Many people will experience pelvic pain for a variety of reasons (pregnancy, labour, post part, etc.) Pelvic pain can describes multiple locations as well not just the pelvic floor muscles, but most common is in the hip and pubic bone, and low back, so what can we do?
So lets talk what is your pelvic floor?
- Your pelvic floor is sling set of muscles that runs between your public bone in the front and tailbone in the back
What do they do?
- for women there pelvic floor supports the womb, bladder, and bowel
- control release of bodily fluid through tightening and releasing
- This is where some of the pelvic pain can come in unfortunately
What causes this pelvic pain?
- trauma and negative experiences are the most common causes
- Trauma includes tearing from labour and delivery
- Even after the tear has healed you can still where the tearing occurred
- if you’re experiencing pain you’ll often guard and protect this area causing you to tease and cause more pain
- Trauma includes tearing from labour and delivery
How do we reduce tension?
- One of the easiest and most effective is by bringing blood flow to the area
- blood flow will bring oxygen to the areas flushing out some lactic acid which can cause pain in the pelvic floor region
- Another way is physically stretching through manual therapy techniques to aid in lengthening the pelvic floor muscles which in-turn decreases tension in the pelvic floor
What can you do on your own?
- maintenance lengthening
- This is some stretching and strengthening techniques you would get from a pelvic floor physiotherapists
- The reason you need to see a pelvic floor therapist for this in particular is because while pelvic pain is mostly from to much tension in the pelvic floor it can also be the exact opposite where there is not enough tension
If you have any questions we are always here to help! We’ve also done another article on how to diagnose pelvic pain that you can find here!
