Jana Danielson joins Dr. Conners to discuss pelvic floor healing and her own product that she developed to help men and women (and kids!) heal: the Cooch Ball (the Gooch ball for men.)
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About Jana Danielson
Jana Danielson is an award-winning wellness entrepreneur who, through her experience with physical pain, turned her mess into her message, which has now become her mission. She is also an Amazon International Best Selling Author, Founder of Lead Pilates and Lead Integrated Health Therapies and the Metta District, her online wellness community.
Coaches and consults with tens of thousands of women from all over the world to help improve their quality of life, their confidence, and their impact in this world.
After her experience with chronic pain, Jana discovered the healing power of a mindset shift, which she now uses to help her clients heal.
Jana Danielson is an award-winning wellness entrepreneur, best-selling author, and the owner of Lead Pilates, Lead Integrated Health Therapies, and her online wellness community, The Metta District.
Stay tuned for Episode 33 (you can see all episodes on the Conners Clinic Live page!)
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Transcript
Dr. Conners
Hello, everybody. This is Dr. Kevin Conners. Welcome to another episode of Conners Clinic Live. We have a special guest person that I just met a few months ago, but has become a quick friend because I love what she does. Jana Danielson is from Canada, lives in Mexico. She is the leader, the inventor of equipment for health. She is a leader of Metta District, which is a Pilates Studio, Health Recovery Studio, really, and a bunch of online courses that we’re really recommending a lot of our members to start to get involved with. And this really simple ball that she invented called the Cooch Ball, that seems so simple, but she’s going to spend some time today explaining it to us. And I’m going to turn the microphone over to you, young lady.
Jana Danielson
Dr. Conners, thank you so much for that introduction. I’m happy to be here. I want to just start by, I want to show you the ball. When Dr. Conners said it’s simple, it’s simple. It truly is a ball. I’m going to talk a little bit about how this came to be, how it has helped the tens of thousands of people that I have come in contact with and why.
The body is amazing at healing when you can understand it, communicate with it, and give it what it needs. So I am a Pilates instructor turned pelvic floor champion because of my own pain early on in my life. I’m the mom of three boys, and I watch TV. And so all those things you see these commercials about incontinence products and the commercials which show these big burly construction workers and the fancy lady in her business suit with this newly designed incontinence product now at your local grocery store or pharmacy that you could pick up. And I wanted to do a little bit of research. And so did you know that the incontinence product industry was a $14 billion industry? Why are so many people all over the world subscribing to this product as the solution for an issue in the body that’s really about muscles, right?
So if you wanted to get stronger arms or stronger legs or have better posture, you would work on the muscles to change that. And yet when it comes to Pelvic floor health, the first issue was no one was talking about it. And it kind of made me a little bit mad because this is our body. And why are we not talking about it? It wasn’t until recently that I learned that the main nerve that comes from the brain into our pelvic floor is called the pudendal nerve. It is a sensory nerve, which means it creates sensations, and it’s a motor nerve. So it takes the communication from the brain to that area so that it can function properly. And I just want to add that the pelvic floor is designed for multifunctions. It holds our pelvic organs up inside of us. We live on a planet with gravity. It’s the floor of our core. So if it’s not properly functioning because we live on a planet with gravity, over time, those organs inside our body, our bladder, in women our uterus, they’re going to start to descend. So functionally, we need this muscle to be responding so that it can simply hold our organs inside of us.
It’s a very sensual muscle as well. So when it works good, it works good. And in amongst that is sprinkled all these moments of lack of confidence and pain. Often there can be trauma to that area and we become very disconnected. We can get a lot of pain in our hips, a lot of tightness in our low back. And what some people don’t realize is simple experiences like cold, tingly feet, like constipation. Those are just two very regular examples of actual pelvic floor dysfunction. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to cough or sneeze and pee a little bit. Pelvic floor can be so much more than that.
Dr. Conners
I think most people know the term pelvic floor muscles and they kind of get an idea of what you’re talking about, but they don’t know how it correlates to the greater picture of health. They might go to the point of say, oh, that’s just for incontinence. And I don’t have incontinence. I’m not buying adult diapers yet, so that’s not an issue for me. But there’s literally almost nobody that goes to the step you’re talking about that it can tie into constipation, bowel habit regularity. It can tie into low back pain, it can tie into neuropathy issues, it can tie into lower extremity pain and knee pain, abdominal pain, menstrual irregularity, dysfunction with male sexual function, female sexual function. You can just go on and on. Everything basically from the bottom of the ribs down. Any dysfunction can be tied to that muscle that is supposed to be holding everything up. That’s a key point, I think, that listeners need to grasp that it’s more than why don’t wear diapers, so I don’t need to think about this.
Jana Danielson
So what a lot of people don’t know is that in about 90% of cases, erectile dysfunction in men, post prostate cancer surgery in men, and in incontinence pelvic floor pain in women, 90% of those people who are seeking medical attention actually could heal and regain function through proper movement and proper understanding of how the body works. If there were ten women in a waiting room in a clinic waiting for a pelvic floor mesh pinup surgery, only one of those ten actually needs to go into that room and get that surgery done. And that was research done by Dr. Bruce Crawford, who is a urogynecologist out of Reno, Nevada.
Dr. Conners
So what do you do? That’s the question. What do you do? Do I have to buy this big piece of equipment that’s going to sit in the corner of my bedroom and become a clothes hanger.
Jana Danielson
No, not at all. And there are like internal and I’m a big proponent of pelvic floor physiotherapists. I think it’s very important to have an internal examination. But what I realized through all of the kinesiology and personal training research is that a muscle fiber, our facial connective tissue, our nerve tissue, it needs oxygen rich, nutrient rich blood to be a flourishing tissue. So it’s like a plant. If we don’t water a plant, if we don’t have that plant in sunshine, the plant is not going to flourish. Our muscle fibers, our connective tissue, our communication system through our nerves is not going to flourish. When we have poor posture, when we are dehydrated, when we don’t have proper nutrition, our sleep isn’t on point. All of those things point to a lack of blood flow. When there’s a lack of blood flow, there’s a lack of environment to change, which means simply, we have to create the environment for change. And that’s exactly what the Cooch Ball does. It’s also co branded for the guys as the Gooch Ball. So my husband and I use the same product. But here’s really how it works.
When you sit on the ball and you can sit on the floor, you can sit on a chair. You don’t have to cross your legs in front of you. It’s very accessible, doesn’t really discriminate between getting on the floor or not. When the weight of the body sits on the ball and the ball is about two thirds full for optimal experience in the body, if you know a little bit about fascia work and you would take a foam roller and roll out your legs, it’s kind of like a hurts so good experience. That’s what I’m trying to mimic in the pelvic floor. When you’re sitting on the ball for simply three minutes a day, going through proper diaphragmatic breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, and understanding that when you inhale your pelvic floor is at rest. And when you exhale, it’s like when you’re sitting on the ball, it’s like you’re lifting an elevator. The elevator is going up into the body, and then on the exhale, the elevator is returning to the lobby. When you understand that concept and know what that feels like in the body, the weight of the body on the ball creates the fascia release.
So now we’re getting oxygen rich, nutrient rich blood to the area. So now these tissues are like having a party because they can actually they’re like, yes, please. I would love all this nutrition. And then through the breath work that I teach simultaneously, you’re teaching the new function, the improved function. So whether you have a pelvic floor that’s too tight, we call it hypertonic, like a rock wall, or whether your pelvic floor is hypotonic, a lack of tone, it’s kind of like the perfect storm because the weight of the body on the ball does the release. The breathing on the ball does the activation or the function. So you’re getting both sides of the coin and your body is kind of drinking up exactly how much of each of those experiences release and strength it needs in that moment.
Dr. Conners
How did you come up with it? You started teaching pilates. Is that right?
Jana Danielson
Again, I taught fitness for many years before I taught Pilates. And I always believed that my core was my six pack. Those were my abs. It wasn’t until I started doing my Pilates training that I realized that the core is a three dimensional cylinder. It has a roof, which is your diaphragm. It has a floor, which is the pelvic floor. And then it has four different muscles that create the abdominal cylinder. Through my Pilates training, this all came together and I was like, wait, what? You mean the six pack abdominals? We shouldn’t be chasing those. And in fact, we shouldn’t be. It’s the deepest set of abdominals called the transverse abdominals, which are the main muscle of respiration. That’s what the diaphragm talks to. And nobody seemed to have known this. And I was like, why aren’t we talking about this? Why aren’t we teaching this? And so when I realized there was a lack of understanding and a lack of tool to help men and women outside of the medical system understand this, I decided to, actually it was my husband one night we were eating supper. And I was kind of in a little bit of an edgy mood, and I was like, I need to spread the news.
And he said, well, create a solution then. And I created the Cooch Ball and really haven’t looked back. The ball is easy to use, it comes with training videos for men and for women. Because I believe that the education around this is absolutely key. And once you understand that, you’ll notice. You’ll do what I call “live what you learn.” I don’t want you just focusing on your pelvic floor when you’re sitting on your cooch or gooch ball. I want you to understand that when you’re picking up big boxes, when you’re doing your fall cleaning, or when you are doing your yard work or when you’re out for a walk or when you’re on vacation in Europe walking on those cobblestone streets and you need to create more stability in your body, I want the pelvic floor to work for you. I don’t want us to believe that because there’s been another candle on our birthday cake that we should wave the white flag and experience these things that society has told us, well, we chose to be a mom and have a baby. Well, welcome to the pee club, you get a lifetime membership, and that’s not the case. It truly is a mindset shift.
Dr. Conners
So I know you don’t want people buying this and not using it. So what comes with it? You mentioned the videos. So on your website, when you purchase it, you watch the training videos?
Jana Danielson
Yeah. So what happens, the Cooch Ball Bundle comes with the ball and it’s deflated. So you get a pump that comes with it and you pump it up two thirds. There’s like a little intro postcard in there. It’s called the Quick Start Guide. And then what you’ll get access to is your very own student dashboard, where when you buy the Cooch Ball bundle, you actually get both the “Create Your Pelvic Floor Upgrade” course, which is focused on women and their body. Then you also get the Gooch Power course. And my husband Jason actually is in that one. And we talk all about the Pelvic floor from a male perspective as well. There is a bonus Pelvic Floor Secrets webinar in there because it really is the layered learning that starts to help you live what you learn. So basically, the bundle, you have the whole A to Z or soup to nuts package for you to start improving your quality of life. Now, Dr. Conners, I do want to say I’ve mentioned three minutes a few times for many, many people, when they sit on the ball, there’s going to be what we call the Ouch factor.
And the ouch factor is the biofeedback that the body is giving you. So when you sit on the ball, you might only sit for 15 seconds for the first week, and then maybe you’ll go up to 30 seconds. But here’s the key. As long as your breath is your guide, that you’re breathing in and out very calmly, you’re not triggering your sympathetic nervous system, which is that fight or flight. As soon as you get on the ball and that Ouch factor is a little bit higher than you would like, we will naturally protect. We might not breathe as calmly. You’re communicating to your sympathetic nervous system alarm bells and everything is going to protect instead of allowing the release to happen. So that’s my one rule, is allow your breath to be your guide. If you find yourself holding your breath, ripping through your jaw, sit on your couch, sit on your mattress. There’s ways that you can take a little bit take a little bit of air out of it. There’s ways to customize this, and it might take you three months to work up to three minutes. But what I can tell you is when you get off the ball, over time, you’re going to feel this beautiful, warm, tingly sensation; that’s blood flow.
You’re going to become very almost like a connoisseur of your health and wellness from the inside out. And you’re going to understand what’s going on. And that’s extremely empowering when we know how to connect the dots between what we just did and how the body benefited.
Dr. Conners
So, I mean, it’s very exciting to say we’re going to have an exercise that’s going to help support our whole abdominal cavity and at maximum, it’s going to take us three minutes a day. You might only be able to do it for 20 seconds a day to begin with. That’s a lot better than thinking that I have to put in a 20 minutes Tae-Bo exercise video in order to start feeling healthy. So it’s doable. When exercise and so important of an exercise is this, it just seems a little more overwhelming to people. They don’t do it. So what good is it? So this is simple, easy to do and doable. Do you have any age limits? Like if a person is 85 years old and they’re thinking about their mother with dementia. What would be your recommendation for somebody like that?
Jana Danielson
That’s the one thing I say about this is this little tool really doesn’t discriminate. I’ve had I believe from what I know, my oldest Cooch Ball client is 92 or was 92 when she bought this. Even people that have advanced stages of osteoporosis, right when you’re sitting on the ball, there can be a little bit of instability. So what I say for my clients who are in that realm where they might have some osteoporosis or some osteoarthritis and their confidence with maybe sitting on a hard chair on a ball with the instability, simply sit on your couch or put a cushion on your chair. Add to the stability that way. I’ve had children actually as young as ten and eleven years old. Their moms buy them the Cooch Ball because they are dealing with bedwetting and they won’t go for sleepovers to their friend’s house because they have a lack of confidence. And even in those young kids, they are usually high caliber athletes or dancers. And they’re holding this tension in their body because of their sport or their art. And by virtue of that, their pelvic floor gets tight and they have these bedwetting episodes.
So it really does span, it’s really ageless. I’m going to say keep it away from your four legged furry friends because puppies like this ball too. It is not puppy friendly. It’s very easy for them to get their teeth into this. Someone said you need to create the Pooch Ball to come with the Cooch Ball. So I can have a ball for my dog to play with and then I can have my own ball. And of course, when someone is younger, I always recommend if you have a movement expert in your realm of health and wellness, professional or physiotherapist, always check with them because everyone’s situation is very different.
Dr. Conners
I’m excited about it. We’re going to have links down here for our listeners to get one of these. How long does it take to get once they order it? A week or so.
Jana Danielson
Yeah, we fulfill out of the US. So if you’re in the US, it doesn’t take long at all. We do fulfill internationally. So just be a little bit patient if you are in Australia or over in the UK. Takes just a couple of days longer.
Dr. Conners
And like Jana said, all the videos come with it. Your quick start guide you’re up and running. You’re using really some changes with constipation, all sorts of neurological issues in the abdominal. Help build those pelvic floor muscles back. Jana, thank you so much for being with us today. I appreciate it. And I wanted you to give a little bit of plug about something else you got coming up here, too.
Jana Danielson
Yes. Yeah. Well, you are a guest on it. So we are doing the Medicine of Mindset summit in conjunction with Dr. Talks happening from January 24 to 31st. That’s actually how Dr. Conners and I met. He was so gracious to be on what is my very first hosting gig with a summit. Now, this summit is a taste of our conversation here, there’s more of it.
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NOTE: All of the above statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This and any product(s) discussed are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Dustin has been passionate about holistic health since he met his wife, Dr Mallory Ranem (Conners) 20 years ago. As the Digital Media Manager, he coordinates content across Conners Clinic’s large online presence, including written, video, and audio.
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