So the other day we had dinner with friends at their house and at one point while standing by in the family room to help the kids settle back down after a mid-game frackass I started thumbing through a book about working out with those big pump-up Pilates exercise balls.

This afternoon, sort of on a whim, I decided to try one of the recommended “subtle core-building” exercises on the biggest of several balls my partner used to use as a chair when she had a sore back. And the exercise really is a simple, subtle one. You sit square on the ball, your knees at roughly 90 degrees, and then bounce with a sort of elbows-bent, marching-band arm movement. The instructions had been to do the exercise for a while, five minutes or more, and to pay attention to what core muscles were engaged or flexed.

And it really is a subtle exercise. At first it was all about finding balance, and then rhythm, but once I found my center of gravity and a good pace I started noticing, sure enough, all sorts of muscles I generally don’t pay any attention to gently engaging and taking on more of a central role. The first big sensations were in my core muscles near my solar plexus — not my usual abdominals or obliques but something a little deeper.

So that was cool, but the other thing I really started to notice after my mid-torso muscles was my pelvic-floor muscles. After just a few minutes the slow, steady pulsing and flexing — too gentle by far to be anything like clenching… really no effort at all — just started reaching deeper, engaging not just my PC muscles but lots of other ones as well, leg muscles, girdle muscles, muscles around my perineum, and even muscles I think maybe I notice only when I’m ejaculating.

Anyway, it was just a slow, sensual not-quite-erotic feeling, and — me being me after all — I began to wonder how it would work with more direct stimulation like a smaller bump or ball near my prostate. And then, me being me with my little lint-trap memory, I remembered someone mentioning a gag/novelty sex toy that was basically just a Pilates ball with an attached dildo.

A little bit of Googling turned up a couple of products along those lines (or at least a couple of repackagings of the same product — as if that never happens.) You can see one from the first randomly Googled vendor that included a photo of the actual product here.

I obviously couldn’t say if the product would work for anyone else, male or female — especially since I haven’t even tried one yet — but I can say that I think it might not be the big joke it was often presented when it was first introduced. I happen to think you could probably get the same benefit from a regular ball and a regular insertable of your choice. Anyway, if anyone else has tried one of those things, or if you’ve noticed the sort of inner/erotic sensations I was trying to describe (with or without insertables) I’d love to hear about it.

[Note: Today’s photo is a bit less work safe than usual. But, again, only a bit. —fl]