Kristina Rihanoff worried she would never dance again when she battled pelvic floor issues.
Kristina Rihanoff worried she would never dance again when she battled pelvic floor issues
The 47-year-old star - who competed as a professional on 'Strictly Come Dancing' from 2008 until 2015 - suddenly began to suffer from bladder weakness when she lost all sensation in that area shortly after giving birth to Mila , eight, and worried about what would happen to her career as a result.
She told OK! Magazine: "It was scary because you think, ‘Am I ever going to dance again? At the end of the day, it’s my work, and I love it.
"I had no sensation of any kind in my pelvic floor area.
"I’m very body aware so I was like, ‘What is going on?’ I know my body inside out, I have always trained my body and competed at the professional level with very high endurance training so feeling like I couldn’t engage my core, and I couldn’t engage my pelvic floor, it really freaked me out. I was like, ‘What happened to my body? Where is all of that sensation?’"
The former 'Celebrity Big Brother' housemate - who has been in a relationship with her former 'Strictly' partner Ben Cohen since they met on the show in 2013 - was grateful that she didn't have post-natal depression following the birth but eventually found her way back to dancing so she could get back to "normal" again.
She said: "Very thankfully, I didn’t have post-natal depression, which quite a few people in my circle did have, but I had worries about the work I love. I was like, ‘Well, if this is not gonna get better, then I’m probably not going to be able to dance.’ So that was all very scary. It’s a scary process of thoughts.
"Lots of women I know want to get back to activity after having a child, because you just want to feel kind of normal again. You want to go for that walk, that run, that yoga class… If you feel like you can’t control yourself so you shouldn’t go, that adds to depression, that adds to mental health issues, that adds to feeling inadequate and feeling bad about yourself."
Kristina then decided to leave television behind and these days operates a dance school in Northampton.
She said: "I really, really missed it the first couple of years. You have a withdrawal. It was so vibrant and fun working together to make something really cool and amazing. Then you get busy with your life and now I have a dance school which has grown so much. I dance every day with the kids, and I have different ages and levels from ages four and five to adult couples. I take them to competitions constantly."
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