why is a <bridgehead> forcing a page break?

for better or worse, i'm starting each set of exercises
with a 

  <bridgehead>Exercises</bridgehead>

since i want:

1) for now, the exercises to start at the current location on
   the printed page

2) i don't want any Exercises headers to appear in the ToC

and yet, the "Exercises" header is being forced to the next
printed page in the PDF output.

  i *did* add page breaks before section levels 1, 2 and 3
but from what i read, this should *not* affect pagination
for <bridgehead>s.

  suggestions?

rday

p.s.  i did add the "renderas" attribute to <bridgehead>, and
i set it to "other", but this made no difference.  it's still
being forced to the next page.