Painful Sex and the Importance of Pelvic Physical Therapy, and No…. It’s Not About Having a Glass of Wine to “Relax”.
Pelvic Physical Therapy is an important component to recovering from and preventing painful sex. Most women are gas lit into thinking that they “just need to relax” or to "“just have a glass of wine”. Please, just NO. Let’s actually listen to women, help them understand their bodies, and then move forward. Because women deserve to enjoy sex too.
Here are four ways pelvic physical therapy can help you improve painful sex and start to enjoy the time with your partner again.
Figure out why it hurts. Your pelvic physical therapist can help assess why you are having pain with intercourse. Hormones, scar tissue, tight muscles, different medical conditions, past and present trauma. These are just a few things that impact pain.
Implement “exercises” to help. I use the term “exercise” very loosely here. Exercise can be stretches, nerve glides, reverse kegels, kegels, core strengthening, hip strengthening, visceral (organ) mobility.
Help you and partner decide on different positions that might make things slightly better. After we know WHAT is hurting, we can offer positional changes to try out. Is the tissue more painful toward the back of the vaginal opening? Then having your partner penetrate from behind might be more comfortable. There’s a variety of positions to try and your pelvic PT will have some great suggestions depending on what is hurting you.
Help you decide on different tools to help. There are a variety of pelvic specific tools that might help between therapy sessions and we use those to help you become more independent. Wands, dilators, devices that normalize touch, etc can be helpful. Your pelvic PT will look at the different options with you and decide which is right for you.
Pelvic Physical Therapy is a helpful tool that you can use to make sex less painful and more enjoyable. You deserve to feel well, you deserve to enjoy this time with your partner, you deserve to move forward without pain.
Love,
Ann
