Do You Have Pelvic Pain?

It hurts when you sit. In fact, the pain can be excruciating. Sometimes intercourse is painful, and it’s not something you want to do anymore. It can be hard to go to work everyday and get your job done because you have to sit there and answer the phone or be on the computer all day long. It can be even harder to get chores done at home. Reaching in to get laundry out of the dryer, reaching down to get dishes out of the dishwasher, or squatting to the floor is nearly impossible. Pelvic pain is deep- it may be around the tailbone, deep inside the hip, in the low back, or really hard to distinguish exactly where the pain is coming from. These are just some of the signs of pelvic floor dysfunction AKA pelvic pain.

What causes this?

There can be many many causes of pelvic pain. Trauma- like a car wreck, a bad fall on your tailbone, childbirth, or an unpleasant sexual experience- are all frequent causes of pelvic floor pain. However, sometimes pelvic pain is simply the result of tight muscles in other parts of your body or poor posture. So if you have pelvic floor pain, what can you do about it?

What can you do?

  1. It is really important to avoid doing kegels at this point in time, even if you’re leaking urine. Pelvic pain is often caused by muscles that are already too tight- doing kegels will just make this worse.
  2. Focus on relaxing your body and improving your posture. Make sure that when you’re sitting, you have a small arch in the lower part of your back. This helps to stretch your pelvic floor muscles.
  3. Make sure that you are taking deep breaths on a regular basis. How does this help?  Deep breathing helps to relax your entire body. Your pelvic muscles are controlled by your autonomic nervous system -in other words they are automatically controlled without you having to think about it by your body. If your whole body is tight, your pelvic floor muscles will be tight too. So it’s important to relax your whole body.  Take deep, slow breaths focusing on expanding your rib cage and not allowing your shoulders to come up. Breathe in for 4 seconds and breathe out for 8 Seconds. Do this for five minutes a day.

Want more tips to help reduce your pelvic floor pain? Download my free report Pain “down there” .

If you have more specific questions, please contact me at The Perfect Pelvis- we provide pelvic floor physical therapy in the Lee’s Summit and greater Kansas City area.

816-607-3747

krush@theperfectpelvis.com

AUTHOR

Dr. Katy Rush

The Perfect Pelvis

"We Help Active Adults & Athletes Get Back To Workouts and Sports They Enjoy without surgery, stopping activities they love, or relying on pain medicine."
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