What Easter Eggs Are in Your Basket?

The Hidden Clues Your Pelvic Floor is Giving You—And Why You Should Stop Ignoring Them

Because your pelvic floor is whispering, not screaming (yet).

This time of year, we love a good Easter egg hunt. But let’s be honest: some of the most surprising treasures aren’t hidden in the backyard, they’re buried in your body.

Pelvic health symptoms are often overlooked, brushed off, or chalked up to age, stress, or being “out of shape.” But your pelvic floor is deeply tied to your nervous system, hormones, and emotions, so its whispers can show up anywhere from your jaw to your bathroom habits.

Let’s decode these sneaky signals, one “Easter egg” at a time:

1. Your Tongue Affects Your Pelvic Floor
The tongue, diaphragm, and pelvic floor are part of a midline pressure system. When the tongue rests low, or you mouth-breathe, it disrupts the coordination required for reflexive core stability. The result? Less pelvic support, more tension.

Try this: Tongue up, lips closed, nasal breathing. It’s free core rehab.

Evidence: Dysfunctional breathing is tied to pelvic floor issues. Tongue position influences vagal tone and parasympathetic balance.

2. Butt Clenching Might Be a Trauma Response
Always gripping your glutes? It may not be a fitness thing, it might be your body bracing for something. The glutes and pelvic floor love to co-contract, especially when your nervous system is running on fear or survival.

Try this: Sit back. Unclench. Let your body feel supported without gripping.

Evidence: Chronic guarding patterns, especially in the pelvis, are common in trauma survivors and people with anxiety.

3. Visual Clutter = Pelvic Guarding

Environments packed with sensory input, bright lights, mess, visual noise, can subtly trigger your nervous system. When your brain stays on high alert, your body tightens…and the pelvic floor often joins the party.

Try this: Declutter one space, dim the lights, and notice what relaxes (hint: it’s not just your shoulders).

Evidence: Sensory overload increases sympathetic nervous system activation, which elevates pelvic floor tone.

4. Your Pelvic Floor Has a Circadian Rhythm

Just like your gut and brain, your pelvic floor tissues follow daily cycles. Evening tightness, nighttime urgency, or disrupted sleep around your cycle? That’s your pelvic floor clock doing its thing, often before you even realize it.

Try this: Prioritize nighttime pelvic rest. Warm bath, gentle mobility, legs-up-the-wall.

Evidence: Hormones, temperature, and inflammation follow circadian cycles and influence pelvic tissue tone.

5. The Soles of Your Feet Can Impact Your Pelvic Floor

Fascia connects everything, yes, even your feet to your pelvic floor. Flat arches, clenched toes, or stiff soles from overuse or unsupportive shoes can create upward tension. Your posture starts at the ground.

Try this: Ditch the heels, massage your feet, and spend time barefoot when safe.

Evidence: Fascial lines (per Thomas Myers’s Anatomy Trains) connect feet to pelvis. Research shows links between foot posture and pelvic alignment.

6. You Can Feel Pelvic Floor Tightness in Your Throat

Your throat and pelvic floor are developmental twins, formed from the same embryological tissue and deeply connected by the vagus nerve. Voice strain, swallowing difficulty, or even a lump-in-throat feeling can mirror pelvic guarding.

Try this: Yawn, hum, gargle. Soften your voice and see what your pelvis does.

Evidence: Vagal nerve pathways regulate both laryngeal and pelvic muscle tone. Pelvic floor therapy often improves symptoms in the upper airway.

7. You Can’t Orgasm If You Can’t Exhale

Orgasm requires letting go, and so does a full exhale. If you’re breath-holding, rushing, or anxious during intimacy, your pelvic floor stays tight, which blocks arousal and climax.

Try this: Slow down. Long exhales. Let pleasure ride on your breath.

Evidence: Exhalation is parasympathetic, and orgasm depends on full pelvic floor relaxation.

8. Sneaky Urge to Pee = Sensory Mismatch

Feel like you have to pee, but your bladder is barely full? That’s not urgency. That’s your brain misfiring based on habits or stress. This is common in overactive bladder and interstitial cystitis.

Try this: Use urge suppression techniques: heel raises, breath work, or distractions.

Evidence: Bladder urgency can be retrained through central nervous system modulation.

9. Perimenopause Symptoms Can Start in the Pelvic Floor

Before your period changes, your pelvic tissues start reacting to declining estrogen. Urgency, UTIs, dryness, discomfort, and “random leaks” may be the first flags, not your missed cycles.

Try this: Get proactive. Address tissue health with hydration, vaginal moisturizers, pelvic floor therapy, and hormone-informed strategies.

Evidence: Pelvic and urogenital tissues are estrogen-dependent and are often first affected in perimenopause.

10. Constipation History = Trouble Relaxing During Sex

Chronic constipation teaches your pelvic floor to clench (to hold it) or bear down (to push it). Over time, these patterns hardwire your pelvic floor into a state of control, not release. And that matters during intimacy.

Try this: Gentle pelvic floor lengthening, breathwork, and somatic awareness can retrain this pattern.

Evidence: Dysfunctional toileting habits are linked to pelvic pain and sexual dysfunction.

11. Pelvic Floor Tension Can Affect Emotional Expression

When the pelvic floor is locked, so is emotional expression. Some folks cry during pelvic release work, not because they’re sad, but because they’ve been holding everything down there for years.

Try this: Release the body, and the feelings might follow. It’s not weird, it’s your nervous system finally letting go.

Evidence: Trauma, fascia, and emotion are stored somatically. Pelvic floor therapy often triggers emotional release.

So… What Now?

If this list made you pause, laugh, or unclench something, great. That was your body saying, “Thanks for noticing me.” Your pelvic floor isn’t just about childbirth or Kegels. It’s your sensor, stabilizer, and silent communicator. And when it speaks, however subtly, it’s worth listening.

So the next time your throat feels tight, your glutes are on duty, or your bladder lies to you… remember: it might just be a pelvic health Easter egg.

Need help decoding your own symptoms?
This isn’t about doing more Kegels. It’s about doing less bracing, gripping, and ignoring. It’s about feeling good inside your body.