Pelvic Health, Plain And Simple with Becca Meredith

Pelvic health should be simple to talk about, yet most of us only notice our pelvic floor when something goes wrong—leaks during workouts, urgency on a long shift, pain with intimacy, or stubborn constipation. We invited occupational therapist and yoga teacher Becca Meredith to open the door with clarity and care. She walks us through what the pelvic floor actually is, why tone can be too low or too high, and how breath, posture, and the nervous system shape everything from bladder signals to sex and recovery after birth.

We get practical about real-life patterns: nurses and teachers holding pee all day, kids avoiding school bathrooms, and the brain–bladder connection that gets dull when we delay. Becca explains how she assesses alignment through the thoracic spine, sacrum, and hips, why internal work is only one option—and always consent-based—and how external fascial release, mindful cues, and targeted strength can change reflexes fast. A case of workout-related leaks shows how pairing bridges, adductor activation, and smart Kegels can build control without obsessing over contractions. We also dig into constipation as a hidden driver of leaks, bedwetting routines that help, and hydration that supports an even-tempered bladder.

Our conversation spans pregnancy prep, VBAC considerations, postpartum diastasis, prolapse support, and the shifting terrain of perimenopause. Becca shares why hypertonic floors need down-training, not more squeezing, and how breath into the back ribs can unlock the back of the pelvic floor. She also previews Arvigo Mayan Abdominal Therapy for scar tissue, endometriosis, cesarean recovery, and a gentler path to restore organ mobility. The throughline is hopeful and human: when we create safety, listen to the body, and train with intention, strength follows softness.

If pelvic health has felt confusing or off-limits, this is your guide to clear language, actionable steps, and compassionate care. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more listeners find trustworthy pelvic health support.

Becca helps patients restore balance, rebuild confidence, and reconnect with their bodies in empowering ways.

Website: https://enlightenedpelvichealth.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/enlightenedpelvichealth?igsh=MWo0dGRyMTBseGRwNA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Becca And Her Path
• 3:47 Pelvic Floor 101 And Common Symptoms
• 7:52 Personal Birth Stories And Yoga Shift
• 13:07 Nurses, Teachers, And Bladder Habits
• 17:52 Kids, Constipation, And Giggle Leaks
• 22:37 Hypertonic vs Hypotonic Explained
• 27:27 Beyond Kegels: Assessment Options
• 33:37 Trauma-Informed Care And Safety
• 37:57 Internal Work Step By Step

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Hello, and welcome back to Empowered Ease. I'm your host, Jen Olinger, and today I'm so excited to welcome my guest, Becca Meredith. She's an occupational therapist, a yoga teacher, a mama, Reiki practitioner, and a whole light, wholehearted lover of light. Becca graduated with her master's in occupational therapy in 2012 and has practiced across settings from home health to hospitals. In 2018, she fell in love with yoga and immediately began teaching, adding chair yoga and prenatal and postnatal specialties. Since then, she's been deepening her work into pelvic health, completing OT Pioneer's pelvic floor training, pelvic rehab manual assessment and treatment, and certification as a pregnancy and postpartum corrective exercise specialist. In 2023, she also completed holistic postpartum training with the Institute for Birth Healing. Becca's passion for serving women grew out of her own pelvic health journey as a reminder that the body is completely interconnected, and when one thing is off, the whole system and our sense of self can shift. She blends Welcome Becca. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you doing? Good. I have been looking forward to having you on. Actually, just talking to you from I think prior to even me having this podcast, I heard about what you do. And as a nurse too, the polar floor is a common, common topic among us because we have poor pelvic floor habits. So tell me a little bit, I guess like just a briefly kind of like what you do. I know you live in the St. Louis, the Metro East St. Louis area, and kind of like I got into it. And yeah, what's your what's your junior?

SPEAKER_01: 2:56

Absolutely. So well, I mean, plenty of things, what the pelvic floor is and what it does, but it's a group of muscles that's within our pelvic bowl, our pelvic bones. Um, and they all kind of inter are interwoven together. It's super cool, and it's not really muscles that you can see, like your biceps and your quads and all that good stuff. You can see those muscles and you can see them move. Your pelvic floor, you can't really see it that much, but it's lots of functions to it, and really we don't really notice it until something goes wrong. And so then that's when somebody comes to see me. Hey, I'm peeing my pants. Hey, I have really like a lot of pressure down in my vagina, down bulging, feels weird when I go to the bathroom, go poop pee, whatever. Pain, pain with sex, that's a big one. So until something kind of is goes off haywire, that's when they typically come and see me and they learn about the public floor. How I got here was, you know, I'm a mom, mom of four. And so pregnancies, four pregnancies, four deliveries, all that good stuff. With my first baby, I had a psiotomy. And so healing from that was, I think that's probably the most painful thing that I've ever healed from in my entire life at up until this point. But that kind of brought on my healing from hint from that first baby, really brought on a lot of leaking when I was working out and pain with sex and just pain in general. And, you know, I kind of just like went about my life and was like, well, I guess this is just like kind of what it is, which is what a lot of moms will say, or people will say they think that it's normal. And even back to like when I was a kid, I remember having giggles and continence. So like laughing so hard and peeing my pants as a kid and being like, what in the world is going on? And so really dating back, I was a college soccer player and very athletic as a kid. And so I probably had a hypertonic pelvic player, which we can talk about in a second. So had dysfunction, you know, had my first baby, kind of just like negligent and just oblivious to like the world of pelvic health. And then when I got pregnant with my second, I actually started doing yoga teacher training. And so that kind of like shifted in me and like just the books we were reading, the conversations that we were having, the things that we were looking at. It's not just about stretching, it's just not about yoga poses, but it was a lot of self-study. And so, you know, during pregnancy, I had to learn how to modify my practice and just trying to learn more about childbirth and alternative options rather than just listening to your doctor and doing exactly what you're supposed to do to have a baby. So I did a lot of learning and self-discovery with my second pregnancy, and I think that kind of was like the taste that I needed for getting into women's health. And then had my baby. It was a very traumatic delivery. So birth trauma is one of my favorite topics to talk about, unfortunately. But had her, and then she was, you know, just under a year when COVID hit, the pandemic hit. And I think that was like also another time that a lot of people had that kind of turning that lens inward to be like, am I happy with my life? Like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? You just really learned like what your priorities were. So I guess that was like some of our benefits to the pandemic, although it was terrible. I hope we never have that ever again. But so a lot of courses became accessible. So I got to take a lot of different intro OT to uh pelvic health with OT lens. So being an occupational therapist since 2012, you know, working with primarily the older adult populations on hip replacement, stroke recovery, rehab to home. I this was like a whole new world for me. And having the yoga teacher training was definitely a different experience. And I loved having that OT side of things as a yoga teacher. But yeah, did some trainings whenever a pandemic was occurring, going on, whatever, was pregnant with my third during that. So that was super cool. The stuff that I was learning, I was also pregnant. And so it was again this other experience and perspective while I was learning because I was actually pregnant. And then when he turned about a year, I opened up my practice and I primarily treat in my office in uh Maryville, Illinois. I also have a spot in O'Fallon, Illinois, which is where me and my family live. My family and I live and teach yoga locally in the area as well. And I treat anything and everything with pelvic floor problems that pop up. Um that is awesome. It was like the longest, weirdest answer. I feel like I was all over the place. But no, I love it. It's perfectly perfect.

SPEAKER_00: 7:19

No, because I like honestly, you brought me so many places. I was thinking, like, so do most people come to you? Is it after birth charm? Is like the most common, or do you get like elderly incontinence? Because I didn't think about elderly incontinence. Honestly, I was just thinking, like, how many nurses do you probably see? Because we have a lot of incontinence issues. I've been told it's from holding it too long and with full bladders. I'm not really sure. We also are very dehydrated, but yes, I never know. They're also moms, a lot of moms, too.

SPEAKER_01: 7:43

So I have a current patient on caseload, and yeah, that was like the first topic that I was like, How often are you going to the bathroom? She's like, Maybe once in my 12-hour shift. And I was like, You have to go more, you know. My teachers, my teachers, they'll hold their pee. Oh, yeah, you would think about that.

SPEAKER_00: 7:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:57

And so here's the reasoning of why we because our brain and our bladder is directly connected. And so whenever we don't go to the bathroom and we hold our pee all day long, this is common with little kids too. They hold their pee all day long when they're at school because they don't feel safe in the bathroom or they're just too busy and occupied with what's going on. Same thing at work with nurses and teachers. We kind of like almost like deaden the sensory system to be like, we can hold the bladder, we can hold the bladder. And then you're at capacity of like how much fluid can be in your bladder. And then it's like you're just really, really disconnecting that connection that you're supposed to have a healthy connection between the brain and the bladder to properly empty out when it's supposed to. So then when you do go to the bathroom and it's super, super full, maybe you're not emptying the pee out all the way. So it's just building up some really unhappy bladder habits.

SPEAKER_00: 8:46

That's so interesting. And then you, when you mentioned having and like giggle incontinence as a child, I'm like, I didn't even think about the kids would have pelvic floor issues either. And I totally like, I remember laughing myself so hard. I peed myself one time, I was in shock. I thought something was wrong with me. I know. What just happened? What just like I swear you do that purpose because I really thought people that did that before were just like doing it for attention. I like, you know, as a kid. Not now, obviously. But yeah, um, yeah. So what's up with that?

SPEAKER_01: 9:13

Yeah, and I don't, I don't really specialize in pediatrics and kiddos. When I do, it's like, hey, my kid, it's like a kid that I probably know, or a friend of mine that has a kid that's bed wedding or giggles incontinence is a popular one. Bed wedding is a really popular one. Um constipation is proven constipation is probably the cause until proven guilty or innocent, whatever it is, multiple times. Um so because that's really common in kiddos, like the I mean, even in adults too, is constipation. That's what's causing the incontinence. It can be because if you think about your pelvic bowl, you've got your bladder, your uterus, and then your rectum. And so if you have built up poop in there and you're not going to the bathroom, it could be pressing forward onto the uterus, pressing forward onto the bladder. And also you got to think about it like when you're constipated, when you're full of poop, like you're probably not very comfortable. Like you're anxious, so anxious. You're anxious, you're holding, you're holding so all of that tension that you're holding, you're squeezing your cute little butt cheeks, like you're you're holding on to all of that tension. And so then we're building that pelvic floor dysfunction because kind of what I mentioned about like a hypertonic pelvic floor. So typically, if you zoom out to patients and like you asked about like what's the most common reason somebody comes and sees you? If you zoom out, I can usually categore, categorize my patients into they have hypotonic pelvic floor, so low tone, or they have a hypertonic. Sometimes they can have both, which is really tricky to treat. But so we kind of go from there, like, oh yes, you have low tone, we need to work on strengthening, probably coordination is a big one, but it's not everything. There's lots of other things that that are moving parts that go with the pelvic floor than just doing Kegels, which we can talk about in a second. And then if they have hypertonic, so they have a tighter pelvic floor, we have to work about how can they relax. Because the example that I give, which I think is is pretty easy to understand, and it's not quite the same. But on the example that I give is like the bicep. If I want to strengthen my bicep muscle, I'm not gonna put a weight in it, I'm not gonna hold, hold, hold this position the whole time. Because if I try to move my arm to reach something out of the cabinet or something off the floor or whatever it is functionally, it's gonna be so tight and it's gonna be so stuck. There's no function to it. It's the same thing with our public floor if we're constipated. We're holding on to our public floor, whether it's the glutes, the core, whatever, because we feel so uncomfortable. The pelvic floor doesn't know how to relax, it doesn't know how to soften. So then we have to build this kind of connection back up to really find the balance between lengthening and contracting the pelvic floor.

SPEAKER_00: 11:48

Interesting. I had no idea. I've never thought about it in these terms, but I'm loving it so much. So, okay, I've obviously heard of key all. Yes, which is funny because one of my friends I was telling her that I was having you on, she's like, Man, this reminds me I needed to do my kegalls. I'm like, that's probably the only thing I think of. So, what are some of the like other things like if that are the other like physical practices or therapies, or how do you work with people? What can people expect? I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 12:17

That is a really great question because there's lots of pelvic core therapists out there. Social media is great and fantastic, and there's you know, some pelvic core therapists that are like so anti-Kegel because it's just like the worst thing in the world. And then there's other people that it's like that's a lot of older OBs will be like, you just need to do your Kegels or you know, whatever it is. That's very outdated. And so I think pick kegels and pelvic floor contractions, same thing, are very empowering to be like, okay, those are my muscles that we're talking about, which I'm it's hard to at first identify muscle groups, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:51

Like if you have never like locked into your body before, it's like a process. So I could see where that would help you. Like so many people my muscles.

SPEAKER_01: 12:59

They're like, I don't know if I'm doing it right. Like they squeeze their butt cheeks, they squeeze their muscles, and those things are all a part of it, but they are not your pelvic floor. And so there's lots of different cues that that you can utilize with it. But yeah, it is just a very, very small part. And I do offer internal uh work, so that's going in through the vagina and kind of assessing the pelvic floor, all of the muscles, making sure we don't have any trigger point or any tension, and then assess, I might have them key goal, see if they can lift up the pelvic floor, all of that good stuff. But that's usually, I mean, I don't even always do that the first session. That's usually a second or third session into it. And that's just a tool. I've had lots of patients that we have not done any internal work because I think having that trauma-informed lens and approach is super important because you don't know what somebody's been through. And you know, usually with a lot of cues and feedback, sitting on an exercise ball, sitting on a Pilates small ball, a roll, lots of different things. You can kind of feel that, even using your hand, you can feel maybe a little bit of a lift and different visualization mindfulness strategies that you can really connect into your public floor.

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

So there's like more than one strategy. Oh, yes, absolutely for people's comfort level. Because that was one thing I didn't even think about with someone else, of course. Chatty, little chatty Kathy over here. But um, was like, yeah, they do internal work. And I was like, Oh, okay, totally makes sense. Like, but I didn't think of that before, and I could only imagine if someone was coming to you, like, that's a good thing to be prepared for. Internal work is an option, so okay.

SPEAKER_01: 14:27

Yeah, and it's I like to always say, like, this is not a pap smear, you're not, I'm not gonna use the speculum on you. Thank god you're in a comfortable spot, you're not with knee stirrups in. Like, I try to make my office as cozy and comfortable, and of course, getting consent and saying, like, this is I'm gonna tell you exactly what I'm gonna do before I do it, and making sure that's okay, constantly checking in with the the patient to make sure that everything is okay. They feel safe, they feel supported, all of that good stuff. And it's, you know, it's not like a quick we're in and out kind of thing. We're taking the time to really pinpoint what could be potentially causing the problem. But like I said, that's like, you know, further into the assessment or further into a couple of sessions. I look at the whole body, so I'm gonna look at rotation of the upper spine, so the thoracic spine, seeing if we have any kind of limited range of motion there. I'm gonna look up, of course, at the pelvic bone, so the tops of the hips, I'm gonna look at the sacrum, that low part of your back. It's like an upside-down triangle. That's a big factor. And the the pelvis in general is a ring, so it's connected at the pubic bone at the front and then at the SI joints in the back. And so we have to kind of just check and make sure that we're not having any misalignment there because if we're misaligned at any of the pelvic bones, then the pelvic floor is going to be kind of compromised too. So we want to find the alignment at the pelvic bones first before we start to address the muscles. And then, yeah, mind mindless, mindfulness strategies, connecting in, seeing if they can connect into those muscles, see if they can connect into themselves and just notice like what does what pops up mentally, emotionally, or can they not even connect in because they're just so feeling like they're, you know, those buzzing reminders of stuff they have to do after, or anything that popped up. Or I've had lots of patients that, you know, tears are often coming up because they're thinking back to different traumas that they've maybe had before.

SPEAKER_00: 16:14

Whether it's I feel like that probably carries shame too, because like just anything with our private areas, we're taught that from a young age there's shame involved.

SPEAKER_01: 16:22

Yes, shame and yeah, that you're like just talked about it, talk about it, or you're just supposed to accept it for what it is. And so yeah, having that conversation like in a very safe supported environment is extremely important, and having the time to do so because I always say, like, you know, working at a hospital or working at a clinic, I would probably be kind of limited on how long I can do that for. And so I don't have to do that because you know, I work for myself. So that's a big part of it. But I'm trying to think of what else. I feel like you asked something else, and no, I can't remember what it was.

SPEAKER_00: 16:55

I do that all the time. Rapid fire question. Sorry. So if you so when people come to you, so it's kind of like we start off by like assessing where the problem's at first, and then you offer both like physical practices for them to do at home and with you, and then there's internal options as well for work. What kind of what kind of work internally do you do if someone was to expect? I mean, is that like something we're comfortable talking about? And here I'm just like I'm curious. I'm like, I'm a nurse, so I'm like, tell me what happens.

SPEAKER_01: 17:25

Absolutely. So, like the pelvic floor, I should have I should have my pelvic and our pelvis and my muscles and all that stuff so that I explain it to you. But using our hands, so we're like pretending that this is our pelvis within that is they used to say, like, when I started when I became an OT, they called it like your hammock muscles of your pelvic floor, and that's kind of true to an extent, like it has like that kind of like bowl-shaped hammock present presentation, but it's more like a diamond-shaped bowl because we've got a pubic bone that's like our front of our pelvic floor, we've got the tailbone that's like the back of our pelvic floor, and then we have the sit spones, those side bony parts of our butts when we sit down, we can connect in and anchor down. So those are our four corners of our pelvic floor, and within that, yes, there's kind of like a hammock sensation or like a trampoline is another one that I like to explain. So you said what did you say for internal? Yeah. So I either really just what people would expect. What we would do for like treatment. Um, well, first, so for internal, I would look all externally. So I would look at hair growth patterns, I would look at like fascia of like where the pubic bone is. I'll work around like almost like I say, like in a clock-like manner. So we'll start at 12 o'clock where the pubic bone is, work our way down to the their left side, my right side, work our way down, see if there's any kind of fascial restrictions at the gluteal folds, the butt cheeks, the ischiorectal fossa, like all of that area. And then we work around to the perineum. So that's the space between the vagina and the rectum. And then we work our way over to the other side. So that's without even going internal at all. That's all externally, okay? And then I might have them keagle, I might have them cough, I might tell the have them see that kind of check back in does everything feel okay? And then if they feel okay and we want to see if we can go further, we'll go in to assess the first layer of the pelvic floor. So the first layer of the pelvic floor, I can assess by the tip of my finger. So usually we do the exact same thing. We work around in that kind of clock-like manner. And then the second layer of the pelvic floor is usually my second knuckle, and we're doing the same thing, kind of move around in that circulate movement. I might have them keegle, might have them cough at any point. If we notice anything along the way of like, ooh, that feels very uncomfortable, then we stop there and we treat it.

SPEAKER_00: 19:33

So are you checking for like tone and pain and like like bogginess or like kind of things like that? Is that what you're like to over tightening kind of things? Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 19:44

Yep, okay. Tension and making sure that it's like not too much tension, like finding that healthy balance in between. And then, yeah, might have them keagle to see if they can engage that part of the pelvic floor, right side compared to left side. Okay. Front to back, basically. And then yeah, third layer of the pelvic floor, the deepest layer of the pelvic floor is usually from my second knuckle all the way to the index finger. So that's about how far my finger is in. It's not very far. But yeah, stopping at any point along the way to see, just to see what we find. I'm trying to think of this week who I saw. I think I saw somebody yesterday. And she's on her feet a lot at work. She goes to the bathroom pretty consistently. So we talked about like how much water she's drinking, because that's a big factor of like having that perfect balance of not too much acidic fluids in our bladder that's irritating, make us think we have to go to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00: 20:33

So we're supposed to for like an overactive bladder.

SPEAKER_01: 20:35

Yeah, so we're supposed to drink half amount of water and ounces of our weight. So if we weigh 100 pounds, we're supposed to drink 50, 50 ounces, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00: 20:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 20:46

So asking her that, yeah, she's on her feet a lot. So then we assess like posture. How does she hold her body? Does she lean onto that left side and squeeze that left butt cheek to kind of stabilize her? So we talked about that. How can we change that? How can we shift that? And then I got her on the table and I did all manual adjustments, no internal, all manual adjustments to her sacrum because she was very flared on the left side of her sacrum. Did some soft tissue release to the upper or the lower back, and then we did internal. This was the second visit that we were working together. So then, yeah, walkthrough internal. We did the three levels of the pelvic floor. Her complaint is leaking with coughing, sneezing, working out, working out specifically is why she's really coming to see me because she wants to work out more, but she's having all this leaking. So we did the assessment, no pain noted, no weird, funky tension issues. So then we were doing a lot of kegels just to see, do you feel that? And said she said, yes, yes, I do feel that sensation. So we kind of were working with that. And what her home exercise program was like when I left left her with to do at home, was yeah, you know, wouldn't it wouldn't hurt to do some kegels to bring some awareness to your pelvic floor. But really, what I wanted to do with her specifically is she's doing the Peloton app workout. She's not doing for that. And so I'm like, send me, tell me what you're doing. What's your favorite kind of workout type of stuff to do? And different ways that we move our body is going to force our pelvic floor to respond. So, specifically with her, I think I had her do some bridge squeezes with a ball in between the legs. So to get the inner thighs engaged, the pelvic floor is going to respond, you know, get a little bit of overflow response. But then I might have her actually do, I'm like, okay, maybe I'll have you do some kegels whenever you do your bridge ball squeezes. So you don't have to focus on kegels every single time you do your deadlifts and your squats and all of that good stuff. But with this bridging ball squeeze exercise we're gonna do, I want you to do your keegles with that. They used to call it stoplight keegles. So every time you're at the stoplight, you're supposed to do your keegles. I'm like, you know, yeah, you could do that if you wanted. She could have done that if she wanted to. But if we would have had a patient vice versa, of having like a hypertonic pelvic floor, so lots of pain, pain with insertion of for sex or toys or tampons or pap smears, I would not have her do any kegels at all because that would just make it all worse.

SPEAKER_00: 23:10

She's overleased. So okay. This is I've so do a lot of people hearing what you talk, I'm wondering, is a lot of it like alignment of their spinal alignment? I would think too, because like I'm thinking like that could throw it would throw a lot of it off too. It's just like I'm thinking yoga, like stretching. Are we do we need to loosen other areas of our body that are affecting it too?

SPEAKER_01: 23:32

It truly is a whole body approach. Like you, you're not, that's why I say like the internal portion of it is just a teeny tiny piece because we are going to be looking at, yeah, like you said, the spine, like, but like with some of my patients, one of my other patients that I had yesterday, she can barely twist her upper spine without twisting her whole body. And so it's so restricted at her upper spine and she can't breathe, which we haven't even talked about breath. But if she can't breathe into her back ribs and her back diaphragm, all of that fascia, all of that connection down to the pelvis is gonna be completely restricted. And so she's gonna have issues with that back of the pelvic floor as well. She was my belly birther, she attempted a V back. So um, she had cesarian with her first, attempted the V back, vaginal birth after cesarean, and something about the baby just would not descend down into her pelvis. And I was telling her not to like I I'm a big like language matters and like how you say it, where when you say it, all of that matters. But there was a summit that I listened to and participated in this past spring, and it was the presenter did a lot of research on VBACs and unsuccessful VVACs, whatever, and she talked a lot about a lot about upper spine restrictions and that something about something with the restriction at the upper spine really affects the baby to be able to fully engage into the pelvic bowl. How interesting. So, you know, and I so I t I told this to my patient yesterday with like very much like, hey, this is take this as much as you want to. I don't, I'm not saying this is what it was, but and she was very thankful for that because she's like, you know, it's validating to hear that, but also just like, you know, I I did all the things. I did all of the spinning babies, which is a popular thing for for positioning and to get baby into a good spot. And she did all those things, and she's like, well, maybe it's just how my body is, how my genetics of my family, because her mom actually came into sessions to watch the boys while I would treat her. And so I could look at her mom and see kind of restrictions, they had very similar posture patterns.

SPEAKER_00: 25:37

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

So nothing that I would say that I could have helped her get that V back, but I wish I would have seen her during pregnancy to see what we could have done to address that earlier on. She works from home, so she sits at a desk all day, not all day long, but she sits at a desk for long portions of time.

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

So I love that you say that because this is my question now. Like, so people that come to you, because you said, like, I I didn't even think about people who are like having urgency issues. I'm always I'm thinking about leaking for the most part. So, do you work with people while they're pregnant? I know that's people work pretty like while they're pregnant to stretch their pelvic floor. I know I've heard of like exercise you can do with your partner to prepare for birth. Do you work with people after pregnancy, people who are having incontinence issues, people are having urgency issues? Am I missing anything like any pelvic or bladder issues that you work with?

SPEAKER_01: 26:30

Oh, yeah, definitely. Like I have I've had a decent amount of like people that have not had kids, young young adults.

SPEAKER_00: 26:36

Um I've never had kids and I started leaking like I drip after a pee, which is new. And I was like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_01: 26:43

Like I didn't have babies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is going on? Yeah. Yeah. So I've seen a fair amount of like pre-k. So I mean, they're young in my book because they're like early 20s and I'm, you know, mid to late 20s. Oh, that is young. I'm in my 40s, but so I'm just like, okay, like, am I still cool? But like I've seen them for hypertonic pelvic floor. So kind of similar to like probably what I had when I was in college and in high school to IC. I have another young patient that has interstitial cystitis. So basically inflammation of the bladder lining.

SPEAKER_00: 27:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 27:16

A tough one to treat. Endo, lots of endometriosis patients.

SPEAKER_00: 27:20

Okay. Because I'm thinking a lot of people probably don't even know this is an option. So that's why I want to like run through this to be like, oh, like maybe there's something I can do, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 27:29

Yeah, I mean, basically, if you have a pelvis and a poly floor, you should see a pelvic floor therapist.

SPEAKER_00: 27:33

Right. And you're a woman, yeah, right. Like, this is what happened.

SPEAKER_01: 27:37

Ideally, like, I would like it in the run long run to like see my patients once a year, like just like you go in for your well-wis women checkup. Like, I think you should be seeing a pelvic floor therapist, especially if you have prolapse on a diagnosis. If you have a genetic history of prolapse, if you had a genetic history of like um family member getting surgery for like mesh repair or whatever, that would be my dream world of seeing somebody once a year to just like check in, especially after I've seen them. But back to like what you're saying about like seeing pregnancy, like I love to see my patients from like a couple sessions during pregnancy and a couple sessions postpartum because you know, like I love a non physical, so I like like a non-medicated birth. That's what I did with my girls. And so I will get often a decent amount of patients that are home birthers, so they're doing non-medicated, no epidurals, no medication at all, or they go to like the birth center across the river at Mercy, and they're planning on just using a very low intervention side because I just, I don't know, we all have our passions. And I just I learned a lot when I was pregnant with my second when I was doing my yoga teacher training that I was talking about. And so I will get a lot of moms that are looking for alternative approaches, or just moms that want to like figure out like, yes, I am planning to get the abdural, but like I want to try to avoid a C-section. What can I do in preparation for that? So we learn about the pelvis and connection and not just the physical standpoints, but the mental emotional standpoint. It's important to feel safe within our nervous system. So it's so then our body can let go and be able to have the baby. So yeah, seeing them along their pregnancy, and then of course, after they have the baby, it's like just it's just the best thing in the world. And I teach yoga too, so I do prenatal and postnatal yoga series often. So I'll see my patients, you know, they'll come to those series too. And so I just get to really see them from this, and I'll do mom and me. I just did mom, mom and me wellness sessions. And so, you know, I'll see patients from before they got pregnant, while they were pregnant, after they had the baby, and then they're bringing their babies to it. It's just like the freaking coolest thing in the whole wide world.

SPEAKER_00: 29:35

Yeah, that sounds awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 29:38

And so, but then yeah, I so I'll see in the postpartum, and like if anything pops up, like in that kind of phase of life, and not just like you know, postpartum or fourth trimester, the 12 weeks after you have a baby, it is it's forever, like you your body has changed forever. Yeah, very menopause. Like, that's the next one. Is that I see that's me, yep. So I see I see the hot flashes, I see the genito-urinary system changes. So germinus usually is a big one, atrophy of the muscles, and yeah, it's a wild stage of life that we're having this estrogen, it's just like on this roller coaster up and down, and then throwing freaking everything off. Yeah, it's bullshit. It truly is like it's so unfreaking fair. I shared it's been a while since I shared it, but it was just like men enjoying their life, and then it's women, periods, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, like all of this list of like all this stuff that we have while managing your household and raising your children and working, yeah. So yeah, it's like anybody and everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 30:45

Do you okay? This is maybe a silly question, but so if like my stepson has had issues with wetting the bed, so is it is this something a little like men can do too if they have urgency and inconstancy issues?

SPEAKER_01: 30:56

I do I do want to say that because even though I don't treat penis owners because I've not taken the course on it, and since it is just like me as a solo practitioner, like I think it's another practice. There too. I do not, but there are some really amazing people, especially locally, that treatment.

SPEAKER_00: 31:13

So it exists for men too. It's just a little different therapy. This is only for women, anyway. But I was just curious about that. Let's go to that.

SPEAKER_01: 31:20

Like prostate issues, any kind of cancer, age.

SPEAKER_00: 31:24

I've seen like bed wedding for little boys too. That's right. Bedweding for little boys. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 31:29

Yep. Yep. So I would say, like him, I would be like, How often does he go to the bathroom? How often does he poop? What is his poop?

SPEAKER_00: 31:37

He's constipated all the time. That's why when you said that, I was like, oh my God. Any I mean on ADHD meds, who probably doesn't drink a lot of water during the day. So I'm like, oh he is a tense little anxious guy. So I'm like, oh my God, everything he just said is him on again to my own.

SPEAKER_01: 31:49

And I would try for him, like pediatricians might have suggested like Muralx or Dulcilex or something like that. I would, you know, those are great for temporary fixes, but I would look into magnesium, magnesium calm. They have kids' gummies. I would look into that. That's going to help his nervous system, but it's also going to help like the consistency of his stool so he's not having to push it out. Yeah, drinking water is definitely important. Some of his medication is probably throwing things off as well, slowing down his his digestive system.

SPEAKER_00: 32:16

I think it messes with his sleep a little bit too.

SPEAKER_01: 32:18

So that's also like he's in a deep sleep finally, and his body's finally relaxed. So then it goes. So yeah. A couple other strategies that we've used for that is like, you know, he might go to bed at his bedtime at 7:30, 8 o'clock, whatever. And then you're staying up for your bedtime rituals, whatever. And then before you go to bed at 10:30, 11, maybe you pop in there, have him go to the bathroom really quick so he empties empties.

SPEAKER_00: 32:41

That's what we do. We get him up at like midnight and we try to black.

SPEAKER_01: 32:44

I'm sure he's not, you know, as much as I want to be like, drink water, drink fluids. But like usually we say two hours before they go to sleep, they should be cut off from drinking fluids, no juices, Gatorades. That was something that I had a recent patient. They were like, Yeah, there he's staying up late because he's got extracurricular activities and he's been drinking Gatorade because he's so you know busy and active with his sport. He's so thirsty to hydrated. We've been giving him greater, and that's super sugary. And it's just for him that inflammates, inflammates, inflammates? No, inflames his blast, yes, you're right.

SPEAKER_00: 33:18

I got confused. We'll just say irritates, okay. The bladder was inflamed, is inflamed.

SPEAKER_01: 33:23

Yes, yes, and it would irritate it, and so then he would wet the bed. And so sure shit, they stopped giving him Gatorade and they just give him regular water, and he's not having any issues anymore.

SPEAKER_00: 33:32

So oh my gosh. Well, we are lucky, Jacks will only drink water, but I was like, I'm like, that's usually not a kid problem, uh that you like an issue, but he'll only drink water. We're lucky there, but I'm glad I can't wait to share this with my his mom and my husband. Thank you. Okay, I know you're on a time crunch. We've probably got a few minutes left. I appreciate you coming on so much. I've learned so much. I could honestly ask you questions all day. So we may have to do this again. But there are a couple things I always ask, like, okay, number one, I know that you are like digging deeper into your own practice. You're extended I want to mention like you are extending your own knowledge and like with Pilates, so like learning more about the body, and you're also extending into like some abdominal therapies to add to your practice for people, which is really exciting. So, what what will the abdominal stuff kind of add to what kind of patients will you be able to see?

SPEAKER_01: 34:20

Yes, so it's called Arvigo Ad Maya Abdominal Therapy. It's like an actual, I guess, copyrighted, I don't know, training program, but it's legitimate. Okay. So I'm going to Portland at the end of this month for this, and I can't freaking wait. But it's really taking like this hands-on approach to treating not just the abdomen, but definitely the back and the reproductive organs. So the ovaries, the uterus, fallopian tubes, looking at the bladder, the rectum, the intestines as well. Specifically with me, like, you know, I treat a lot of moms that have diastasis recti. So that the separation of the abdominal muscles. I'll treat a lot of hernia repair after they've had, you know, babies, sometimes they cause hernias. So there's lots of different strategies that we can use in this my abdominal to treat the fascia and like a lot of energetic work, which is kind of like what I like to treat. Like in the hospital setting, they probably wouldn't, insurance would probably not cover this, but treating the energetic approach to it because just like in yoga, we have different chakras, different points throughout our body, energy, gatekeepers, locks, basically. Well, the womb is so sacred. Your bandas. Yes. And the womb is so sacred, we hold, you know, we we can create life there. We have cycles, we have that sexuality as well, which is a very important part of our lives too. But we hold a lot of traumas, whether they're big traumas or little traumas, we hold a lot of that within our body. And so if we don't treat that or we're, you know, kind of hesitant to even like see what's going on within our uterus, then I don't know. I think we're holding ourselves back in a lot of different ways. So I'm hoping that this is what this abdominal treatment therapy training is going to help. Of course, the fascial um approaches to it for like endo patients. Um, they have a lot of if they've had excision or excisions, so where they're actually taking the endo lining out of their body or any kind of scar tissue from a belly birth or hysterectomy, like these are all really important things that you can have a lot of scar tissue built up or just something is going off within the body internally. And so treating that, making sure that our fascia doesn't have any restrictions there is something that we'll definitely be able to address with that.

SPEAKER_00: 36:38

That is so cool. You know, it's crazy is like how connected it all is. Like, really, honestly, like I had a a client of mine, and she we were working through her after cancer diagnosis reconnection with her body, and she had sleep apnea even though she probably weighed 90 pounds. But after she was able to like get comfortable in her body again, and like because she had this posture that was like this. So when she was able to like loosen her shoulders and actually like be comfortable rolling her shoulders back, her sleep apnea went away. So it's just interesting, all the things you're saying, it's like so connected. So I know you have to go here, so but I do want to ask you before we go, I ask all my guests like what is your go-to self-nurture when things get like overwhelmed for you? What do you do?

SPEAKER_01: 37:22

That's a good question. Cause this is like I was just telling my one of my pelvic four therapy buddies that like this. I think this is like the most chaotic, busiest month of my life up to date because we are moving into and you make time for us. I love it. Trying to sell a house, trying to sell our moving into a new house, have four kids, have the business, getting the polyseature training, get ready to go to Portland. It's just so bad. So I think like my go-to strategy is not going to be the same as everybody. And I think knowing that that's okay, first of all, because that's what I tell a lot of my patients is we have to find what makes sense to you, what make you make what makes you feel safe within your body, so then your body can find softness. And yeah, so you know, obviously, I love yoga. I love getting on my yoga mat and moving my body. And I taught Disney kids yoga last night. And although that was crazy and chaotic and overwhelming, something about like the shavasana, we call it snack shavasana. So that's where you lay there and you rest as corpse pose. With kids, we do sh snack shavasna, so it keeps them still while they're snacking on their little snack in the finally content after an hour of just listening to Disney music and all that good stuff. And I'm just laying there on my mat with my eyes closed, even just like softening to the tip of my tip of my nose, and just feeling my breath moving in through my body, which we didn't get to talk about breath. We'll have to, we definitely have to do another one because the breath is directly connected into the pelvic floor and our nervous system. So just feeling my body breathe and feeling my body could just soften and be still is just the reset that I always need.

SPEAKER_00: 38:48

So yeah, I love that. Okay, we're definitely gonna do this again. We're gonna talk about yoga, we're gonna talk about breath, and we're gonna talk about the mind-body connection and like your all that because that's I could I number one, I want to pick your brain, but number two, I love this stuff. I'm like obsessed. So we're absolutely thank you so much for coming out. Is there anything you want to leave our guests with? And then also tell me for people who just listen where to find you. I'm I'm gonna put all that in the show notes, but if someone's just listening how to find you, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 39:14

So I try to be as active as I possibly can on social media, not always great at it, especially this month. But I have my Instagram and my Facebook account. And so I try to post like useful tools and tricks and all of that good stuff, educational stuff on there. But then I have a website as well. It's www.enlightenedpublichealth.com. Um, you can always contact me on there. But yeah, I I teach yoga regularly at some local studios. And so if like this month I'm booked for patients, I'm not taking any more patients on right now, but I always suggest like if there is pregnancy or postpartum or something's going on, come to those prenatal, postnatal, you know, series. And yes, you get to move your body and connect in that way, but pick my brain there too. So yeah, if there's anybody local that's wanting to come to a yoga class, come and see me for that too.

SPEAKER_00: 39:59

That's how I heard about you talking about public floor and yoga classes. Someone told me that too. And I was like, what? What education does she have?

SPEAKER_01: 40:05

Oh, it's just so nice too. Like, even like on Sundays, I teach a heated vinyasa class. So it's like a power flow class and it's heated, so you get nice and sweaty. Um, but even that, like coming to a class like that, like just connecting in, of course, with me, like I want to be everybody's friend, but like connecting into the community and connecting into prenatal, postnatal, connecting into other mothers as well that are going through something very similar.

SPEAKER_00: 40:28

It's very oh yes, community, women healing community. That's something that comes up on the show. Like it used to come up every single episode. It's probably been a while, but it's so true. We need some people who understand us. Yep, absolutely. I love it. I love it. I can't wait to talk to you again. Thank you so much for your time, and I'm so excited to share this episode.

SPEAKER_01: 40:46

Yay! Yay. All right, well, I'll talk to you later, okay?

SPEAKER_00: 40:50

Yes, have a good day.

SPEAKER_01: 40:52

See you later. Bye. Bye, hi.