3 Ways to Effectively Treat the Pelvis
Pelvic health therapists can effectively treat the pelvis by working with the pelvic bones, through spring testing assessments, and by knowing what patterns to look for in their client’s body.
Working With The Pelvic Bones
If you work in pelvic health, then you, likely, know all about the pelvic floor muscles, their function, and how to assess and treat them. But what do you know about the pelvic bones that the pelvic floor muscles attach to?
The pelvic bones house the pelvic floor muscles and knowing how to make effective changes in the pelvic bones can help the function of the muscles as well. When you work with the pelvic bones, you often get better results with less work. Expanding your assessment and treatment skills of the pelvic bones needs to be a priority for better outcomes for your clients.
Most pelvic health therapists treat the pelvis by looking for and correcting anterior and posterior rotations of the ilium. Whether you correct these rotations with muscle energy techniques or exercises, this is only one aspect to treat the pelvis that needs to be addressed. There are so many more patterns the pelvis goes into, especially after giving birth no matter when that birth occurred. It could have occurred days ago or years ago. As a pelvic health therapist, you MUST know how to treat the pelvis and work with the pelvic bones beyond anterior and posterior rotations. I am going to share a few things that have helped me tremendously in my own work to treat the pelvis.
Spring Testing In Your Assessments
Most pelvic courses I’ve taken over the years teach a standing stork test for assessing the motion of the sacrum in the sacroiliac joint. One thumb on the PSIS and the other on the sacrum and you assess to see if there is movement as the client lifts their leg. I have never had much success with this technique, but luckily, I learned a way better technique for assessing the motion in the sacroiliac joint.
Jerry Hesch introduced me to spring testing of the bones of the pelvis, and the simplicity of these tests won me over, especially when I started getting better results with my clients. I am able to feel so much more about what is going on in the pelvis than I used to by using the spring testing technique.
Taking what I learned from Jerry and in palpating my postpartum clients I started finding repeating patterns in the pelvis of my postpartum clients. I researched what I was finding and realized that the bones of the pelvis were still stuck in the pattern of pelvic outlet opening for birth. This discovery fueled my curiosity, and I found additional patterns in the pelvis and learned that what I was feeling in the pelvis was a result of the impact that birthing positions had on the pelvic bones.
Learning The 4 Patterns
Knowing what to look for when you treat the pelvis can help you quickly get to the root cause of pain and dysfunction. Over the years I have discovered that there are 4 main patterns you can find in the postpartum pelvis:
- Sacral Flexion Pattern
- Common Birth Pattern
- Posterior Sacrum Pattern
- Ilium Splaying Pattern
I started to learn more about the cause and effect that these patterns were creating in the body based on client complaints. All of these different patterns have unique presentations that can cause specific challenges for your clients. For instance, clients with sacral flexion do not like to lay on hard surfaces on their back as it hurts. Someone with an ischial splay may find sitting feels uneven or uncomfortable. The common birth pattern can cause right sided low back pain.
When you can identify these patterns, work with the pelvic bones, and learn the treatment techniques for these patterns you will get amazing results with your postpartum clients (and often anyone with a pelvis!). You will be able to eliminate back and pelvic pain and greatly improving your client’s pelvic floor function.
How To Treat the 4 Patterns
Want to learn how to get the great results I am talking about? I teach you how to identify, assess and treat all 4 main patterns in Treating the Postpartum Pelvis, an online course that is clear, concise and extremely effective. You will get the information you need in just over 3 hours of online content, so you can get these techniques into your hands and master them in your work with clients. It is my mission that every pelvic health therapist will learn the concepts and techniques taught in this course as they are foundational to improving your clinical outcomes with your clients.
About the Author: Lynn Schulte is a Pelvic Health Therapist and the founder of the Institute for Birth Healing, a pelvic health continuing education organization that specializes in prenatal and postpartum care. For more information, go to https://instituteforbirthhealing.com