, and it helps you choose when to go to the toilet. Where is the pelvic floor? It stretches from your pubic bone at the front to your tailbone at the back, between your two sitting bones.

A tight pelvic floor is not a strong one. It needs to let go as well as lift. Chris Lalor, Flametree’s Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher, teaches it in two short rules: spread, don’t tuck; tone, don’t flop. Both men and women have a pelvic floor.

Here is the article in short form:

• What it is: a dome of muscle that holds up the bladder, womb and bowel.
• Where it is: between the pubic bone, the tailbone and the sitting bones.
• Too tight or too weak: many women are tight, loose or a mix of both.
• Squeezing alone: a tight pelvic floor does not need more squeezing.
• Spread, don’t tuck: raise your props until the buttocks can spread.
• Tone, don’t flop: open and lift at the same time.
• Breath: the pelvic floor moves with the diaphragm.
• New students: 12 classes for $59.50, in Darwin or LIVE online.

Last updated: 25 October 2026

What is the pelvic floor?

The pelvic floor is a sling of muscles that closes the bottom of your pelvis, like the floor of a bowl. It holds up the bladder, the womb (in women) and the bowel. It keeps the bladder and bowel closed until you choose to go, and it lets go when you do.

Old drawings showed a sagging basin. An MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) study of healthy women in 1997 found a dome at rest instead. The study’s title says it well: a dome, not a basin. A dome is springy. It can lift and it can soften, and a good pelvic floor does both.

Where is the pelvic floor?

It sits at the very bottom of your trunk, inside the bowl of the pelvis. Three bony points frame it: the pubic bone at the front, the tailbone at the back, and one sitting bone on each side.

Above it sits another dome: the diaphragm (the big breathing muscle under the lungs). Keep that second dome in mind.

What does the pelvic floor do?

It has four jobs:

• It holds things up. The bladder, womb and bowel rest on it.
• It keeps things closed. It helps the bladder and bowel stay shut until you choose to go.
• It lets go. To empty the bladder or bowel, the muscles must relax fully.
• It moves with your breath. It rises and falls with the diaphragm.

The third job gets forgotten, and that is where “too tight” comes in.

Why is a tight pelvic floor as much a problem as a weak one?

Because a muscle can be too tight, too loose, or a mix of both, and a tight muscle is not a strong muscle. Many women are told only to squeeze. That is half the story.

Leslie Howard is an American yoga teacher who trained for many years with senior teachers in the Iyengar tradition, and now works only on pelvic health. In her 2017 book Pelvic Liberation, she tells what happened to her in her 40s. After a year of daily pelvic floor strengthening, sex began to hurt, and long drives brought a burning feeling between her sitting bones. When she was examined, she was told the opposite of what she expected: her muscles were too tight.

“I didn’t even know a woman could be too tight,” she writes. She had believed every woman’s pelvic floor sags with age, and she had been squeezing hard every day. Her lesson is that a pelvic floor can be “too tight, too loose, and often a combination of both.”

What about Kegel exercises?

Kegel exercises (squeezing the muscles you would use to stop the flow of urine) help many women with stress leaks (leaks when you cough, laugh or lift). Leslie Howard and Judith Hanson Lasater, an American yoga teacher since 1971, both point out that for a tight pelvic floor, more squeezing can make things worse.

What does the research say about a tight pelvic floor?

Less than you might hope. A 2024 review by Kari Bo looked for trials of relaxation training for the pelvic floor in women with bladder-emptying problems. It found only three randomised trials, and called for better ones. That a pelvic floor can be too tight is known from long practice. Research has only begun to test it.

What does “spread, don’t tuck” mean?

It means that in sitting and lying poses you spread the buttocks to the sides and keep the tailbone neutral, instead of tucking it under. Chris Lalor says it is the action she comes back to more than any other.

“It’s absolutely not a poking of the pubis up. It’s a spreading,” she told her women’s class in 2021. She told that class the tucking habit “has huge ramifications” beyond a sore lower back, for pelvic health and for the bowel.

The answer in the poses is height, not force. As Chris tells her students: “Better to have the blocks higher and the buttocks spread than to tuck your tailbone under.” Raise the props until the pose is comfortable, and the habit starts to let go. When it does, she says, something comes back: “the freedom to finally have a body, instead of it tucked under.”

What does “tone, don’t flop” mean?

It means that opening the pelvis is only half the job. The pelvic floor also needs life and lift.

Chris was surprised to learn this herself. “This took me ages to comprehend,” she told a class in 2021. “I’d always had the belief that the more flexible I was, the better.” Then she saw that her legs were simply dropping open, doing nothing. “It’s just a floppy action. So you don’t want that.”

In Bound Angle Pose (Baddha Konasana), a block goes behind the sacrum (the flat triangle of bone at the back of the pelvis) and a belt goes around the feet. The shins lift while the thighs open. “If your shins drop down, it’s really not going to tone this area at all. So the shins lift… it’s two actions.”

That is the shape of a good class: standing poses for tone and life, supported lying poses and a long out-breath for softening.

How does your breath move the pelvic floor?

Every time you breathe in, your pelvic floor moves. On the in-breath the diaphragm flattens and moves down. The belly and sides widen, and the pelvic floor softens and moves down too. On the out-breath the deep belly muscle firms like a corset, and both domes lift.

A 2023 review of the anatomy of deep belly breathing describes the diaphragm, the pelvic floor and the belly muscles as one working team. Howard sees many women pull the belly in on the in-breath, which she calls reverse breathing. That stops both domes moving.

A soft belly on the in-breath lets the whole system move again. This is taught from practice. It is not claimed as a treatment for leaks.

What does the research say about yoga and the pelvic floor?

Yoga is a reasonable way to work the pelvic floor, and in trials it has done about as well as standard pelvic floor muscle training. Most of the research looks at women with bladder leaks.

• 2024, 240 women aged 45 to 90 with daily leaks: 12 weeks of pelvic yoga cut leaks by an average of 2.3 a day. A general stretching and strengthening programme cut them by 1.9. Both helped, and the gap between them was small.
• 2025, 14 trials, 797 women with stress leaks: yoga, Pilates, breathing and core exercise worked about as well as pelvic floor muscle training, and much better than usual care. No adverse events were reported.
• 2026, 20 trials, 2,002 women aged 60 and over: pelvic floor muscle training was similarly effective to yoga and Pilates.

For the full story on leaks, read our posts on light bladder leakage and pelvic floor exercises. For more on research and poses, see yoga for pelvic floor, and for the years around menopause, yoga for perimenopause.

Where can I learn this in Darwin or online?

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga in Darwin and LIVE online. In regular classes, a teacher can see whether you are tucking or flopping, and set your props just right.

Chris Lalor’s free ebook, Cool, Calm And Strong, has a full chapter on the pelvic floor and bladder. It explains yoga. It does not teach it, because classes do that.

New to Flametree, or away for three months or more? The beginner deal gives you 12 classes for $59.50 (10 at half price plus 2 free), in Darwin or LIVE online. Studio classes are for permanent NT residents, and online is open from anywhere. See the times on the beginner timetable.

Pelvic floor questions

What is the pelvic floor?

The pelvic floor is a hammock of muscles at the base of your pelvis. It holds up the bladder, the womb (in women) and the bowel, and it helps you control when you go to the toilet. Both men and women have one.

Where is the pelvic floor?

It stretches from your pubic bone at the front to your tailbone at the back, and it sits between your two sitting bones. It is the bottom of the bowl of your pelvis, below the bladder and bowel.

Can a pelvic floor be too tight?

Yes. A pelvic floor can be too tight, too loose, or a mix of both. The yoga teacher Leslie Howard writes that a tight muscle is not a strong muscle, and that sometimes the job is to learn to let go.

Do more Kegel exercises make a pelvic floor stronger?

Not always. Kegel exercises (squeezing the muscles you would use to stop the flow of urine) help many women with stress leaks. For a tight pelvic floor, Leslie Howard and Judith Hanson Lasater both say that more squeezing can make things worse.

What does spread, don’t tuck mean?

It is Chris Lalor’s rule for sitting and lying poses. Take hold of the flesh of the buttocks and spread it to the sides, and keep the tailbone neutral instead of tucking it under. Raise your props until you can do it without force.

What does tone, don’t flop mean?

Opening the pelvis is only half the job. The pelvic floor also needs life and lift. In Bound Angle Pose, for example, the shins lift while the thighs open, so two things happen at once.

Is yoga good for the pelvic floor?

A 2024 trial of 240 women with daily leaks found that 12 weeks of pelvic yoga cut leaks by an average of 2.3 a day, while general stretching and strengthening cut them by 1.9. Two reviews of exercise trials found yoga as effective as standard pelvic floor muscle training.

Sources

• Hjartardottir S, Nilsson J, Petersen C, Lingman G. The female pelvic floor: a dome, not a basin. Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand 1997. PubMed, DOI
• Bo K. Is there evidence for pelvic floor muscle relaxation training in nonneurogenic female bladder outlet obstruction? A narrative review. Neurourol Urodyn 2024. PubMed, DOI
• Liu H, Wiedman CM, Lovelace-Chandler V, Gong S, Salem Y. Deep diaphragmatic breathing: anatomical and biomechanical consideration. J Holist Nurs 2023. PubMed, DOI
• Huang AJ, et al. Efficacy of a therapeutic pelvic yoga program versus a physical conditioning program on urinary incontinence in women: a randomized trial. Ann Intern Med 2024. PubMed, DOI
• Hao J, et al. Alternative exercise regimens for stress urinary incontinence in women: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int Urogynecol J 2025. PubMed, DOI
• Hao J, et al. Physical therapy for urinary incontinence in older women: a systematic review. Arch Gerontol Geriatr 2026. PubMed, DOI
• Howard L. Pelvic Liberation (2017), with a foreword by Judith Hanson Lasater.
• Chris Lalor, Women Only classes, 2020 and 2021, and the Flametree ebook Cool, Calm And Strong, section 2.5.5.

This post is general information about yoga. Flametree Yoga Studio, Darwin, Northern Territory.