Pelvic Floor Therapy

Pelvic pain is not normal

You’ve had pain in your hips, low back or the very bowl of your pelvis, and don’t know why. Your doctor says there is nothing wrong… but it hurts!

Painful intercourse, prolapse, urinary or fecal incontinence, painful menstrual cycle and infertility can all be related to tension, knots and scar tissue in the muscles and ligaments of the pelvic floor.

Many people have no idea there is a way out. For many, the topic of the vagina, anus and prostate is taboo, so you just suffer through the pain and hope it goes away.

What is the pelvic floor?

Your pelvic floor is made up of a group of muscles, ligaments and tendons which support your organs, hips and core. Internal hip rotators, hip flexors, and the muscles controlling your bladder and rectum are all part of it.

These muscles can be tight, knotted, weak, imbalanced or containing scar tissue. Just like any other muscle, when they are massaged, they release and allow proper blood flow and movement in the tissues and joints.

What causes pelvic pain?

Many people have experienced trauma of some kind to their pelvic floor – a broken tailbone, a car accident, a difficult birth, sexual abuse or sexual shaming.

Whether it’s physical, psychosomatic or both, the injury or trauma signals the nervous system that you are in danger, and it tenses the muscles in preparation for fight or flight. If that trauma doesn’t get resolved and moved out of your body, longer-term problems develop.

In all of these cases, the tissues stop functioning properly. They become congested and don’t get proper blood flow. This means they don’t get the nutrients and oxygen they need, and toxins build up. Over time, this creates chronic pain and negatively affects your organs.

Problems addressed

• Chronic low back & hip pain
• Painful sex or sexual dysfunction
• Healing after childbirth, miscarriage or abortion
• Healing from sexual abuse or trauma
• Healing your relationship with your body
• Infertility
• Pelvic congestion
• Vaginismus
• Frequent vaginal or urinary infections
• Urinary or Fecal leakage or incontinence

What a session is like

In the initial session, we take our time to go over your current conditions, the history of your pain, and your goals

for treatment. We go over the anatomy of the pelvic floor and take time for any questions or concerns you may have.

We then do a treatment of the external muscles, and if you feel comfortable with it, proceed to doing work on the internal pelvic floor muscles. This gentle internal pelvic floor therapy is done intravaginally or intra-anally.

In the treatment, I also include breathing techniques, guided visualization and somatic dialogue to bring your awareness to your pelvis and reconnect with it in order for you to create and maintain a loving relationship with it.

My own story

Snowboarding 7 years ago, I was coming down the icy mountain, caught an edge of my board, flew up in the air and landed straight on my tailbone. I felt the tailbone crack and pain seared up through my body. I could only lay there in agony until the paramedics come and took me off the slope.

It took a couple months before I could once again sit comfortably, and I didn’t know about pelvic floor therapy at that point, so for a couple years I just dealt with the pain. I had further complications, however, like hemorrhoids, a perianal abscess that lead to a fissure which I had to get surgery on. No fun!

I knew I had to find something to help, and in my research I found Tamy Kent’s work with pelvic floor therapy. It intrigued me, so I found a Naturopath named Kathryn Kloos who does the work. No more did I want the pelvic floor pain, painful intercourse and incontinence I had been experiencing. I would try anything!

My first session, I was very nervous, and even afraid. However, she went through a lengthy intake and taught me about the muscles in my pelvic floor, walked me through what she was going to do and gently worked my internal pelvic floor muscles.

I was amazed at how much relief I felt! Especially that I felt the same kind of knots, trigger points and myofascial pain as I have felt in my neck, shoulders and hips when I’ve had therapeutic massage there. It’s just that I had more taboo around my pelvic floor.

There was so much relief that I booked several more sessions with Kathryn, and each time I got more and more relief. I also learned a lot about myself, and regained a sense of connection to my sexual center.

It helped me so much, that when Dr. Kathryn offered her Holistic Pelvic Floor Therapy training and mentorship program, I decided to learn how to do the work myself.