You may know conscious breath work, or pranayama, can help manage pelvic pain. But how? Read the blog to learn more.

In this blog, Dr. Alexis shares her birth story of baby #3.

The foot is commonly overlooked when it comes to pelvic floor symptoms such as leaking, heaviness, and prolapse. Read the blog to learn about how the foot ad pelvic floor are connected.

Yoga is a helpful adjunct tool to traditional medical care and pelvic floor physical therapy. How is yoga beneficial for men and women healing pelvic pain? Read the blog post to learn about how yoga can help relieve acute and chronic pelvic pain.

Pregnancy aches and pains, especially pelvic pain, has been normalized. Women are often told it’s part of being pregnant and will get better postpartum. Although many of these aches and pains are common during pregnancy, there is a lot we can do in pelvic floor therapy to reduce pain and help you have a more comfortable pregnancy.

In previous blog posts (like this one) we have talked about the link between the pelvic floor and hip pain. The muscles in the pelvic floor have a significant effect on joints in the area, including the lower back, SI joint, and hips. But what about pelvic organ prolapse (or POP)? Does pelvic organ prolapse cause hip pain? Let’s dive in.

Most of my prenatal and postpartum patients have heard (or seen on social media) mixed things about postpartum exercise. Can you start doing some type of exercise right away? Should you be staying in bed for the first 5 days? Should you be back to your pre-pregnancy exercise routine by 6 weeks, or are you supposed to start exercising at 6 weeks? All of these questions (and so many more) come up in these appointments. Let’s unpack this topic!

The 6-week mark is used because of tissue healing guidelines, but nothing magical happens at 6 weeks that allows postpartum moms to just jump back into any activity they want. If they had any other surgery or major injury, they likely would be referred to physical therapy. Yet most postpartum moms still aren’t referred to any kind of pelvic floor therapy. Read the full blog to learn strategies to help you recover in the first 6 weeks postpartum.

When patients reach out to me interested in pelvic floor therapy, it is typically because they are experiencing symptoms such as urinary leaking, painful intercourse, constipation or other bowel dysfunction, or are pregnant or postpartum. Patients with hip pain typically think to see an orthopedic physical therapist or a physician. However, the pelvic floor may actually play a major role in reducing and eliminating hip pain. Read the full blog to learn more.

If you have followed me on social media or read any of my previous blog posts, you likely know that I do not like blanket statements when it comes to most things in physical therapy. Exercise in pregnancy is absolutely one of those things! Over the years there have been a lot of movements and exercises deemed “pregnancy safe” or “not safe”, most of which do not have substantial evidence to support that stance. In this post, I’m going to dive into what is and is not recommended, as well as my stance on exercise during pregnancy.

A common thing I hear from my patients or folks in the community is that they feel like their hip flexors are always tight. Many times they say "no matter how much I stretch, they just never loosen up!". So the question becomes, are your hip flexors really "tight"? As in, is that muscle shortened? Why does it feel that way? And why doesn't stretching help?

I often see patients who experience urine leaking with both things like coughing, sneezing, laughing AND with things like running, jumping, and lifting weights. Sometimes the reason for loss of urine with these two scenarios are the same, but sometimes there are other factors that are specific to leaking with running and jumping that need to be addressed. Read the blog to learn more.

Constipation is a symptom that many of my patients with back pain and/or pelvic floor dysfunction experience. Sometimes patients are coming in because of bowel dysfunction, but more often than not I am seeing them for something else and as we work through their intake form, we find that constipation could be contributing to their symptoms. In this blog post, we’re going to dive into how to why constipation happens, how to know if you’re constipated, and how constipation can affect your pelvic health.

I often describe my approach to treatment as “holistic physical therapy”. Recently I had someone ask me what I meant by holistic, as they always think of physical therapy as being holistic since we aren’t performing surgery or using injections. This is a great point, so I thought I would write a blog further explaining what I mean when I say holistic physical therapy.

When it comes to pain management, there are two things I commonly hear from patients. The first: “No pain, no gain”. The second: “I was having pain, so I didn’t do anything for 2 weeks”. These two statements sit on complete opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to pain management. And in my experience, neither of these patients end up feeling better from these philosophies.

If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you have heard of pelvic organ prolapse. Maybe you have seen someone talking about it on their Instagram page and you aren’t sure what it is, maybe you suspect that you may have pelvic organ prolapse, or maybe you’ve been diagnosed with pelvic organ prolapse and want to learn more about how you can manage it. Read on to learn more about pelvic organ prolapse and how pelvic floor therapy can help.

Just this week, I saw a post in a Facebook group where an expecting mom was asking about perineal massage for pregnancy and a few women suggested pelvic floor therapy, and others asked what pelvic floor PT is. It made me realize that there are still so many people who don’t realize we can help them! In this post, I’m going to cover what the pelvic floor is, what pelvic floor (or pelvic health) therapy is, and what to expect when you see a pelvic floor therapist.

More often than not, I find that patients in my office experience some level of constipation. Even those who have daily bowel movements will report that sometimes they have hard stools or have to strain in order to have a bowel movement. First, let’s talk about a few things we need to address when it comes to constipation.

If you’re a mom or mom-to-be, chances are you’ve been warned about “peezing”. You’ve likely been told that once you have a baby, you’re probably going to pee a little every time you cough or sneeze. It’s just the cost of giving birth, right? No matter how many babies you have delivered, or how you delivered them, peeing every time you cough or sneeze is not normal or something you have to live with. Read the rest of the blog to learn why “peezing” happens, and what to do about it.

Whether a patient comes to me with neck or back pain, is pregnant and preparing for labor and delivery, or is postpartum and beginning to rehab, we almost always start treatment with diaphragmatic breathing. There are many reasons why learning how to breathe well with your diaphragm is important, and in this blog post I’m going to explain what diaphragmatic breathing is and why you could benefit from working on breathing.