What my PT has shown me is that my pelvic floor muscles tense up in response to pain. Having both bowel and bladder problems, my pelvic region is nearly always in pain, and thus nearly always tensed up. I walked around for years that way without even realizing it. I think a lot of it too is from being bloated - I was subconsciously trying to "suck it in" all of the time. Now what we're working on is a conscious relaxing of those muscles. She uses biofeedback machines to show me what muscles are actually engaged when I feel as though I'm relaxed, when I do a Kegel, etc.
My PT is also a big advocate in hypnotherapy, meditation, yoga, anything that will help me relax because tension is such a big part of the problem. I think I'm going to finally break down and buy the IBS hypnotherapy CD's...
I agree with sharond - a lot of PT's without specialized training will simply have you do Kegel exercises to "strengthen" the area, but without a full understanding/visualization of the muscles, all you will be doing is making the region more tense.
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Re: Thanks and a couple more questions
