Pelvic Floor connected to your Feet and Jaw?

For this blog, I wanted to write about the connection between your pelvic floor and your feet, as well as the connection between your pelvic floor and your jaw. The pelvic floor is actually broadly connected to many parts of your body and I wanted to share how sometimes, we treat other areas of your body that are not even anywhere near the pelvic floor but have a direct correlation with it.

I did a podcast episode in the past on how and why inflexible feet can lead to pelvic floor dysfunction and it kind of relates to that. If you haven't heard of Anatomy Trains before, that is a bit of a description of what I'm going to go through right now.

What Are Anatomy Trains

So Anatomy Trains was put out there by Thomas Myers and he basically dissected these different layers of fascia that run through the body that connect vary vastly different lines and different areas from head to toe.

So the line that includes the pelvic floor is called the deep frontal line and it goes from literally the soles of your feet all the way up to the jaw. And we can see how these different areas connect with one another and tie in together.

The deep frontal line consists of essentially the base of your foot. So when we talked about stiff feet, we kind of linked it in with when you lose that ability to lift the urge for your foot, you lose your shock absorber. And when you lose the shock absorber for movement, then the force has to be transmitted somewhere.

How The Pelvic Floor Is Connected To The Feet

So we've got the arch of the foot and that muscle right behind the shin bone. It's your tibialis posterior. If you've ever been into my office and come in with any lower extremity issue or lower leg issue, plantar fasciitis, and I've worked on your posterior tibialis, you're like, “Oh my gosh, I did not realize that that was so sore,” because it can be a problem area that people don't realize because they're not often poking around in there to realize that there's an issue going on. So that's the muscle that helps to lift your arch.

Then we've got popliteus, which attaches to the knee. So if you think of the chain of events, if your arch drops, your knee isn't lined up, and it starts to bow inward, putting extra stress and pressure can lead to knee injuries.

Then we've got this intermuscular septum in the leg, so it's splitting the front half and the back half of the leg. After that, we've got your adductors - your inner thigh or the groin area. And when we put out a lot of stuff, exercises, and that kind of thing to address pelvic floor issues, I do a lot of adductor work and squeezing the coregeous ball. I do a lot of that for people that have SI joint pain or low back pain because it's a great way to stabilize the pelvis.

Then we've got Pectineus, also in that area, then we have the pelvic floor. And we already know that those inner thighs, those adductors, have a direct relationship with the pelvic floor because the inner thigh or the adductor as we call them, attaches to the pelvis and kind of butts up against where the pelvic floor is attaching. So that's where that fascial connection comes into.

So we've got the pelvic floor, and then we have those deep, deep hip flexors. So there are different muscles that do hip flexion but the ones I'm talking about for this are your iliacus and your psoas. A lot of people will talk about psoas and iliacus and psoas actually attach in the same spot on the leg so you might see in some text it called ilio psoas. Basically that's the lower attachment where they meet but they're two separate muscles and they start in two different spots. Your iliacus starts on the pelvis and then goes to the leg, and then the psoas attaches to your spine, your lumbar spine, and then attaches to the leg. They are starting in two very different spots and they have the fascia of your abdominal muscles covering them. So that also ties in very heavily with the pelvic floor as well.

You've got that connection then where the psoas - your deep hip flexor - that's attaching to your spine shares fascia with your diaphragm breathing muscle. So you got that breathing stuff that we always are talking about, how that stretches the pelvic floor. So it's talking to the pelvic floor in that way, but it is also connected fascially with the pelvic floor by going from psoas and iliacus, and then connecting in through the pelvic floor as well. So there's that dual attachment there.

How The Pelvic Floor Is Connected To The Jaw

Now we go into your neck. So there's like that breath connection between the neck and the diaphragm and one of the spots that it affects are the scalene muscles. The scalene muscles are in the front side of the neck typically. There are three different parts so they're slightly different spaces - whether it's interior, middle, or posterior.

A lot of times if we have dysfunctional breathing, and we're not using the diaphragm, our body's going to look to another source in that same fascial plane to help inflate the lungs. So we've got the scalene muscles working and trying to pick up the upper part of the ribcage to help with that inhalation. So we want to take the work off of the scalene muscles and let it come back to the diaphragm so that the diaphragm can work, fully contract, and stretch the pelvic floor.

The other neck muscles that are connected actually are the in front suprahyoid and then up into the TMJ. These muscles are around the jaw. So often, when we clench our jaw, we have a literal fascial connection where we hold tension and clench in our pelvic floor. So the tension and tightening in our pelvic floor are also very connected to the tension and tightness in our jaw. 

So if you're having low back pain, SI joint pain, those kinds of things that people don't naturally correlate with pelvic floor issues yet, and you have jaw pain, it is something that you should definitely get assessed because it might be connected. Your chronic SI joint or hip pain that is not going away with standard care and you have this tension and tightness in the jaw are good indicators that we should check out your pelvic floor and make sure that that's stable, relaxed, able to relax, and able to support your hip, SI joint, and low back. It could be the missing link for you. So keep aware of how your jaw feels because again, there is that connection and that deep frontal line from Anatomy Trains.

Conclusion

So with that deep frontal line, when it's all working well and together, it lifts the arch of the foot, it stabilizes each segment of the leg, so it's helping with ankle mobility and stability, knee health, hip stability, and it supports the lumbar spine and it stabilizes the chest when you're allowing expansion and relaxation of breathing, and it balances your neck. There's also a deep connection between the abdominal fascia and the pelvic floor right behind the pubic bone. That's important.

And another area that people don't usually like to get worked on, but it's important, is the umbilicus. So that's your belly button and when you think about how it's right in the center of your abdomen, that has a lot of fascial connection, deep as well to the different layers of your abdomen. So doing mobilization of the belly button can also be helpful, even though it is not an area that we typically work on. It's something that's good to assess as well.

This is only one of the Anatomy Trains I know of and it is a very simplified view of it. It goes into a ton of detail with Thomas Myers’ work but it's very validating to see how we address pelvic floor issues and treat it. It lines up pretty well with those concepts between that deep frontal line and the fascial connections from the jaw all the way down to the arch of the foot.

If you have any questions, you can drop it in the comment section or you can send me a message through Facebook or Instagram. I’d be happy to do another blog about your questions. Also, if you want me to talk about something specific, let me know!

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