Sewing your sit bones together

The photo shows me doing the yoga posture Dadasana in Cardiff with my back not as straight and upright as it should be! What is Dadasana? And how can you use it to improve your pelvic health?

Dandasana is the rod position and is one of the hardest postures around, if you are doing it properly. It is the basic sitting posture in yoga.

All you need to do is sit with your back upright and in neutral position and your legs out straight in front of you. Easy in theory.

It helps to sit against a wall to keep your back upright. The closer you wriggle your bottom against the wall, the better the posture. In the photo it would be much better if the back was more upright!

Try very hard to press your knees down towards the floor so that you stretch your hamstrings and let your feet point upwards.

Check your feet carefully. They should not be splayed outwards but pointing vertically upwards and if you have a partner, they should be able to place a book against your feet and the balls and the heels and the outside edge of both feet would be in contact with the book.

The pelvic health bit? Ah yes, if you have sat properly you will be aware that you are sitting on what the exercise world calls the sit bones. These are the ischial tuberosities at the bottom of your pelvic bones.

One way of checking that you are sitting on them is to take your hand underneath your bottom and draw the flesh backwards. Do this on both sides. You should feel that your are sitting on some bony parts.

Once you have placed yourself carefully into Dandasana concentrate on the breath. On an out breath imagine that you are drawing the sit bones closer to each other. And then relax. On every out breath, really work hard on pulling the sit bones closer together. Keep practising this daily even if to begin with you can't feel any movement. It will come. Persevere!

This action drawing the sit bones together tightens Superficial transverse perineal muscle that goes across at right angles to the line between your anus and urethra.

Once you are happy that you can pull the sit bones together, you can take this one step further and also at the same time try to tighten your muscle around your anus and your uretha. These are the puborectalis and the bulbospongiosus.

This posture will help you strengthen your pelvic floor muscles so do practice it frequently.