What is Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy?

Pelvic floor physical therapy involves physical therapy (PT) performed by a physical therapist who has specialized, post-doctoral training in pelvic floor conditions. A pelvic floor physical therapist is often the best medical professional to treat your pelvic floor symptoms, conservatively.

Pelvic floor physical therapy involves assessment and treatment to the muscles, joints and organs that sit at the bottom of the pelvis. Many people don’t even know that there are muscles down there! See image below which illustrates a bird’s eye view of the female pelvic floor.

Like any other muscle in the body, the muscles of the pelvic floor can get tight, stretched, weak and can go into spasm. A pelvic floor physical therapist looks to determine whether the pelvic floor muscles and joints could be causing your symptoms and further investigates why the pelvic floor muscles are not working properly.

Often symptoms such as pain, leakage and constipation don’t just affect the pelvic floor, but affect neighboring joints as well. Sometimes the pelvic floor is just a victim in a poorly coordinated system and many times patients will report other areas of pain, besides the pelvic floor.

Pelvic floor physical therapy is a highly researched area and shows profound results at improving quality of life and symptoms such as urinary and bowel incontinence, diastasic recti, pelvic organ prolapse and more!