What Does a Typical Pelvic Floor Therapy Treatment Look Like

Just as with the evaluation, what a treatment session can look like varies greatly between clinics and pelvic floor providers. Remember, pelvic floor therapist is not a protected term, meaning anyone can claim this role. A pelvic floor therapist should be a licensed occupational therapy or physical therapy provider. However, it is a speciality within these professions. This means that a provider takes a collection of continued education, mentorship, skill sharing, and experience to curate their care. This experience can vary greatly, and so can passions or preferred treatment methods within the pelvic health specialty.

Below I’ll outline what a typical pelvic floor therapy treatment session looks like at Anxious Pelvis Clinic.

A Typical Treatment

Treatment will depend on what’s needed for you in your plan of care, and on that specific day. Here you’re the leader of your care, and your therapist is your guide. Everything is always optional and done with your full consent.

Whichever approaches are used, we will talk about them first. This way you know your options and why we might use a certain approach. You are an active participant in guiding your care.

Different treatment approaches in a session can look like: 

• Manual Techniques 

  • Body work that works with the muscles and the nervous system to treat the musculoskeletal system and your brain response to that touch or mobilization

  • Abdominal massage for constipation management

  • Soft tissue mobilization to increase blood flow and increase mobility of the tissue

  • Scar massage and training for self massage

• Visceral mobilization 

  • Techniques that assist in mobilization of the organs, such as the bowels, bladder, uterus, ovaries, and more.

• Vascular and lymph drainage for the pelvic floor 

  • Did you know that blood vessels can have trigger points!?

• Pelvic Tool Training 

  • Training in the use of wands, dilators, or other assistive tools to help you with your pelvic floor therapy while you’re at home 

• Nervous System Regulation Training 

  • Every session will involve a level of nervous system regulation. Sometimes this is woven into the methods of treatment, sometimes it is direct strategy training for you to have in your toolbox 

• Guided Meditation and Visualizations

• Breath Training

• Neuro-retraining 

  • These can be techniques that work towards rewiring the brain’s pain response, an urgency response, numbness, fear associations, and more

• Movement 

  • This can be stretches, strengthening exercises, mobility training, and more

    • Functional movements are often used to carry out interventions into what you’re actually doing in your daily life

• Pelvic Floor Trigger Point Release

  • External pelvic floor

  • Internal vaginal 

  • Internal rectal 

  • Read more on internal work here

• Education 

  • This can be on the pelvic floor, your anatomy, how your pelvic organs are functioning, why to use certain positions or engage in certain pelvic health habits, chronic pain responses, and much more! 

  • If pregnant, this can also include breathing techniques and positioning during delivery, stages of labor and how to care for the pelvic floor in each, tearing and prolapse prevention, and more. 

• Habit Training 

  • This can be training in bowel and bladder habits that impact our pelvic health, or on how to build activities into your daily habits 

• Coordination Training 

  • How your pelvic floor muscles, core muscles, and breath work together and how that coordination might look with different activities 

• Routine Building 

  • Let’s not just mention an activity you should do, but take the time to really dissect and implement it into your routine, in a way that actually works for you 

• Nutrition 

  • Working with possible triggers and helpful foods/drinks for your bowel or bladder health, or how it can impact pain

• Biofeedback 

  • Some places may use a machine for this. At our clinic, this looks more like using visual or tactile cues, such as your own hands to give you live feedback on what’s happening with your body

• Sex Counseling Techniques 

  • With training in pelvic sex counseling, these activity-based techniques can be incorporated into sessions as appropriate

• Positioning, Posture, and Ergonomics 

  • We may look at posture, or how the body is positioned during certain activities, or even the set up of your workstation

As you can see, there’s a lot that can be done in pelvic floor therapy. Often, it’s a blend of any of the above. We will pull from different techniques depending on your needs, values, and priorities.

If through assessment, it’s determined you might need another member on your team to dive deeper into a certain avenue (like nutrition) or one not covered (like acupuncture), we will discuss appropriate referral options. 

When we say holistic care, we mean we’re looking at all avenues that can impact your pelvic health and wellness. This is full body care.

Pelvic floor therapy can completely change how you connect with your body and engage in practices every single day.

If you’d like to experience a transformation in your daily wellness, schedule your consultation today!