Jaki Nett knows what it's like to live with incontinence. She knows it consumes every waking moment. She knows it means staying on the lookout for the nearest bathroom. She knows how choosing an outfit for the day becomes less about what you want to wear and more about what's most likely to hide embarrassing leaks.

But although Nett has lived with urinary incontinence for years, she found a way out – a unique method called Felt Sense that she developed for strengthening the pelvic muscles.

Living With Incontinence
When Nett, now 59 and a yoga teacher in St. Helena, Calif., was diagnosed with uterine fibroids, she was determined not to have surgery to remove them. Instead, she wanted to try healing them holistically with the help of her Iyengar yoga practice. She tried herbs, acupuncture, acupressure and other remedies, but her fibroids continued to grow. She was plagued by side effects including intense pain, a lack of interest in sex and a growing inability to hold her urine.

"I knew where every bathroom was," says Nett, who is known for her openness and frankness about discussing the subject of incontinence. "I learned how to pee in cups and bottles. I dressed to pee."

It was the impact on her mode of dress that was particularly upsetting, she says. Nett, a former Playboy Bunny, was very concerned with how she looked and dressed, and suddenly she had to wear loose-fitting clothes to hide stains. Still, she refused to give in to wearing a bulky pad. "I'd worked too long to wear thongs to end up wearing a pad," she says.

Nett finally decided to try surgery for some relief and found a doctor who would perform the operation without removing her ovaries. The surgery was successful, but it took Nett a while to get back to her normal self. Unfortunately, continence was not something that came along with her healing. Over the years, she tried many of the recommended treatments for incontinence, including a device that shocks the muscles of the vagina, Kegel exercises, vaginal weights and more, but nothing worked.

As a longtime yoga practitioner, Nett had used yoga to help her live with the fibroids before her surgery. One day after surgery while practicing her yoga, she felt a contraction in her pelvic floor that she had never felt before. She immediately went to look up that muscle in her anatomy book. "From that awareness and that knowledge, I started doing more research," says Nett. Step by step she started learning how to move and not move the appropriate muscles in that part of the body and over a period of months cured herself of her incontinence.

Today, that's the method that Nett shares with students around the world, young and old, who are struggling with daily incontinence.

The Felt Sense Method
Nett, who also teaches psychology at a local college, begins by helping her students validate themselves through telling their own story – be it out loud or in a private journal. "The first thing that a woman has to do is be validated," she says. "Incontinence is very embarrassing. The self-esteem tends to be low."

She starts by sharing her story in a very open manner. "There is a hunger, a need for people to be very frank with (women with incontinence)," says Nett.

Next, she educates them about their bodies, presenting the anatomy of the pelvic floor and the physiology of where urine comes from. "That empowers them with a little knowledge," says Nett. "It's amazing how many people don't know simple things about how the body works."

Then, using visualization techniques, they begin to learn how to make contact with the two main muscle groups of the pelvic floor. Understanding and invoking these muscles together is unique to Felt Sense, says Nett, as other methods for trying to access these muscles only direct one to "contract and release" or try to stop the urine flow. Students learn how to make conscious contact with these muscles both separately and together.

Finally, Nett helps students tone and strengthen these muscle groups through specially-designed yoga postures based on the Iyengar method of yoga, which emphasizes proper alignment. Women have to retrain their bodies, she insists. "Once we work these muscles, they will start working again," says Nett. "These muscles can be conditioned. It's just like conditioning the muscle of your arm."

How long does it take? It depends on your condition, age and other factors, says Nett, but most people can expect to regain full urinary continence within months. She recommends students work the pelvic muscles using Felt Sense whenever they think about it – even while driving in the car.

Other Benefits of Felt Sense
Besides restoring continence, Nett says strengthening the pelvic floor through Felt Sense can provide a variety of other benefits.

A lax pelvic floor can make sex less fulfilling, she says. By restoring strength to those muscles, women can gain increased orgasm intensity and frequency. Weak pelvic floors also can cause women to bring air into the vagina during intercourse, according to Nett, which can make an embarrassing sound.

In addition, a strong pelvic floor should be a precursor to serious weightlifting, she says. Many women have injured the vaginal muscles if they begin training before the pelvic floor is properly strengthened.

Today, Nett is proud to say she can go for several hours before using the restroom after feeling the initial urge to urinate. That's a long way from her days of dashing to the nearest toilet, and it's a path down which she hopes she can guide many others.

Want to see more?

• When Laughing Makes You Leak: Fast Facts About Stress Urinary Incontinence
• Active Living: Managing Urinary Incontinence
• Staying Active, Controlling Incontinence: A Primer for Men and Women
• Breathe In, Breathe Out: The Art of Yoga
• The Art of a Kegel
• Turn up the Heat! Reshape Your Body With Hot Yoga
• Talk about it!