Core and Floor Restore: An Interview with Bernadette Lack

B is a midwife, personal trainer, wife, mother, published academic and the Founder of Core and Floor Restore (now stocking Nurtur Tea). Her goal is for you to feel epic in your body so you can do with it what you need and want to! In this insightful interview with B we learn about her own experience with incontinence, giving birth and the state of postpartum care. Enjoy this interview with this amazing woman. Thanks B!

Can you go more into detail about the incontinence you experienced since you were 19-years-old and how this developed into Core and Floor Restore? 

At 19 I started leaking urine. I now put this down to childhood constipation (which is why I’m so passionate about pooing), really bad hayfever, dancing (constantly sucking my belly button into my spine and working against my bodies natural alignment) and being a high achieving child (aka tense, when the mind is tense the body is tense). I keep this a secret throughout my 20s. I only ever leaked when i sneezed, I was super fit, ran marathons, pole danced etc and never had any issues, towards the end of my 20s it occasionally happened when I coughed too. 

Once we decided to have our own babes I knew I better get onto it (I'd just ignored it prior to then and kept it a secret, no one knew not even my partner or parents). I saw a physio in Melbourne, she told me to do my kegels, stop running and wait 4 to 6 months to get pregnant, I pretty much followed her advice without ALL the kegels she prescribed but as soon as I hit 6 weeks and started vomiting i wet myself. I then basically spent the next 24 weeks covered in urine and vomit, it was horrendous and i was so traumatised by pregnancy. I doubted my bodies ability to give birth, I couldn’t sneeze how could I give birth. I ended up rocking my homebirth and from there decided if i could do that, i could heal. 

Core and floor was originally developed for me. I'm a researcher, i love research and one thing that never made sense to me was that you would just simply squeeze and release a muscle to heal from an issue. So i set out trialling different things people were offering around the world and then developed core and floor based on what worked for me. I never imagined I'd be where I am now with so many people doing it but when I started sharing my story, I realised everyone else had a similar story to share and so core and floor naturally developed from the need i saw in my local community and then progressed to global thanks to the internet and the wider need. 

You have so many talents and services you offer women. Do you have a particular area that you are most passionate about? (E.g. postpartum core or women in pregnancy?)

Ohhhh look I’m a midwife in every cell of my body and birth is by far my greatest passion, mostly before birth is seen as the end but its really the beginning and so what I’m passionate now is postpartum. And when I say postpartum I’m talking about the fact that postpartum lasts forever. 

I'm passionate about people having a publicly funded holistic approach to healing. It blows my mind that the medical system drops a mother as soon as she gives birth. Pregnancy and birth are the biggest emotional, mental and physical events we ever go through in our lifetime and culturally and medically we have no recognition for that fact that that needs time to heal from and be processed. So thats my biggest passion, whether it be emotionally support women heal from birth or transform into motherhood, offering them support during motherhood or physically helping them heal although the way I see it the body can never fully heal without the mind healing too. 

I recently read an interview with you where you said ‘Birth is a physiological event’. What did you mean by that? Is that the case for every woman?

Physiological means it is a function of the body aka something that body has inbuilt mechanisms to do. Just like breathing, weeing, pooing and orgasm. So yes it is the case for everybody however our body can experience issues with these functions. So just like we can experience issues with breathing, weeing, pooing, orgasm and movement etc we can experience issues with birth. The main reason I believe we have issues with birth in our culture is because we have put a physiological event in a pathophysiological place (aka a hospital, a place of sickness and disease). 

Do you see a lot of women who have experienced birth trauma? What would be your advice for women who are currently suffering or have suffered from this?

The current stats are that 1:3 experience birth trauma and 12% experience obstetric violence. Book a birth debrief, I believe everyone needs a debrief post birth, regardless of whether you would see it as traumatic and the reason for this is that birth is transformational. It forces you to become a different person, science proves this but we've known it. And that transformation can not come without a story, without our wounds being brought up and felt. 

Tell us your favourite fact about the vagina. 

That it is not penis shaped, that it is this incredible structure thats designed to change shape based on need and that it is incredibly instinctual, it knows how to keep us safe. 

Your instagram followers obviously adore you and we love your inspirational and educational posts. What’s the one topic that get’s everyone commenting?

hmmm I don’t know because I never have time to look at the comments hahaha i think people like when I bring humour and when my hubby gets involved. mostly people love my stories and when I share the honest, raw truth. 

Your exercise programs and live classes look awesome. I can’t wait to start them in January 2023. Do you teach women all across Australia? 

Worldwide actually ;-) if the time is right I have had people join me from many different countries live which is really very cool.