Breathe Through It: My First Session of Pelvic Floor Therapy

Breathe Through It

I never realized, until this week, that having spent several years under the ministrations of a massage terrorist would help me with vaginal issues. But it’s true.

Because, you see, when Helga The Horrible¹ used to knead and press and dig her elbows into my overtight, sore muscles, I had to breathe through it. (And then, when I relaxed into the pain a bit from the breathing, she would dig in further and I’d have to breathe some more.) (I think she was a sadist.)

And that’s what I had to do during my first pelvic floor therapy session: breathe through it.

In which, I am ‘consulted’:

The first part of the appointment was easy. For me, at least. For the therapist, not so much. She was a bit stumbly and apologetic in her question-asking, and it was strange for me to feel like *I* was the one who needed to put *her* at ease. I think she’s used to people being reticent or feeling shameful about discussing their nethers and what kinds of activities those nethers engage in. But that’s not the case with me.

So I told her about the gradual three-year decline in interest between ages 40-43, and how that decline got very steep and has crashed beyond the zero point into negative-libido land between 43 and 46. I explained some of the physical symptoms I’ve experienced, I told her about my former gynecologist’s declaration that it would be difficult to tell between PCOS and menopause in some ways because of the severity of the former, and I answered questions — the first pertaining to dryness, to which I said, “I know what lube is. I’ve been using it for over twenty years.” — and gave her a general idea of The Problem.^TM

So the first part was basically consultative.

Oh, and she asked me relationship questions and — I’m assuming she also gets this a lot — whether I was there because of my husband’s expectations.

Um, no. “I don’t do anything just because my husband wants it. For the record, he’s made it clear that if I go ahead with this, it must not be ‘because of him’ in any way; he expects that my reasons are entirely my own. And they are. I’m here because I think vaginal health and sexual health are important.”

Aside from a few asides and one brief, odd ‘instructive’ moment in which she tried to demonstrate how I could better communicate with my partner (again: I think she gets this a lot), that was the end of the consultation.

At which point, we got down to business.

Un-tensing my Pelvic Muscles

I undressed from the waist down and lay face-up on a massage table. There was a towel to drape my thighs and she put pillows under my knees. (“Much more comfortable that stirrups,” she explained.) (Amen.)

She sat on the end of the table, inserted lubricated fingers, and then — moving her hand straight forward, slowly — told me to tell her when it started to hurt.

From her vantage point, her fingers were pointing straight at the 12; from mine, the 6. If that makes sense.

I gave her feedback — “that’s a sharp pain” or “that’s uncomfortable but not exactly painful” — when it hurt, and I let her know, after she would press into that sore spot for a while, how it changed: “that’s duller now” and “it feels like a knot just released” and “on a scale of one to five, that’s about a three.”

She moved ‘around the clock’ along the saddle of pelvic muscles — slightly moving her finger and holding in the one o’clock position, waiting for my feedback, pressing or holding or releasing pressure accordingly, then on to the two o’clock and three o’clock, etc. — and it was a long series of {1} feeling the pain, {2} breathing through the pain, and {3} releasing pain.

Inhale, gathering those pain sensations.

Exhale, letting them go.

Breathe though it.

Repeat.

At one point, she complimented me on my ability to breathe.

Which seems silly, I guess. But a lot of people either don’t know how to breathe through discomfort (our instinct, as humans, is to tense up and hold our breath when we experience pain; so it’s a thought process many people are unused to) or just choose not to do it.

At another point she told me that if it got too intense, to try to breathe through my vagina.

Which was hilarious.

But I was too busy trying to breathe through it to laugh.

Still Breathing

She felt we made progress.

“I can feel your pulse now,” was something she said on a couple occasions. Which means that the ‘knot’ or whatever-you-call-it tension was released/relaxed in those spots.

She also said, “Really, you did all the work.”

(Of course I did. PFT is a form of physical therapy, and I’m well aware that physical therapy requires work.)

She also gave me some stretches to do — {a} one for my upper thighs, as apparently the tense muscles there (and they are tense — I have approximately zero flexibility in my legs anymore, which is a huge change from how things used to be²) are having a negative influence on the inner muscles they are connected to, and {b} another for my back, which is supposed to floss my nerves — and I will work on those between now and the next time I see her.

Meanwhile, I have a bit of residual inner soreness — similar to what you’d experience if a massage therapist did deep tissue work on you — that I’m just… I dunno, sitting with{?} right now.

And I’m breathing through it.

***************

¹Not her real name. But close enough.

²I mean… The positions!

NOTE: My purpose in writing this post is twofold. I wanted to provide an update because I’ve been talking about health topics recently, but I also wanted to just share information. I’ve never met anybody who has gone through pelvic floor therapy before and when I went looking for information online — especially from a personal-experience perspective — I found it lacking.

If you are interested in this topic or have personal experience with this kind of therapy, I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you have questions, please ask.