Pelvic Pain

I have pelvic pain. What can I expect from therapy with Healthy Pelvy pelvic floor therapy?

Many people experience some kind of pain related to their pelvic floor, pelvic, sexual experience, or bowel/bladder function. Unfortunately, if they have finally gained the courage to bring it up to a healthcare provider, it is dismissed. Or they are encouraged to address it in various and unhelpful ways: drink alcohol, take pain pills, just breathe.

Sure, the goal is to decrease the pain communication potentially via alcohol, pain medication (whose job it is to disrupt pain signals), or breathing to calm your nervous system. However, without actual guidance and assessment, it’s really hard to do this on your own.

The way we address your pain will depend completely on your specific body and the reasons of your pain.

For example, when a patient comes to us with pain with intercourse, the conversation begins with finding out exactly what about intercourse in painful. Is it penetration? Is it the friction throughout? Deeper pressure? Is it because of scar tissue after a tear during labor of a child? Is it because of high tension in the pelvic floor muscles from the emotional side of things?

Then from there, we develop a course of action. We may focus on directly addressing the pelvic floor via an assessment (always with thorough explanation of what to expect and with informed and signed consent). We may work our way up to that by focusing externally: is your whole body holding tension? Are there stretches and breathing exercises we could do first?

Often times, we will work on a person (physically perform what is called manual therapy) on surrounding muscles systems a) to physically address those muscle and tissue areas and b) begin to connect with the person’s nervous system to gain more familiarity.

Surprisingly, we’ve found that often times the source of pain is not always exactly in the pelvic floor. We’ve even ahd patients find relief without ever having an internal exam or treatment - although that is much more exact and provides clearer information.

(All we’re saying is that you do not have to be scared to come to us if you’re resistant to an internal exam. We are highly trained to work around that, if that’s the case!)