Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy

The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that go between your sit bones, pubic, bone, and coccyx 

physical therapy involves assessing and treating muscle tone, muscle coordination, and strength to improve your overall function and quality of life.

Your therapist will ask you a lot of questions to understand your situation and learn about the driving factors. Once a history has been taken, an observation of movement will be performed.  There may be assessment of areas above or below the pelvic floor, as there are many regions of the body that can influence the pelvic floor.  With consent, the therapist will perform an internal pelvic muscle exam vaginally or rectally to determine what muscles have tone, test for muscle strength, endurance, and determine the total excursion of movement within the pelvic floor.

Consent is ongoing.  If at any point, you feel uncomfortable or have questions, tell your therapist.  Your therapist will meet you where you are.  Doing an internal pelvic floor exam is the best way to determine a specific treatment approach, but it is not required and you do not need it in order to receive physical therapy. Your therapist can perform external palpation, or have you perform external palpation on yourself.  They can also guide and instruct you on how to coordinate the core, pelvic floor, and deep core.  There is plenty of patient education on habit modifications and positioning strategies that can help most pelvic floor conditions as well. 

Each therapy session is designed to be longer than most in-network rehab centers.  The intention in longer treatment sessions, means the frequency of visits is reduced.  Most pelvic floor patients come in 1 time for the first few weeks and then taper care to every other week and then once per month.  Understand that total visits depend on the severity, acuity, and chronicity of the condition you are receiving care for.

You will be provided with educational videos and exercise PDFs.  Depending on your needs, you will receive handouts that instruct on posture modifications, toileting mechanics, techniques for urge suppression, bowel and bladder habit retraining, coordination exercises for the pelvic floor and deep core, instructions on how to perform a kegel, or how to down train the central nervous system. You will receive evidence based information on your condition as well.  In a world full of misinformation, your therapist will ensure that all questions are answered, and can site research for you if you are eager to learn more.

We do not need a script to see you.  Virginia is a direct access state.  This means that with a doctorate in physical therapy, your therapist is allowed to assess anyone to determine their need for care.  But if you have a script, please bring it, as we try keep communication open to other members of your healthcare team.