This is part two of my interview with Orchid Cameron, and she shares some great tips for postnatal exercises. That can help women not only immediately after birth, but here I am 16 years later after my last birth and I have a problem with sneeze peeing and she has a solution for me that I am going to try and I will report back on it.

In a few weeks to let you know how it works. But definitely this is an awesome episode. With tips for women of any age. And in any place in their mothering career

UPADATE – I have been doing her program for 76 days and have seen a positive result!

https://reconnectionablab.com/

Transcript

Sheridan: I’m so excited to have Orchid here today.

First I want to say why I’m extra excited because Orchid is one of my personal friends and also I’ve attended one of her births. And so that was extra special. So I’m a little bit extra excited to have Orchid here today.

Orchid Cameron is a standup comic, she teaches trauma conscious yoga and meditation.

She facilitates support groups and leads yoga classes for prenatal mothers. She has become a supportive voice in the domestic violence community and is committed to using her personal experience to positively impact others in similar situations to hers. A film director, she’s made seven shorts and been an official selection in film festivals. With a degree in theater.

She’s also taught acting, film, directing, and screenwriting. She is the owner of reconnection ab lab an online, and live course to repair abs in pelvic floor postnatally. She’s a mother of a 21 year old and a six year old herself. So she knows all about these issues and her mission is to end pain in as many people as possible and light the fire in others to maximize their fun and pleasure..

[00:02:11] postnatal recovery tips

Orchid: My third piece of advice again, back to reconnectionablab.com is my, postnatal recovery program.

[00:02:19] no sit ups!

Orchid: No, sit-ups. Please do not do sit-ups, do not do sit-ups. I don’t care what any YouTube video tells you. I don’t care. What any tiktok video tells you. Please do not do sit ups again.

I know I said it four times already, but please do not do sit ups. I had one client who she gave birth. She was pretty fine. Three months later, her doctor was like, oh, if you want your stomach to be flat again, do sit ups. She started doing sit-ups and then she started peeing her pants. that’s when she started sneeze peeing like every sneeze was a little bit of pee.

And then she came to my class for the first time after that experience, because she heard about, I help people, not sneeze pee, or I help people’s, lower back pain stop. She did my program and it stopped pretty quickly, within a week or two, but sit ups cause it.. Cause instability in your core, if your abs are already separated, you’re going to make it worse with sit-ups.

So no sit ups while you’re pregnant. No sit ups after you give birth and no sit-ups until three months after you stop nursing because you’re hormonal state makes your tissue soft and once your abs are already totally together because your abs go totally back together.

And you’re three months after nursing, yeah, situps are fine, but you don’t need them actually. They’re not the best way to work your abdominals.

[00:03:45] no frontal planks

Orchid: So no sit ups, no frontal planks. A frontal plank looks like the top of a pushup. Do not do frontal planks, no frontal planks. I actually had an argument with another postnatal teacher.

She put frontal planks from the get-go right away, frontal planks. And I’m like, no. I’ve looked at everybody’s programs, I’ve done a lot of people’s programs and whittled down, the best moves the programs. The programs that have frontal planks.

They don’t close their abs all the way. So the outermost abs the, the abdominis rectus the up and down, abs that fitness instructors love to, to build cause that’s the six pack, right? If the programs that do frontal planks, don’t close your apps together, all the way, the programs that avoid frontal planks do.

And so in my personal research do not do frontal planks. Not until your abs are all the way together.

[00:04:38] do not do double leg lifts

Orchid: And then do not do double leg lifts. That’s where you lay on your back and with both legs up at the same time. Single leg lifts or single leg slides different. So again, no sit-ups Nope, no, frontal planks, no double leg lifts

You don’t have to do my program, but find a postnatal workout. Mine’s only five minutes a day. It’s on the computer. So you could do it at any time. But you don’t have to do mine, find anything.

So again, don’t, over-correct your partner

find vitamin community

and do not do sit-ups.

[00:05:10] true confessions – I still have sneeze pee, 16 years after my last birth, can it help me???

Sheridan: I love it. I love it. so I have a question then. So I, I had my last baby 16 years ago and I still have a sneeze pee sometimes.

Orchid: So I have helped people 20 years after they give birth. Obviously I’m not a doctor, I’m a fitness instructor. I can’t make a guarantee, but yeah, I’ve seen people 20 years after they give birth, fix it within two weeks of doing my program two weeks.

So my program is 12 weeks long and you could do it from your phone or a computer. So it’s it’s about five, five and a half minutes a day, five to six minutes, depending on which section of the program you are. So if you have six minutes a day, you’re going to fix any AB separation and fix any pelvic floor dysfunction.

I’m going to try it and I’ll report back to people. Oh,

Orchid: awesome.

my middle son is getting married this summer and just today I was driving my son to his allergy appointment, I sneeze and I have a little pee, and I’m like, oh my gosh, I cannot pee at my son’s wedding.

oh my gosh. Yeah. Got

Sheridan: to take care of this.

So I’m so excited. I’m going to

Orchid: try it out. And I would love that I can’t wait to hear your testimonial about quitting sneeze pee because I was outside the YMCA. And I, somebody was like auditioning to work at the YMCA. And I told her I help post natal women not pee their pants. And she was like pointed at the sky.

She’s like, that’s God’s work.

I laughed so hard at that, but it’s true. I don’t like, my, I was, my mission is to end pain is as many people as possible. So I. Could not walk straight for almost nine months after I gave birth. And so that’s why I did a crazy amount of research. Also. I said my love for the human body.

I love biology. So I did so much research before I came up with my five minutes a day. So I took classic moves from physical therapy. I took moves from every program I watch and I made them more effcient. So rather than 30 minutes a day or an hour and a half a day. Okay. One program online has a thousand reps a day of one exercise.

like no mom in the freaking world. has time for a thousand reps of anything a day. I don’t want to count to a thousand, even if it doesn’t involve a rep. I made something way quicker, way more time effective. And I just, I made it. So it’s just easy.

It’s just easy. a partner comes home, holds the baby. Stop drop and work out, do your five minutes. And it will, I can’t wait to change your life about the Sheridan. I really can’t. I can’t wait until your undies are dry at all times.

It’s just really

Sheridan: bad during allergy season,

Orchid: oh, I bet. Yeah. You don’t want that. So some people have complained about like the price point of my program. It’s a little bit high, but. It’s cheaper than adult diapers, It’s way cheaper than it still. I think it’s only three months of adult diapers.

anyway. Yeah. I want this solution for you.

Sheridan: Yeah, I’ll definitely check it out. Awesome.

[00:08:23] What inspired you to create Ab Lab?

Sheridan: So I’m really curious why you decided to create this ab lab program. What was your inspiration?

thanks for asking.

Orchid: The reason why I started the program is because I trained in power yoga. So if you don’t know, there’s at least 27 major branches of yoga, that’s not even how many studios there are, or how many types there are. There’s 27. Major branches of yoga. And so a lot of people think of kind of the yoga, where you’re just breathing and stretching and just having a relaxing time.

That’s not the kind of yoga I trained in. I trained in a type of yoga that other yoga. teachers, tease and call power yoga. Cause they’re like power yoga! It’s like every inhale and exhale is a different pose. Not just every breath is a different post. The inhale and the exhale are separate poses. So it’s more like a bootcamp yoga.

So I trained in this kind of super athletic bootcamp style. And so I, when I was pregnant, I was doing chat Uranga, which is a high plank to low plank, which is. It’s kinda like doing half of a pushup. And I gained 50 pounds when I was pregnant because I was, I started out small. and so I thought I was just really buff.

I thought I was just so strong when I could do a chat Uranga. I just did yoga full out when I was pregnant. So the philosophy. Of the yoga brand that I will not name the trained me, said anything you could do before you’re pregnant. You could do when you are pregnant, anything you can do before you’re pregnant, you could do when you’re pregnant.

Not true, guys, not true. So I did full out power yoga.

[00:10:01] Orchid couldn’t walk after her birth

Orchid: I taught my whole pregnancy and then I couldn’t walk straight after I gave birth. I could not walk. I had serious hip pain and serious, low back pain. The doctor did like an MRI on my hip and an x-ray on my hip. And he’s just there’s nothing wrong with your hip.

And then I just scoured the internet and I looked at every program and once I fixed my abs, my low back pain and my hip pain stopped. So that sounds really crazy that the front of my body instability was causing the back of my body to hurt. like I said, doctors are a little confused. They look at what’s hurting and not maybe the instability in the front and the insides that’s causing that pain.

And so some people get like lower hip pain and they don’t know why. so once I figured out how to fix my abs, I was upset. I’m like, there’s such limited information on birth birthing, post birth that I printed a flyer for myself. I walked in the YMCA and I was like, you will hire me my classes at 10:00 AM on Wednesdays.

[00:11:10] fixing abs can fix a lot of problems

Orchid: She hired me and. Everyone who walked into my class, even if they came by mistake. Like some people weren’t pregnant came in by mistake, and then it fixed their problems.

They stopped having back pain. They stopped sneeze peeing. they stopped, having, just the instability of the pelvis and the core. And. That’s exciting. That’s exciting. If you look at my website, there’s women who are like, my back pain was a 10 and I couldn’t get out of bed. And then after I worked with her for two weeks, it was a zero.

there’s a testimony like that, or just, there’s not a lot of, I don’t sneeze pees anymore. Testimonials. Cause most people don’t want. That they ever did it.

so here’s the thing. I just want to be really clear doing power yoga through my pregnancy was good for a lot of parts of my body. So it is shown that if you do cardio while you’re pregnant, it helps your baby’s heart.

that’s exciting that my power yoga helped my baby’s heart. I could have done cardio that didn’t hurt my abs though. And so that’s why I had this urgency to go to the YMCA and, at the YMC to get free babysitting. So I’m like, this is where the moms go. So I started teaching at the YMCA. worked with so many moms.

Orchid: I helped people for years. And so this online program is super exciting for me because I want to help as many people as possible repair their bodies, oh, okay. Again, I hate physical pain. I hate physical pain. I hate it. I hate. Being uncomfortable to the point where my mind doesn’t work. I hate if I can’t pick up my baby as well, without having pain, I hate pain so much.

And so it actually almost causes me pain to think of how many women have pain and they don’t need it.

[00:13:01] doctors don’t have the answers

Orchid: How many women go to their doctor and their doctor tells them to do sit-ups. I actually even had a doctor come to my class. And she came to my class and she said that diastasis recti, the thing that the app separation there’s like almost like a Google for doctors.

So she looked it up on her kind of Google for doctors like a diagnostic tool. And it said, diastasis recti is only cosmetic and the only cure is surgery. So when she read that, she’s I know that’s not true. She came into my class. She learned the exercises I teach got better and then started teaching her patients, which is really cool of her.

I want the women who come to her office to have good information. And so what I’m saying is even doctors who give birth are struggling to be like, how do I fix this? How do I fix this in myself? But can you imagine every doctor in the US thinking it’s only cosmetic and that the only solution is surgery?

Because like I said, it’s a functional. Thing like muscles supporting the joints, muscles, supporting the connective tissue, like lifestyle choices, like how you get in and out of bed or how you push your stroller. Those affect the connective tissue between your abs. Every choice you make is gonna affect your body.

anyway, so that’s how I started with the reconnection ab lab is just. I is almost like an itch in my body where I’m like, I can not handle how many women are having pain that don’t need to.

Orchid: It disgust me how much money is put in into researching medicine. And they only use male subjects.

It disgusts me the inequality in medicine. It disgusts me. a lot of the studies we use are from hundreds of years ago or only studying men currently, or all those things that, women’s bodies deserve more attention. Women having pain deserves more attention, women getting support. I guess I feel like angry, like extremely angry.

the knowledge is not available to everybody. It just makes me angry that the knowledge is not available to everybody. So obviously I charge for the knowledge, which is annoying. I want to just give it away for free, but to pay for a hosting fees and to pay for all the time I put into promoting it. I need to charge for it, but if in a perfect world, if I had a magic wand

Orchid: I just have every doctor know, I would just have it be like in France where postnatal women automatically get physical therapy after. If I had a magic wand, I would just give away the information for free, but, I did real work to bring the information.

also even when I tried to give it away for free, it costs me money.

Orchid: So I would really love to get this information out to as much, many people as possible. I think it’s a good baby shower gifts. It feels like so many. Baby shower gifts are cute outfits, which are cool. Cute outfits are cool, but I think mommy being able to walk is cooler.

Sheridan: Absolutely. And 15 years later, not sneeze peeing.

Orchid: Exactly. Exactly. what would have it been like Sheridan, if right after you gave birth to every baby, you got the physical therapy and that you never had to sneeze pee? Because it’s humiliating and it’s uncomfortable. Anyway. Awesome.

[00:16:38] where to find Orchid

Sheridan: can you let people know where they can find you online and find your program and all the good stuff?

Orchid: I’d love it. If you follow me on Instagram and you could see my whole journey.

Also I’m about to shoot a stand-up comedy special, so you can look out for that.

and then, orchidcameron.com is like the hub of everything I do.

Orchid: I do one-on-one coaching. as well as my stand up when I’m going to show up in your town.

And then if you want to add me on Facebook, Please add me on Facebook. Just make sure to include, a direct message saying you met me through Sheridan’s podcast. Just let me know.

So yes, you can add me on Facebook, Instagram, and then to find my AB repair and my pelvic repair program. It’s called reconnection because you’re connecting your pelvic floor muscles or reconnecting yourself to your own breath or reconnecting yourself to your own life.

Reconnection AB as an abdominal. Lab, as in like we’re going to the lab to do a science experiment, reconnectionablab. com.

[00:17:41] conclusion

Sheridan: thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast today and sharing your experiences and your wisdom.

And I will link in the show notes to all the different. links, you talked about where they can find you. And, and then of course I promise to come back in 12 weeks and let everyone know how my peeing is going.

Orchid: that’s exciting. thank you so much for having me Sheridan and thank you for being my friend.

And also thanks for being my teacher. I’ve taken a lot of your courses and I’ve gotten so much value from it. So thank you so much. Thank you.

Sheridan: I’m excited for you to be my teacher.