Episode 60 - How the Position of Your Womb Impacts Menstrual Health

 🐚Topics covered

• Understanding basic uterine anatomy and how the uterus is held in place by ligaments and fascia
• Different uterine positions: anteverted, retroverted, retroflexed, laterally displaced, hyperflexed, and prolapsed
• How uterine position can affect period pain, fertility, digestion, libido, and posture
• Iris's personal story of a biking accident and how it impacted her pelvic health
• The connection between stress, nervous system, and uterine positioning
• How daily habits like crossing legs and posture affect pelvic alignment
• The psoas muscle's role in pelvic health and stress response
• Why the uterus is a mobile, responsive organ that reflects our emotional and physical state
• Practical breathing techniques for pelvic floor awareness and relaxation
• Types of support available: integral pelvic health therapy, Arvigo therapy, pelvic floor therapy, and osteopathy

About the Host

I’m Iris Josephina—functional hormone specialist, orthomolecular hormone coach, and entrepreneur. Through Cycle Seeds and The Inner Rhythms Podcast, I support people in reconnecting with their cyclical nature, deepening body literacy, and reclaiming hormonal harmony from a place of sovereignty and embodied knowledge. Most people know me from Instagram, where I share stories, tools, and inspiration on cyclical living, menstrual cycles, fertility, hormones and more. 

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Iris Josephina: You are listening to the podcast of Iris Josephina. If you are passionate about exploring the menstrual cycle, cyclical living, body wisdom, personal growth, spirituality, and running a business in alignment with your natural cycles, you're in the right place. I'm Iris. I'm an entrepreneur, functional hormone specialist, trainer and coach, and I am on a mission.

[00:00:29] Iris Josephina: To share insights, fun facts, and inspiration I discover along the way as I run my business and walk my own path on earth. Here you'll hear my personal stories, guest interviews, and vulnerable shares from clients and students. Most people know me from Instagram where you can find me under at cycle seeds, or they have been a coaching client or student in one of my courses. I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into today's episode. 

[00:00:57] Iris Josephina: Hey, loves. Welcome to another solo episode of the Inner Rhythms podcast. Today I want to talk about something that I feel very few people are ever taught, and yet it can affect directly your period pain, your fertility, your experience of your digestion, your libido, and even your posture.

[00:01:25] Iris Josephina: I am talking about the position of your uterus. Now, this isn't about finding something else to fix in our bodies. This is really about understanding the structure of our pelvis and how this deeply intelligent organ, our womb response to things like tension gravity posture, trauma and just life in general and how we use our bodies in our day-to-day life.

[00:01:59] Iris Josephina: And I want to give you language for what is happening in your body and also reflect back what so many of you maybe feel and if you feel that something is not quite right part of that could be the positioning of your uterus. The positioning of our uterus can be part of our story, but for a lot of people this is often missed.

[00:02:25] Iris Josephina: This is also how it was for me. And I want to start with grounding everything in anatomy so you can make like a visual representation. So first of all, the basics. Where does our uterus sit? Now let's ground this in our anatomy. So the uterus is really held in place by a web of ligaments and fascia

[00:02:52] Iris Josephina: primarily the broad ligaments, the round ligaments, and the uterosacral ligaments and others that kind of like tether the womb to the pelvic bones, the sacrum, and also the abdominal wall. In the, let's say, quote unquote typical anatomy, the uterus slightly tilts forward and rests above or on top of the bladder, and that's called an verted uterus.

[00:03:20] Iris Josephina: And this position, positioning of the uterus is often seen as quote unquote, the standard. But at the same time, many people have a retroverted uterus where the uterus is tilted backwards towards the spine or a retroflexed uterus where the uterus is bent backwards on itself more sharply. A laterally displaced uterus, which is a uterus that is pulled to the right or the left.

[00:03:53] Iris Josephina: There is also a HyperFlex uterus where the uterus is deeply curled forward, and we can also have a low lying or a prolapsed uterus where uterus really sits lower than it ideally should.

[00:04:09] Iris Josephina: And some of us are born with these positions. Others develop them over time. And this can be from sitting a lot, having tension in the pelvic floor region, giving birth, experiencing trauma, having to go through surgery, or even from repeated digestive issues and how we use the muscles in our body and I want to emphasize that the uterus is not a fixed organ.

[00:04:45] Iris Josephina: It's mobile. It moves, it's responsive, and that's part I feel, of the brilliance of the womb. But it also means that the womb can be impacted by everything else happening. In the body and I want to like weave in a personal story here and how, how I felt in my own body that my uterus can move around. A couple of years ago, I think maybe it's about five years ago now, I had a very bad biking accident where I was standing with my bike between my legs in front of the red.

[00:05:29] Iris Josephina: Traffic lights just waiting. And someone else crashed into my bike with their bike from the back and I fell over to the left side with my bike between my legs and I didn't really have space to move. So it really affected my, uh, my pelvis and the internal muscle structure of my pelvis. And I was basically stuck with my left leg under my.

[00:05:57] Iris Josephina: Bike and my right, right leg left resting on top of the, on top of the bike. And it really impacted how the internal muscular structure of my pelvis felt like. And it also impacted the position of my bladder and my uterus. And the only reason why I know this is because I went to a integral pelvic health practitioner who worked internally through the vagina and who could assess the position of my organs, my even my cervix, my vagina, my uterus, and all of the muscles around it and the muscle tension around it.

[00:06:46] Iris Josephina: And if it wasn't for this accident, I wouldn't have gotten like so deep into this. But wow. When nobody had worked on my pelvis, my pain was just excruciating. I was in so much more pain when I was on my period. I had pain when I was going to the bathroom, obviously, because the rectum is very closely located to the bladder and the womb, and so

[00:07:17] Iris Josephina: this is when I started to get into this more I do want to say I'm not a pelvic health expert. I'm not a doctor. I'm just sharing from my own experience and also what I've seen in my clients and what I have seen, what this means for menstrual health. So that's something that I wanna talk about right now.

[00:07:35] Iris Josephina: So I already gave my my own example. That after my accident, my period pain became so much more worse than I had ever experienced, and this is because the position of our uterus can also affect circulation, nerve signaling, also lymphatic drainage, and how efficiently the uterus can contract and release during menstruation.

[00:08:02] Iris Josephina: So. When people have a retroverted or retroflex uterus, this may press against rectum. This was what was happening in my case, causing low back pain, constipation, or feeling like a very deep pelvic dragging. Dragging feeling before bleeding. Now when someone has a sharply interflex uterus, this may compress the bladder more and lead to more intense nutrient cramping as blood struggles to exit smoothly.

[00:08:36] Iris Josephina: And it can also potentially lead to having like this frequent need to urin. And then if the uterus is off center, it may reduce blood flow or lymphatic movement to one ovary or fallopian tube. And this sometimes can impact ovulation or even hormone signaling. And when someone has a low lying uterus, this may indicate like a weakened, pelvic muscle tone, which then can increase at a later age heaviness or incontinence, or that.

[00:09:10] Iris Josephina: Falling out feeling that some women report. And so when, when my clients come to me and they're like, my periods are so painful, but my doctor says everything looks normal, or I feel such a pressure in my pelvis, like something is off, or I get such sharp pain during sex, especially in certain positions.

[00:09:32] Iris Josephina: Because of everything that I went through with my own body, apart from just thinking like, oh, maybe someone has a nutrient deficiency or maybe someone, needs to eat in certain way. I now also think, what is their uterine position? Did something happen to their body that has compromised their muscular and ligament structures because

[00:09:57] Iris Josephina: if we have like a misaligned neck or there is something up in our spine, this can create downstream issues and in the same way, a misaligned uterus, but also misaligned muscular structures and ligament structures around the uterus can affect the entire pelvic ecosystem. So your bladder, your bowels, your nerves, but also your hormones, and even your emotional body.

[00:10:26] Iris Josephina: I remember when I was in such a constricted situation with my own pelvis after my accident. My goodness, I had such a short fuse. Everything that I had to do with my body, like riding my bike, sitting on my chair in uni, uh, sitting behind my computer, like all of this affected how my pelvis felt, and it really affected how I felt about.

[00:10:54] Iris Josephina: My body and having space in my body. So when a uterus is misaligned or when we have misaligned organs in our pelvic bowl, this can affect every single part of the experience of our body. And the thing is, our uterus doesn't just respond to structure our muscular structures in our pelvis also respond to stress, and one of the ways in which I have personally noticed this and experienced this is that whenever I feel stressed or whenever I feel tension, what I do is I micro squeeze my knees towards one another when I sit down. The same thing happens when you cross your legs and sit, with your legs over one another. This is a very bad posture by the way. Like my chiropractor always tells me like, do not cross your legs. Like just sit your legs open wide and let them fall in the natural position of your hips.

[00:12:07] Iris Josephina: And so what I did for a very long time is when I feel uncomfortable or, or my body is just generally stressed, I will do like a micro squeeze of my inner groin. Which puts this tension on my inner groin, but obviously my inner groin and their muscles are connected to the internal muscle structures in my pelvic bowl.

[00:12:32] Iris Josephina: So, and one of the biggest muscles around there is the SOAs muscle, uh, that is heavily impacted by, stress and what I have found, and I've also figured out when I spoke to my chiropractor, but also people who are very well versed in the structure of the body and anatomy, like osteopaths or integral pelvic specialists.

[00:12:57] Iris Josephina: When the SOAs muscles are tight, we can see that this translates automatically to how the muscles sit in the pelvic bowl. But also things like shallow breathing, high cortisol, or a sympathetic dominance in the nervous system can literally shift how your organs sit in your body because there is, tension in muscle and tension in fascia, which creates a pool, and the ligaments respond.

[00:13:31] Iris Josephina: Over time, muscles and ligaments can can start to compensate, which then also have an impact on the organs that are held by these muscles and ligaments. And on a nervous system level, the uterus is innervated by both, sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, meaning it is wired into your stress response and your ability to rest and digest and respond, to everything that is happening around you.

[00:14:05] Iris Josephina: And the uterus is, I'd like to think of the uterus as a highly dynamic organ. It's sensitive. It shifts and change, changes in response to hormones. The uterus is also highly vascular and is literally embedded in a network of fascia, muscle fluid ligaments that is constantly translating your emotional, biochemical and mechanical experiences in the body into tissue tone.

[00:14:40] Iris Josephina: This always wildly inspires and interests me, like how our tissue in our body is not just this. Static stuff that just sits in place. It responds literally to everything. And a tilted womb can be a very physical reality, but it can also reflect an emotional patterning or trauma or like a, like a stress response.

[00:15:11] Iris Josephina: Like we all have our ways to soothe our bodies or to put our bodies in a certain position that feels comfortable and safe for us. So for me, my response for a very long time was to cross my right leg over my left. It was just automatic. It's something that I always did without thinking for a long period of my life, and I started to have lower back issues and I started to have more pain during my period, and this all exacerbated and got worse and worse after my accident.

[00:15:47] Iris Josephina: And so it really made me realize like, Hey, Iris, the way that you use your body on a day to day and the habits and the patterns that you bring into your body. Literally have an impact on how organs sit in your body simply because you give your body a certain posture that makes muscles and ligaments and tissues respond.

[00:16:13] Iris Josephina: 'cause that's what all the body does all the time. The body just responds to what it receives and what it doesn't receive. And if I put my body in a certain position on a habitual basis, this will inform how my muscles will naturally respond and what the patterning becomes in my muscles. And it wasn't until I started like training my body, like in the gym and through Pilates and Reformer Pilates, and really giving each side of my body so left and right in front and back and up and down the same input and the same experiences that I started to realize like, hey, my right side is a little bit more sensitive than my left side, and I really started to pay attention, especially after this accident because I was in so much pain. How do I use my body? How do I sit on a chair? How is my subconscious patterning like with crossing the legs?

[00:17:20] Iris Josephina: Am I slouching? Or am I sitting on my sitting bones? and all of this is a way or are ways for me to support my uterine alignment naturally. So we don't need to panic about this. We don't need to immediately like pathologize. What I want to encourage people to do is to get curious. We support the body in remembering balance. So as soon as we become aware of how we use our body, it's way easier to shift and change so that our bodies can actually start to feel better. And I'd like to think about. My body as an ecosystem and each side of this ecosystem deserves the same kind of input. Like it's not, I'd like to think about it in terms of like equality.

[00:18:14] Iris Josephina: Like it's not fair if I just continuously use my right side and cross my right leg over my left. No. It's more equal for both sides of my body to just sit in a straight position and open my legs in the way that my hips allow it and allow for my body to be in proper posture, and I've really found such a profound difference with how my internal experience of my body is.

[00:18:43] Iris Josephina: I used to have so many aches and pains when I was younger, which is interesting because a lot of people start to have all these aches and pains when they get older. I'm 35 now and I barely ever feel my body, and I remember when I was in high school even I had low back pain all of the freaking time. I cannot imagine.

[00:19:04] Iris Josephina: A moment or pull back like a moment of my high school time where I did not complain of lower back pain. So this is to show that, you know, the way that I used my body was so counterintuitive and was so bad for my posture that my body started to show me that it wasn't okay. But I didn't do anything with it in that time.

[00:19:29] Iris Josephina: It wasn't really until the accident that I really started to focus on this. And I feel amazing now, and I know how to use my body. I know how to support my alignment, my proper postural body alignment, and I really feel in my body when I haven't done that. So when I've had like long stretches of writing in front of the computer, when I had long working days or long days where I had to sit more than I'm used to, I immediately feel it in my lower back.

[00:20:02] Iris Josephina: I feel it in my lower belly. I feel that my pelvis doesn't have so much space. I feel my so ass tightening up. So the more awareness that you have about your body, and the more you come to realize what is the normal for your body, the sooner you can say, Hmm, this feels a little bit off. And there are so many beautiful ways of support where we can go to and get support from.

[00:20:32] Iris Josephina: So there is a couple of ways in which I loved my support. So I already mentioned the integral pelvic health. Therapy that is amazing because they support the outside of the pelvis, but also inside of the pelvis. I remember after my accident, I could feel there is one knot in an internal muscle on the inside of my right hip that I could not reach from the outside.

[00:20:59] Iris Josephina: and I've worked with like a, pelvic physical therapist, a regular physical therapist, and I'm like. You can't reach where it's stuck. And this is where I started to go to this integral public therapist who did internal work through my vagina. And I remember this moment where she touched this immense knot in one of my internal pelvic floor muscles towards my right sit sitting bone.

[00:21:29] Iris Josephina: Oh my God, it was so painful. But I also knew like, this is the spot, this is the spot that needs to be released. And she, uh, did myofascial release or releasing of the fascia and the muscles. I just felt them opening and releasing and giving my body the space that it needed. So, that's one thing that I found really, really helpful.

[00:21:53] Iris Josephina: And then there is, arvigo therapy or Mayan abdominal massage, which can really help guide the uterus back to center, not through force, but through releasing restrictions and improving circulation. And I feel that these techniques. This is an indigenous, massage technique. I feel that there are so many cultures on the planet who still hold this wisdom and still understand the importance of using your hands to support alignment in the body.

[00:22:29] Iris Josephina: And then obviously, pelvic floor therapy or having an osteopath who is trained, in pelvic health could support, they can assess the tone, the tension, the scar tissue, and can potentially also teach you how to breathe. I think a lot of people also don't know how to properly breathe. I'm gonna give a little bit of TMI here, but when I go to the bathroom for number two, I try not to push because I know how.

[00:23:02] Iris Josephina: Straining it can be for the pelvis. So what I personally actually do, and I haven't found like any research on this, but it's been something that has been really helpful for me. You can try it at home and see how it is for you. As I said, I'm not a doctor. I'm not like a pelvic floor therapist, but this is what works for me and what has really helped me after my accident to not put any unnecessary tension on my pelvis is that when I go to the bathroom for number two.

[00:23:32] Iris Josephina: I inhale and I release whatever needs to come out on the inhale, and then just very gently push between the inhale and the exhale, and I never strain my pelvis. I also put, a little stool in my household. We call it the poop bench, to lift the feet a little bit, to shift the position of, uh, the anus and the rectum so that your poop can come out more easily.

[00:24:04] Iris Josephina: And I also do this specifically when I'm on my period because I feel when I'm on my period, everything in my pelvic bowl is a little bit more sensitive. My uterus feels a bit more swollen and full. So it's really helpful to not put any tension on my uterus during my period and then another way in which I have found release and relief and support is by just bringing awareness. Like I mentioned earlier, I had this like micro squeeze of my inner groin. I really tried to pay attention when I put tension on my pelvic ball, my lower back, my pelvic muscles and my inner groin. and I also do like womb awareness and somatic tracking.

[00:24:58] Iris Josephina: Just placing my hands on my belly and really feeling where am I today? Is there any tension? Is there any way for me to just come to my breath and be in my body and feel the tension melt away? I know this sounds a little bit airy fairy, but we can guide our bodies. Way more than we often think. And breath is a really beautiful practice for this.

[00:25:28] Iris Josephina: One way of breathing that I particularly love is to sit on my knees with a bolster like this thick yoga pillow, under my pelvis. So I sit with both knees on the side and I roll up a towel or even a tennis ball, and I put it, in between my sitting bones and then I breathe in and out. And what you'll then notice is that your pelvic muscles are like a little jellyfish.

[00:26:00] Iris Josephina: They move away and towards the towel or the ball. And for me, this really helped me to feel tension in my pelvic muscles and also allow my posture to be as optimal as possible, have a little curve in my lower back and allow my breathing to release and have my tissues respond. And this is more of like an awareness practice that has been really, really helpful for me.

[00:26:31] Iris Josephina: And another thing that I have done for my own awareness in my own body is to track my pelvis and how my pelvis feels in every single phase of my menstrual cycle. Maybe you know that the cervix moves up and down in the vaginal canal in every single cycle phase, so it's usually lowest around the menstruation and highest around ovulation.

[00:27:02] Iris Josephina: And I notice that this concept of my cervix moving up and down in my pelvis also impacts my internal sensation and how my pelvic bowl feels and how I feel my uterus sit in my pelvic bowl, and I know maybe not everyone will have this hyper-focused body awareness. I'm obviously in this, in this field for so long that I can feel that, and I also pay attention to my inner groin and my SOAs muscle.

[00:27:39] Iris Josephina: If I have been sitting for a long time or I haven't used my body in the, in the way that it feels the best, I immediately feel it in in my pelvic bowl, and for me, when I feel like the slightest tension there. It's not about what is correct. It's really about how can I feel more at home in my own body and how can I feel the most space in my pelvic bowl?

[00:28:10] Iris Josephina: And I also want to end by saying that your womb is not broken. If the womb is tilted, she's tilted for a reason and it's very important to figure out. Why that is, especially if it gives you discomfort. Know that the womb is mobile, she can shift, she can return, she can recenter, and there are people on this planet who know how to work with this.

[00:28:37] Iris Josephina: And I also wanna say this episode is not about, you know, adding more to your to-do list. It's really about inviting you to reconnect with your pelvic space with. Reverence with softness, with curiosity, and I really want everyone to be aware that if you haven't found the cause of your menstrual issues or your pain.

[00:29:06] Iris Josephina: You may want to look into the position of your uterus and how you use your pelvic ball, how you use the muscles that keep your pelvic ball in place. And for a lot of people who I have seen as my clients, this has been a missing link in finding their way back to their body, feeling more at home in their body, but also reducing.

[00:29:34] Iris Josephina: They're complaints like it's not always about what you eat. It's not always about what kind of supplements you take. Sometimes it's about how do you use your body structure your anatomy on a day-to-day basis and how can, how you use your body inform how your internal muscle structures simply respond?

[00:30:00] Iris Josephina: And if they respond in a way that feels uncomfortable for you, that could be assign that you can look into this a little bit deeper. I hope this episode gave you some insight and some tools in what could potentially cause discomfort in your body, and I hope it made you curious to dive deeper into your own pelvic story and what could be going on for you.

[00:30:26] Iris Josephina: And I just simply hope it can make you more aware of your beautiful womb and your beautiful pelvis, and the way you sit, and the way you move, and the way that you use your body. And become more aware of all of the ways that actually feel good for you and that help you feel at home in your own body.

[00:30:45] Iris Josephina: Thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions or you've gotten curious or just landed really well for you, I would love to hear from you. I would love to answer your questions. I would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to reach out to me here on the podcast platform or via Instagram.

[00:31:04] Iris Josephina: My Instagram is at Cycle Seeds and I would love to hear from you. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and I'll be with you in the next episode. Okay, this wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Want to know more about me? The best way to reach me is via at Cycles Seeds on Instagram.

[00:31:26] Iris Josephina: And if you heard something today and you think, oh my God, wow, I learned something new, feel free to share the podcast on your social media and tag me or leave a review of rating in this way. You help me reach more people like you. Thank you so much.