What happens when one part of our body becomes something we manage, avoid, or simply stop feeling connected to?
In this raw, empowering, and deeply personal episode of The Underlying Answers Podcast, Cindy sits down with Kelly Dean, MPT, licensed physical therapist and founder of "The Tummy Team", for a conversation about pelvic-floor function, incontinence, core strength, trauma—and the importance of staying connected to our bodies as a whole.
Kelly begins with the anatomy, explaining what the pelvic floor actually is, how it works with the rest of the core, and why common doesn't necessarily mean normal when it comes to pelvic-floor dysfunction.
Then the conversation gets personal.
Cindy openly shares her own experience with incontinence and the physical circumstances that contributed to it—including years of spending significant amounts of time in bed while healing and the repeated physical stress of frequent, forceful sneezing. Using Cindy's experience as a real-life example, Kelly offers practical anatomical insights into positioning, movement, strengthening, and rebuilding healthy pelvic-floor function.
But as the conversation continues, another layer begins to emerge.
Kelly discusses the ways trauma and protective responses can affect our relationship with the pelvic floor and emphasizes the importance of remaining connected to the whole body. In that moment, Cindy recognizes something she hadn't fully understood before: after years of working to reconnect with her body, "her pelvic floor was still an area from which she felt disconnected."
That realization leads to an unexpected emotional and physical release during the recording.
Rather than moving past it, Cindy and Kelly allow the moment to become part of the conversation—an authentic example of what can surface when awareness returns to an area of the body we've struggled to connect with.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- What the pelvic floor actually is and how it works with the core
- Why pelvic-floor dysfunction and incontinence don't necessarily have to be accepted as inevitable
- How prolonged inactivity and repeated physical stress can affect pelvic-floor strength and function
- Practical anatomical insights for supporting and strengthening the pelvic floor
- How trauma and protective responses may influence our connection with the pelvic floor
- Why pelvic-floor health involves much more than simply doing Kegels
- The importance of maintaining connection and awareness throughout the whole body
- What Cindy discovered about her own disconnection during the conversation
This episode is about pelvic-floor health, but it's also about something much bigger: "reconnection."
Our bodies function as a whole, yet there can be places within them we've stopped noticing, trusting, feeling, or fully inhabiting. Sometimes deeper understanding begins simply by bringing our awareness back to the places we've unintentionally left behind.
Connect with Kelly Dean and The Tummy Team:
FB and Instagram: The Tummy Team
If this conversation resonated with you, we'd love to invite you to join the Restore the Design™ Community—a place to continue exploring the deeper connections between the body, mind, spirit, and the human experience. Together, we're asking better questions, discovering new perspectives, and learning what it means to reconnect with the body's innate design.
You can learn more and join us at www.theunderlyinganswers.com/community
