Bladder training vs bladder… un-training? Relaxing?

So a little while ago I was telling someone about the wonders of bladder training, and went to look up instructions to link – and discovered it did not mean what I thought it meant. The exercises I’d been using (quite successfully, starting a month before my specialist appointment) weren’t on the internet at all, and now I’m not sure they ever were, so I figure I should write up what they are before I forget again. :)

This might be TMI if you’re not dealing with bladder issues yourself, so, you have been warned.

Actual bladder training, it turns out, is a combination of strengthening the muscles and holding it longer, until they’re strong enough you don’t need excessive bathroom breaks. I had similar symptoms but the opposite cause – my muscles were so strong and tight they weren’t letting my bladder hold anything without incredible pain, so I needed to relax and unknot them instead so that “holding it” wasn’t excruciating. (This might have been interstitial cystitis, but it’s one of those “this hurts, fuck knows why” diagnoses).

Disclaimer: Please, please check with your doctor before trying any of this! I don’t want anyone giving themselves a hernia – or god knows what else. This isn’t real medical advice, just a thing that’s been working for me so far that I want documented.

That said… I don’t remember what I did the first time, beyond some cryptic notes about “ab exercises”. But I do remember the maintenance version I do when it tries to act up again.

When my bladder is mostly empty, I breathe into my belly, and use that air to bear down on my abdomen until I feel just the edge of the bladder pain. Then I back off, and gently ease back into it, trying to relax everything around the bladder while pushing on it from above, and hold it on the edge of the pain as long as I can comfortably hold my breath. A few reps of that a few times a day, and the angry-pain starts to turn into healing-pain, and in under a week there’s a lot less pain. Then I can go longer between bathroom breaks, and I can do that exercise with my bladder only half-empty.

When that can’t reach the pain any more, I add in my ab muscles, which is harder to explain… I kinda just play around with them until I find a way to stretch or massage a sore spot. Pretty soon there isn’t much more to find, and then I forget about it until my bladder starts acting up again :)

Seeing as the only other method of bladder stretching I’ve seen online sounds kinda invasive, I wish I could tell pelvic floor specialists about this so they could turn it into a real treatment… although just now I found https://www.nafc.org/bhealth-blog/how-to-relax-your-pelvic-floor which… gets halfway to what I’m doing? but breathing alone wasn’t enough, and I didn’t need any of those stretches (although they are fun).