Restorative Exercise — Katy Bowman/David McCoid

[jcacciat]

Thought the forum might be interested in this podcast. The Katy Bowman stuff has helped me and McCoid says that her Restorative Exercise program cured him of pelvic pain. There are links that are also helpful.

http://alignforhealth.podbean.com/mf/we ... dcast1.mp3

[webslave]

Yet another testimony to the uselessness of pudendal nerve entrapment surgery! (He had 3 such operations without success)

He says that "going for regular walks with a completely new gait pattern was critical to my recovery".

I also walked daily, which is good for the psyche as well as the body. However, I doubt mere walking will be curative for many men.

Yes you do need to do a tremendous amount of stretching and strengthening exercises with Restorative Exercise. You are also learning new motor skills with many of the exercises. I was balancing on Bosu balls, squatting and eventually hanging from monkey bars. It is a huge commitment. I was doing between 2 to 3 hours a day of the exercises. However the exercises that you are given to do are not what gets you better, the exercises allow you to move in a way that gets you better. That is why I do not believe that on its own a stretching and strengthening programme would work for pelvic pain. If you just stretched and never changed the way you move you would be stretching forever. It would just become incredibly frustrating. The reason your muscles are tight are because of the way you are using your body. With Restorative Exercise I had to think about how I was using my body all of the time... Going for regular walks with a completely new gait pattern was critical to my recovery.

Interesting, but several hours of exercise daily is a huge commitment.

No doubt that level of exercising would be immensely useful to de-stress an anxious person. That may be the key to this approach.

Exercise is well known to be useful in stress, anxiety and depression. Source Source Source Source (and many more). When you are doing it for 3 hours a day, and concentrating during the exercise on the muscle movements, it becomes a powerful psychological intervention akin to taking a megadose of tranquillizers. It's actually a form of meditation, or self-hypnosis.

I disagree with his claim that "it's not so much about getting the pelvic floor to relax as about getting the muscles to work properly". I think he found a useful way to get his pelvic muscles to relax by mentally relaxing himself and his pelvic floor through what I'll call "concentrated walking" or "concentrated exercising" for hours every day.

Men who have been unsuccessful with the Wise-Anderson approach may find this technique useful.

BTW, here is his inspiration, Katy Bowman, talking on the subject:
http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/7 ... _27_59.mp3
(lots of quackery aired, unfortunately)

[johnnyblotter]

I'm very interested in this approach. I also have been reading Katy Bowman's site and working with some interesting new exercises. As a former pretty decent athlete I'm much more drawn to this type of approach. I've actually found a bit of relief recently doing some different types of movements. I'm going to look more into this.

[johnnyblotter]

Wow. I just heard something absolutely fascinating that McCoid said..that he was instructed to walk around on DIFFERENT TERRAIN.

I myself have also persistently had feelings about this and thought, just like McCoid said, it seemed a bit "alternative". On a recent visit to my folks we went on a sort of hike/walk by a river which required climbing around on rocks, walking in a river on stones with bare feet, etc. I'd noticed that for about a day I had significant relief after that hike. It stuck with me enough that I was almost tempted to go back and visit my parents for a week just so I could go back to that river and climb around on the rocks.

After that event I found myself feeling like light jogging up hills was beneficial, but really the second experience I had with some relief happened when I went up to Van Cortland park in the Bronx. I specifically made a 1.5 hour trip there because it's one of the few hilly and woodsy places to walk/hike in NYC. During the walk I climbed up any little rocky areas which required me to bend down, be aware of my feet and do some sort of climbing type of movement.

Now I've realized that that hike was a lot better than the hill running has been, as (theoretically) it engaged my feet and different muscles in my legs/glutes etc.

So, this thing McCoid said about different terrain was pretty crazy to hear. I'm (cautiously) enthused right now.

One additional thing, and I know this is a bit unrelated...I've also found something referred to as "male deer exercise". I just saw this video on youtube and have been employing some parts of it and achieving some real relief. Specifically, I've found that sucking in the bottom of the abdomen and then gently releasing it creates a "wave" type of motion in the perineum that, without a doubt, causes the perineum to gently drop and also to soften a bit. There's also a part of the male deer exercise that involves pulling UP the perineum which I'm skipping for now. I'm not sure if there's a use for that part of it for me.

So out of all of the things I've now spent significant time and expense on, I am finding that BY FAR what has given me definite relief has been 1) certain types of climbing movements, 2)this male deer breathing thing and 3) a modified Sarno type of approach I got from Ezer.

I got more out two days of the deer breathing than I got from 10 internal trigger point sessions. I got more from using Ezer's ideas than I did from working with the paradoxical relaxation audio. By far.

I know I'm going on a bit here, and I know I'm also prone to discover certain activities that create some relief and then get too excited about them, but after a year of dealing with this I'm just of the belief that one has to experiment with different approaches, especially with a problem this complex. My current personal thinking is that 1) There is something to the Sarno stuff as it relates to lack of oxygen in the muscles. I used these techniques and got 50% better. 2) The oxygen idea is being supported by this deer exercise stuff as doing the exercise basically just sends a lot of oxygen and blood into the area and I get unquestionable relief from it and 3) Oxygen and blood are able to circulate through your abdomen / perineum in a much more unrestricted and efficient way when you are aligned properly.

As far as the effect of the just the alignment aspect of Restorative Exercise and how it affects the pelvic muscles (as opposed to the oxygen/blood idea) I guess I can't say yet although I've been (sort of unknowingly) already doing the restorative exercise for probably 1-2 hours daily over the last month. I got some recommendations from someone who I can now see got them from Restorative exercise, and have invested in flatter running shoes, a lot of time doing squats, hip lifts, step ups, and some core work.

But suprisingly I feel like the big, noticeable improvements have come with the Sarno stuff and the male deer stuff. The hiking on the rocks thing comes in very close in third place. I don't know what the connection is there, but where I'm at is that there is some type of connection between getting oxygen and blood into your perineum and your alignment. I told my physical therapist (who'd been doing the internal stuff) about this and she basically indicated that the oxygen/blood flow idea with the deer exercise wasn't at all crazy. And she also suggested that the back surgery and hernia surgery could be preventing that area from circulating properly to begin with.

I really wish I didn't have this stupid hernia patch thing otherwise I'd be doing this deer exercise all damned day, but I have to be careful and monitor things because I'm a little worried about irritating the area or weakening the fix. So I'll be monitoring that as I continue to do it.

All in all I've really been about 75-85% better for maybe the last month, with a real boost from the deer breathing thing.

(edit) I just wrote to David McCoid and am really interested to hear what he thinks. I really like this approach.