Pelvic Floor Cramp at 4am
A personal reflection on pain, awareness and a different way of listening to the body
Last night I woke at 4am with a familiar pain. It’s something I’ve experienced periodically for at least 5 years. A deep pelvic floor cramp that can be intense enough to wake me from sleep and leave me pacing around the house in the middle of the night.
When it arrives, it can feel all-consuming. The pain often radiates through my pelvic floor, moving from front to back or back to front in waves of cramping and tension.
Historically, I’ve reached for painkillers (something I usually avoid if possible).
I’ve also paced, stretched, rocked… I’ve tried to get away from it.
And I understand why. Pain is real. This pain is sometimes excruciating. When we’re in pain, of course we want it to stop.
But recently I’ve been experimenting with something different…
A different relationship with pain
I’ve written before about listening to the body.
About becoming curious rather than immediately trying to fix what we’re experiencing. Last night, I initially found myself doing exactly that. As the pain arrived, I noticed the familiar urge to tense and brace. I felt the familiar dread and panic.
The thought:
“Here we go again.”
But instead of trying to escape the sensation, I brought my awareness towards it: I breathed, stayed with it and felt it.
Not because I enjoyed it or because it wasn’t painful, but because I was curious about what might happen if I stopped resisting it quite so hard.
Listening, understanding and responding
Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time exploring this symptom. I have my own understanding of the deeper experiences and patterns that may sit beneath it and keep it coming back. Working on these underlying emotional triggers has given me long periods of freedom from this pain.
In a sense, I’ve listened and to a degree I’ve understood. But last night reminded me that sometimes understanding isn’t enough. There was something powerful about simply being with it, being present with my body’s experience.
Feeling the sensation directly and meeting it rather than resisting it.
At one point I found myself thinking:
“I know why you’re here.”
Not in a way that was analytical or intellectual, more as a quiet acknowledgement and a recognition.
And from there, I responded, I changed position and brought gentle movement and support to the areas of my body that felt most affected. At one point I moved onto all fours, which felt more comfortable and allowed some of the tension to soften.
I listened, responded and worked with my body rather than against it.
What changed?
The pain didn’t disappear instantly, but something about the experience was different.
The waves of pain were quite a bit smaller and less intense.
The familiar escalation to an excruciating peak never fully arrived.
Instead of lasting for hours, it was over within around half an hour.
And then I was back asleep. The pain was real, but different; my experience of it had changed.
Is there more than one layer to discomfort?
These experiences leave me wondering whether there are sometimes two things happening when we experience pain.
There is the sensation itself, the pain And then there is also our relationship to the sensation:
Our fear, dread and anticipation.
Our tension, resistance and bracing.
Our desperate yet understandable wish for it to stop.
Sometimes those layers can become woven together. While we may not always feel able to control the sensation itself, we may have more influence over our relationship with it than we realise.
A gentle note
It feels crucial to acknowledge that not all pain is the same. Pain deserves appropriate medical attention and support. This article isn’t a suggestion that we should ignore symptoms, avoid treatment or simply think differently about conditions that require care.
But for me, this experience was a reminder that awareness can sometimes be powerful medicine in its own right – not because it necessarily magically removes pain. But because it changes how we meet it. And sometimes, when our body feels heard, understood and responded to… patterns of holding and symptoms that are rooted in stress can begin to soften or shift.
If you'd like support exploring your own symptoms
If this way of relating to symptoms resonates with you, there are different ways we can explore it together.
In an Embodied Health session, we can gently explore the history of a symptom, the patterns surrounding it, and what your body may be asking for beneath the surface. Learn more about Embodied Health or book a session using the link below.
In Somatic Bodywork, we work more directly with the body’s experience through touch, breath, movement and awareness, creating space for tension, sensation and held patterns to be felt and understood. Learn more about Somatic Bodywork, or book a session, using the link below.
Neither approach begins with trying to force symptoms to disappear. Instead, we begin by listening to what your body is communicating, and exploring what it might need.