The pelvis is such an important body part – and yet, it often gets overlooked. The good news? The effectiveness of pelvic floor physiotherapy is backed by a wealth of research, which is why it’s the go-to treatment recommendation for many conditions. We can do so much to help, and we see quick results all the time.
How we examine your pelvic floor
We’re trained to perform internal vaginal and rectal exams so we can assess and treat the pelvic floor. While this can be a game changer for many of our clients, internals aren’t always necessary for care to be effective. If it’s not right for you, we can use other physio wizardry, combined with our pelvic floor expertise, to assess and treat without the internals.
Finding the root cause
Pelvic symptoms can come from issues anywhere in the body, so we use our physio skills to assess your whole body, top to toe, and figure out the big picture. While it’s so important not to overlook the pelvic floor, it shouldn’t be treated in isolation, either. By establishing the root cause of your symptoms, we build a treatment plan that works towards getting you a cheerful pelvis again!
What to Expect
A Deep Dive
We take a full history. These issues can be complex, and it’s important we get a good sense of all the factors so we can choose where best to begin together. There’s no such thing as TMI for us!
Your Comfort is Key
There is, unfortunately, a lot of medical, birth, and sexual trauma in our client base, and it’s really important to us and your success that physio is a comfortable space for you. Our golden rule: no grinning and bearing it. We have lots of tools and can adapt to you, which is how you get better faster. (FYI, you can’t “fail” a pelvic exam.)
Assess
We can’t emphasize this enough: it’s essential to know if your pelvic floor is the victim or the culprit, so we work really hard to be thorough and figure out what's going on. If the problem isn’t coming from your pelvic floor, we need to assess where it’s coming from to address the impact on your pelvic floor and improve your symptoms. If it is your pelvic floor, we treat it directly. No cookie cutter physio here!
Create a Plan Together
Once we have an idea of what’s going on, we develop a care plan with you based on our findings and your goals, expectations, and capacity. If you hate home exercises and won’t end up doing them, tell us, so we can make a plan that actually works for you! If you want to stop leaking when you lift your baby but secretly dream of trampolining with them when they’re 4, tell us! We want to take you all the way.
Check-ins & Course Corrections
We check in with you every session to ensure we’re meeting your needs and expectations. The physio process is rarely linear, and life changes our capacity and goals all the time. If we’re open about it we can pivot with the changes. That helps us stay on track and get you further, faster.
We Treat
Good to Knows
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If you want one, yes! If you don’t want one, no! And if you’re not attached and want us to take the lead, we’ll let you know what we think is the best use of our first session. Sometimes, getting more history or doing other assessments first is useful, as it helps guide us so we get more out of the pelvic exam. For more information, read our blog on what to expect for your first visit.
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We are often told how comfortable these are compared to the medical pelvic exams that clients are more familiar with. We don’t use a speculum, we have lots of time so we can go slow, and there’s nothing we absolutely have to do. We can assess what we can and leave the rest. We use one or two gloves and insert lubricated fingers to assess the muscles and anything else that’s relevant.
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Some people get better with a couple of sessions in quick succession, and some people have many sessions spread out over longer periods of time. On average, people need around 6 visits to reach their goals, but will see a change in the first few.
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Have a look through our “We help” pages to see if your concern is reflected there. Otherwise, you can always give us a call and ask! Sometimes we need to physically assess you to be able to know if we can help or not – but we’ll walk you through all our thoughts and let you know ASAP. If we can’t help, we’ll try and point you in another direction.
