Paula Garbourg's book, The Secret of the Ring Muscles explains that sphincter-exercises can help reduce or even eliminate asthma, bed-wetting, childbirth, menstruation problems, nursing, depression, developmental disabilities, flat feet, hemorrhoids, prolapse of the uterus, tremors, varicose veins, nervous tics, excessive sweating and even more.

There is a powerful exercise to solve this weakness, yet so simple because it only has to do with the way we chew. Chewing should be done with the lips closed, but with the oral cavity open as wide as possible. When chewing is done correctly all the sphincters and intestines work in rhythm and cause the abdomen to contract, improving digestion.

This exercise returns the sphincters to normal operation and the demand for more food than the body needs melts away. It is possible to eat enough without the fear of getting fat. Just make sure to open your jaws widely enough with each chew to bring all the sphincter muscles into action. This reduces your body's craving to eat and also enables your body to burn up more calories more efficiently

When I first interviewed Paula Garbourg, she politely answered my questions but after an hour I still felt I had no real understanding of what she was trying to explain. She then had me lie on the bed and hold my hands over my eyes. l didn't know what to expect. For about 10 minutes nothing happened. She asked me what I felt and I replied that it was boring just lying there. "It's not nothing," she replied, "it's an exercise." My legs were bent and my knees began to rock slowly from side to side. After a while, my toes began to stretch then my feet circled around and around at the ankles. These movements happened spontaneously and they stopped every lime I tried to direct them or became self-conscious. At one point I took my hands off my eyes, and my arms began in to stretch. After about an hour of vigorous exercising, my body lay still my arms at the sides, as if it were telling me it had had enough. I sat up, feeling relaxed and refreshed. On subsequent visits, Garbourg taught me more exercises. Essentially a healthy person, I didn't expect much from sphincter gymnastics. Then, during one session, she asked me if having such a high-pitched voice bothered me. Yes, I replied. (When I answer the phone, people ask if they can speak to my mommy.) She had me sit on the edge of a chair with my knees together and recite a children's nursery rhyme, while contracting the urogenital sphincter once with every syllable. After a few minutes, a rich, alto voice rang out free and resonant. It was an astonishing experience. An Israeli entertainer told me how practicing the exercises vastly improved her singing voice. But she asked not to be named saying "I don't want people to be thinking about my sphincters while I'm singing." There are exercises which can be done while driving, watching television or relaxing, and I have incorporated some of these into my daily life, for example, a jaw-stretching exercise for improving digestion. But I found it extremely difficult to spend an hour a day lying down and doing simple contraction and relaxing exercises at home. A prolonged effort over a long period of time may be requited before any results ate noticed. "If you've had a problem for 30 years, you can't expect it to go away overnight," Garbourg stresses.