What I Wish More People Understood About the Pelvic Floor
Beyond strengthening and lengthening
I often think about how Ari entered this world fully free. No one telling her what or who to be. No one asking her to make herself smaller or quieter or more acceptable. And maybe most importantly, the voice inside her head is still telling her to go full send with everything. Because the girl will go full send with her joy, with her excitement, and with her need for snacks lol.
I stare at her for longer than I care to admit and pray that if I do anything for her, I hope it's that she becomes so secure in her body that she knows it holds the answers.
Learning to Trust My Own Body
I didn't grow up being a friend to my body. I didn't grow up being taught how to talk to my body, or listen to it, or trust it. I thought iceberg lettuce salads were nutrient packed. But I also grew up knowing how good it felt to be powerful in my body.
I felt the most free when I was running as fast as I could or making some kind of "soup" in the backyard. My body was a place of possibility. A place I could go and do and be without thinking too much about what it looked like or whether I was doing it right.
And it wasn't until I was in my early thirties that I began to understand that this freedom was an elegant dance between the feminine and masculine parts of me. Both equally powerful. Both equally important. Both equally present.
The Pelvic Bowl as a Place of Connection
And it wasn't until then that I began to understand the role my pelvic bowl played in that sense of connection. Not just a group of muscles to strengthen or relax. Not just as something to assess when there's pain, leaking, prolapse, or difficulty with sex. But as a place of grounding. Of support. Of connection to myself.
I've spent the last 14+ years helping people understand their bodies. I've spent countless hours talking about the pelvic floor: how to use it, how to lengthen it, how to strengthen it, how to coordinate it, how to heal pelvic floor dysfunction in a myriad of ways.
If I Could Only Teach One Thing
And I believe deeply in all of those things. But if you made me throw every single physical exercise out the window and teach you only one thing, I would teach you how to be present with your own wisdom.
How to listen. How to notice. How to trust what your body is communicating before immediately trying to fix it.
And it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to realize how much power you hold within yourself. It requires you to make space for rage, wonder, joy, grief, pleasure, sadness, all of it, while simultaneously learning how to show your true self to a world that is often unkind to people who do exactly that.
But there is something powerful about returning to yourself anyway.
Returning to Belong to Yourself
The wisdom within us, the force I think of as being held within our pelvic bowl, is not there to make us perfect. It's there to remind us that we belong to ourselves.
It will challenge us. It will ask us to be relentlessly committed to ourselves, our hearts, our boundaries, our desires, and our worthiness.
Your Body Holds Wisdom
And maybe this is what I wish more people understood about the pelvic floor:
It isn't just a muscle. It isn't just something to strengthen. It isn't just something to fix when something goes wrong. Your body is not a problem waiting to be solved. There is a whole world of wisdom waiting for you inside of it.
And if you can get quiet enough to listen, I think you might discover that your body has been trying to bring you home to yourself all along.
Ashley Zimmerman, PT, DPT is a pelvic health specialist, sexuality counselor, and full-spectrum doula who has spent 14+ years helping people come home to their bodies. Her work blends clinical expertise with a deeply human approach — education, movement, nervous system support, and honest conversations about intimacy, pleasure, and trust. When she's not working, you'll find her walking among the trees in Atlanta, chasing down good snacks, and soaking up time with her daughter, Ari.
