A couple of girls who are friends of friends come up and say hello. We compare notes.
‘What’s everyone going to next?’ T browses the various speakers.
‘I like the sound of this talk,’ says a woman in bright red shoes with heels that must be about 12 inches high. It’s a spectator sport just seeing her walking in them but she’s certainly getting attention. ‘There is a lady called Nic Ramsey who runs the She Said Erotic Boutique giving a talk called “The Ultimate Sex Secret Every Woman Should Know”.’
‘I’d like to know it,’ says her friend. ‘I haven’t had sex in a year – I want to know all the secrets I can.’
We agree on this.
‘But let’s try and guess,’ I suggest. ‘What do you each think the secret will be? If you were giving a talk with that name what would you talk about?’
‘I’d talk about how every woman is different,’ says one woman.
‘And so?’ I ask.
‘So, it’s important for men to take things slowly and find out what works for her. I would talk about women with vaginismus23 and how empowering it can be to discover sex from a female perspective rather than a male one.’
‘My talk would be called “Make Love not Porn”.’ says a smiling face called Erin.
‘Mine would be called “No Fear – Embrace What You Both Like”,’ says a face called Lizzie.
‘But what do you think “The Ultimate Sex Secret” is?’ I ask.
‘That it’s good to be a little selfish,’ suggests a third face called Pamela.
Then a man speaks: ‘Learn to be in touch with your own body before you can expect a man to do the same.’ We look around.
‘What about you, Isabel? What do you think’s the ultimate sexual secret that every woman should know?’
‘I really have no idea. If it’s a secret, I probably don’t know it.’
We finish our drinks and go off to the tantra tent for the talk. I’d guess that Nic’s in her mid-40s – a sassy petite blonde. After she has us all settled comfortably she introduces herself briefly.
‘People always ask how I ended up running a sex shop. And they’re always surprised with my reply. After moving to Brighton in 2000, my then fiancé broke my heart, calling off our wedding four weeks before the big day, saying that I was “frigid”. And the truth was, he was right. After years of gynaecological problems resulting in a bad body image and just not enjoying sex, I decided I had to face my demons and learn about sex. So I opened a sex shop. As you do. One aimed at women.’
We applauded. She bowed and continued,
‘Fifteen years on, I can safely say that my heartbreak turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. There isn’t a single day when I don’t make a change in at least one person’s life by sharing my knowledge and helping women to feel better about themselves, their bodies and their sexuality.’
I can’t imagine running a sex shop. Her days must be infinitely varied.
‘The title of this talk is designed to draw you in, and I see that it has done so very successfully. And of course there is not one secret – there are many. But I’m going to talk to you today about a secret that few women understand fully – the influence on our health and our sex lives of … drum roll … pelvic floor muscles.’
No one had predicted that, but Nic knows her subject, so women – listen up.
I’d be willing to bet that you’ve all underestimated the importance of having healthy and strong pelvic floor muscles. You don’t need toys to exercise them but Nic’s erotica boutique, as well as selling ‘all kinds of fun things’,24 takes these muscle toys seriously. She has ‘Luna beads’, which may not be jade eggs but they are a damn sight better than the dog-toy-style appliance that Jovanna had mocked me for purchasing. There are even pressure pumps on her site that measure the strength of the pelvic floor and a metal weight, a sample of which she passes round.
‘There are women who can lift something this heavy?’ someone asks.
Yes, apparently there are.
‘One good exercise is to imagine that you have a marker pen in your vagina and are trying to write your name with it. This will get you to contract your muscles in all kinds of new ways.’
‘Have you tried it?’ asked a voice from the back.
‘Not yet. But maybe I will. First of all, the muscles have to be strong enough to hold the pen in place.’ I look forward to receiving your pictures.
As I’ve been reading extensively this year I understand, but I notice with interest how little the other women know. Nic tells one story that is shocking – it may not be true but I wouldn’t be surprised. Apparently one of the bestselling products in our high street chemists is incontinence pads for adult women. The story Nic reports is that one of the betterknown chains started to sell pelvic floor muscle exercisers – but someone noticed that the more of these they sold the fewer incontinence pads were bought in that town. Bearing in mind that the pads of all kinds are such a bestselling product, what did they do? Advertise the exercisers to benefit more women? No, you’ve guessed, haven’t you? They stopped selling the pelvic exercisers to keep profit in pads high. I don’t make these stories up and I haven’t verified this but it seems possible. Having asked a few quick questions of women on my Facebook pages, so many admit ‘avoiding trampolines and coughing’. I’m really surprised that these exercises are not more widely talked about. And do they really improve our sex lives? Surely if this claim is also true then let’s do our bit to put the makers of incontinence pads out of business. Or at any rate, let’s ensure that neither you nor any of the women you know are contributing to those profits.
The Love, Sex and Intimacy Fair was drawing to a close. T and I decide to skip the last workshop to take the train from Hove Actually back to London. People leaving are sporting leather trousers, whips and fetish paraphernalia. We have massage oil and a book from the British Museum. On the train I’m seized with a moment of doubt.
‘You don’t want to whip me do you, T? You don’t wish I dressed in rubber and want to put a chain around your neck? I’m not the most boring woman in the UK, am I?’
‘No darling, you’re not. And this has not been a dull weekend.’ He produced a box of the amazing orange and cardamom chocolate from the Sexy Raw Chocolate stall. And as we share it and I doze on his shoulder on the way home I know why I’m doing all this. It isn’t all about sex is it?
Your ‘Sex Muscles’ – Kegels and the NHS
So – if strong pelvic floor muscles can really improve our sex lives then I must research this immediately. To do so I must digress to tell you a story. It is a true story and one in which I believe you may have the greatest interest.
There was once a woman who went down in history with the name of Mary Cool. This is not her real name but is the name that her case study was given. She was a US citizen and 42 years old. She had been married for 20 years. She and her husband had sex twice a year.
At the age of 42 Mary started to suffer from a problem which affects more and more women from an increasingly early age – incontinence. Whenever she sneezed, coughed or lifted a weight urine would leak and sometimes drench her. Apparently one out of every two women suffer from this problem at some point in their lives. Mary suffered this embarrassing situation for seven years before going to the doctor who recommended an operation.
Now, as it happens sometimes, Mary had a friend who was into weird alternative stuff. The friend was not afraid to give a little unsolicited advice.
‘Look here,’ she said …
Ha – I’m making this up of course. I have no idea what conversation took place at this point in the story.
‘Mary, you don’t have to have an operation.’
‘But the doctor said …’ blubbed Mary, sobbing, coughing and wetting her pants again.
‘Just listen to me,’ said the well-meaning and interfering friend.
‘I know a different doctor. He’s called Arnold Kegel. And he has a non-surgical method to cure you
.’
‘Oh, sure, and does he believe in fairies too?’ sniffed Mary.
‘It works like this,’ persevered the woo woo friend. ‘You have to work hard but you need to rehabilitate the muscles that have collapsed, which is why you have the problem that you have. It’s the muscles that hold up the whole of your insides. It’s actually a ring of muscles.’
‘But mine are damaged beyond repair,’ she sobbed damply.
‘No. Dr Kegel has this thingamajig that he calls a perineometer. It gets inserted into the vagina and you have to squeeze it.’
‘But I won’t be able to. Nothing in that part of my body works.’
‘Just go and see him, OK? You may avoid the operation.’
So our Mary went along to see the now very famous Dr Kegel. His thingamajig did indeed show that the pelvic floor was totally distended. We could be mean and say atrophied. When she tried to squeeze, the machine measured zero pressure. She was not in a good way. But, keen as we all would be to avoid an operation, Mary went away and practised.
After only six weeks of her daily pelvic floor muscles workout she was able to squeeze and a score of 12mm (whatever that is) showed on the perineometer.
Six months later she was cured and was able to cancel the intended operation. By the time the story ends Mary was squeezing the perineometer and the machine was measuring a score of 22mm. The medical records also inform us that ‘her vaginal muscles became much thicker and stronger’.
But here’s the bit of the story that should really get your attention. About Mary’s sex life. In her bi-annual sexual encounters Mary had reported no sensation and certainly never had a climax of any kind. Now she told Dr Kegel that she wished she had known 20 years ago that it was possible to train these muscles. She was now having sex with her much happier husband several times a week and had experienced her first climax.
She and her friend went out and bought expensive silk lingerie to celebrate.
OK, so I hope it’s clear which bits of this story are me playing and which bits are historically accurate. This case is recorded in 1951 and is one of those that made Dr Kegel famous. In hundreds of further cases he established a link between lack of sexual response and distended Kegel muscles. Also, the other way around. Women who reported being very sexually responsive were shown to have very strong and elastic Kegel muscles. The people in this last group never suffer from incontinence and have few gynaecological problems.
It works like this – the vaginal muscles are sensitive because they are full of nerves. But the mucous membrane of the vagina has very few nerve endings and is almost insensitive. Distension of the muscles therefore renders them less sensitive. And what distends them? Childbirth, being overweight, constipation, lack of exercise, infrequent sex, and general bad health. And after menopause the muscles will thin anyway, but only if they are not used.
But the news is good, girls. Using these muscles regularly restores the functions of the vaginal glands and these are the glands that secrete female hormones as well. Andre Van Lysebeth, from whose book I have taken the retelling of this case history, even goes as far as to say that he believes this practice helps to prevent osteoporosis.
The benefits of strengthening the pelvic floor muscles for men include curing incontinence and improving muscle tone, which can help delay ejaculation. Some sources even say that exercising these muscles can massage and relax the prostate, which may help to prevent prostate cancer. Apparently six months’ pelvic floor muscles training for men is more effective than Viagra in reversing erectile dysfunction. In short, getting blood to these bits is good for all of us.
But back to Mary. What I really want you to notice about the story is that Mary required not one single other experience to improve her sex life from twice a year to twice a week. No one asked about her sexual history, no one offered her yoni healing and, as far as the records show, she may not even have known the location of her clitoris. This was the US in 1951 after all. She hadn’t been to see Freud or Jung, and I think we can safely assume that she had never read a book on tantra. Now I’m not saying that everything I’ve written about so far is null and void – of course not – it all goes together. And, you can call me Isabel Cool if you like, but I intend to follow Mary’s journey and report back to you.
• • •
You may be amazed to know that a lot of help is available to you on the NHS if you’d like to tone up your pelvic floor. You don’t have to be sick. You don’t have to be incontinent. I thank goodness I’m not. But quite what state my pelvic floor muscles are in remains to be seen. I go to see my doctor and explain that, for a number of reasons, I’m interested in checking the health of my pelvic muscles and does she know anyone with a perineometer? She says that if I want to check whether they’re OK, I’ve purely to see whether I can stop peeing mid-flow. But she refers me anyway to a delightful uro-gynae nurse, as an outpatient at my local hospital.
Now before you raise your eyebrows and think this is a questionable use of NHS resources, in this case it’s quite legitimate. There are people in the NHS whose job it is to improve the quality of life. You don’t have to be sick to go and see a doctor. The uro-gynae nurse sighs when I repeat my GP’s comment and says, ‘We don’t use that stopping midflow test any more.’ She’s a wonderfully positive woman who tells me, ‘I wanted to be a nurse but I didn’t want to work with sick people. I love this job because it genuinely improves the quality of people’s lives.’ She explains that I need to come back and see a ‘pelvic floor physiotherapist’ and that, surprisingly, the waiting list isn’t long. I could have just researched the exercises at home but I’m curious to know just how bad or good a state my pelvic floor muscles are in. I am trying to represent the majority of women out there – and, assuming that the majority of women are not incontinent which is the point at which most women go to their doctor – find out just how poor a state these muscles may be in.
May I assume you know about them? Most men and women do. I was told about them after I’d given birth to my daughter (not before – which would have been wise) and I’ve practised them a bit over the years but not with any discipline. In France it’s standard practice for women to be given help re-training these muscles after birth, but not in the UK or the US. I’ve run regularly for cardiovascular health and, yes, that’s probably good. But Kegel muscles? Well, does anyone exercise them regularly?
So while I wait for my NHS appointment to come up – long live the NHS – I do a little research on what can be done if your local GP is less helpful than mine or your local hospital does not boast a team of pelvic floor physiotherapists.
Some women don’t even know what Kegel muscles or pelvic floor muscles are. I discover this by asking the 3,000 people that follow my Facebook pages. I just ask how often people exercise them. Answers include,
‘I don’t know what you are talking about – never heard of them.’
‘Never done them.’
‘… whenever I pee – in a start-stop action.’ (This is not recommended any more as I told you.)
‘Whenever I have sex.’ (This is better but she added, ‘This isn’t very often.’)
Or, ‘Only when I’m reminded of them by reading a question like this.’
And, ‘Used to do them all the time and now can’t be bothered and, erm, notice the difference. Cough, cough … oops.’
The best answer, ‘once or twice a week for about 45 seconds’.
And one women friend says, ‘I always do them on “up” escalators’.
Bearing in mind the low levels of orgasmic response in women and the large numbers that suffer incontinence, some from having their first child in their early 20s, these responses are worrying. It is recognized that for both women and men a wide range of health problems can be avoided by not having any part of the bottom half of your body going into prolapse.
I suppose that, perhaps inevitably, there is also some information on the Internet saying the opposite – on the dangers of too much Kegel exercis
e. But, firstly, they seem to be coming from only one source and, secondly, from my brief and unscientific survey, it seems that there is very little danger of anyone doing too many exercises of this kind.
So – which are your pelvic floor muscles? If you do a quick Internet search pictures will appear of the underside of both men and women and you can read up and become knowledgeable. For our purposes and, very simply, they circle the urethra, the vagina and the anal canal.
The problem with exercising these muscles is that it’s not very interesting. Even when recommended by a doctor, compliance with a pelvic floor exercise programme is poor. If you don’t want to go to your GP, there is a range of fun toys to play with at home. You could check out ‘Kegel 8’. But I would get the biofeedback pelvic trainer, not the machine that does the exercises for you while you watch TV. Call me narrow-minded but I just don’t believe that electronically stimulating a muscle so that it contracts is the same as actually contracting it yourself.
Let me tell you some of the ways to enjoy these exercises. The first is a weird one as you wouldn’t expect it to be enjoyable – but strangely it is. Try and suck your anus up into your body. To really lift it. The muscle that you are using is called your levator ani. Yes, your ‘lift anus’ muscle. Just go on and on lifting that muscle slowly and firmly and you may feel a vibration and even a shiver go up your spine. Weird, huh? You could hold it for up to ten seconds and then release. As Andre Van Lysebeth tells us, ‘a pleasant feeling of warmth is felt at the base of the body in the lumbar region’. You can also practise lifting the anus up as high as you can while breathing normally.
This exercise is a good way to never be bored again while sitting down. Any waiting for a bus or a train, a plane or a person and you can entertain yourself with this one. I’m sorry to be personal but if you have even one haemorrhoid – perhaps following childbirth if you are a woman, or spending too long reading in the loo if you’re a man – and you do this exercise, do please drop me a line and let me know how long you practised for and whether the problem lifted itself away.
Sensation Page 19