Demystifying Pelvic Floor Therapy: Part 1

You took the first step, you scheduled an evaluation, what can you expect?

So, you’ve noticed some pelvic floor symptoms that you want to rid from your life. Now time to call to schedule that evaluation...maybe. Often times, people, especially women, will avoid going to pelvic floor therapy due to not knowing what to expect. Some thoughts that might be going through your head “what if the therapist thinks my symptoms are gross?” “I don’t want to open up to a complete stranger about my pelvic floor issues, heck, I don’t even like thinking/talking about it to myself!” “I’ve heard from others that the therapist might due an internal exam, that is not cool with me.”

I get it. I was there too. And I am a pelvic floor therapist... now. A brief backstory about myself. When I was in PT school, I was positive that when I graduated, I would work in a hospital setting and put the blinders up to every other PT setting. In school, we talked about the pelvic floor for about an hour or two and I distinctly remembering questioning why anyone would want to do this for their career. Fast forward 1 year post graduation of PT school and I was having my own pelvic pain issues. My doctor told me that I had 2 options, live with the pain OR go to pelvic floor therapy... I asked for option 3. (Maybe I will share more of my story in a future post, we will see). So when I say I can relate, I can relate.

But I am hear to tell you what you can expect from a pelvic floor therapy episode of care here at Realign Pelvic Health in hopes that pulling back the curtain might help someone out there take the step to schedule an evaluation to get them on the road to living a vibrant life. If you don’t want to work with me, that’s cool but please find someone you like and trust with your care and kick those pelvic floor symptoms to the curb.

First, we try to make scheduling as easy as possible. We have direct links to our scheduling page for evaluations throughout our website if you want to avoid talking to a human on the phone (I may or may not also avoid phone calls in my personal life as much as possible) or if you want to reach out with questions or to chat, you just have to fill out our contact form.

Prior to your appointment, you will receive 2 emails. One is a general welcome email providing information about the location of the clinic. The 2nd email includes a link to fill out an intake form and consents.

When you come to your first initial evaluation, we welcome you back to our office space. For the first half-ish of this initial evaluation, we chat. We welcome you to share your story starting at whatever point you are comfortable with. We listen and document as you go. Once you have finished your story, we likely will have more follow up questions to get a good sense of who you are and what’s important to you.

After getting most of our questions out of the way (I promise you, there’s always more from us and things that will pop up in your mind to add) we move into a posture and walking assessment. We just want to get a general sense of how you move in space. What feels “natural” and comfortable to you/your body.

Then we will have you lay down on the treatment table and assess how your ribs are sitting and your breathing mechanics. If you are comfortable with it, we ask to feel directly on your skin by lifting your shirt, if you prefer not to, that’s also fine, we adjust.

Everyone is assessed for a diastasis recti (abdominal separation...another blog post coming) by taking 2 of our fingers and assessing along the midline of your abdominals in 3 spots. We will talk you through everything the whole time.

Then we conduct a few more movement tests with your pelvis, all fully clothed. After this, we have you sit up and educate you on our findings and our recommendation for your plan of care.

Because we don’t like rushing clients through their story at the start half of their session, we sometimes have time to educate you on an exercise or two but if we don’t we try to at least teach you a “quick win” task to try out to help improve symptoms in the real short term.

This first appointment, our main goal is to help you feel heard, comfortable, understood, and confident that we can help. We want you leaving feeling ready to hit the ground running at your next appointment to improve your symptoms to achieve your goals.