Resource Package - Pelvic Floor Relaxation for Women
Resource Package - Pelvic Floor Relaxation for Women
This course includes
The instructors
Overview
These relaxation exercises offer hope and help for people of any age with chronic pelvic pain, including painful intercourse. Your patients can use these recordings to practice ‘down-training' their pelvic floor muscles at home.
This series of guided audio recordings is specially designed for women with persistent pelvic pain to learn how to relax tight muscles, especially the pelvic floor muscles inside the pelvis, which are often tense and a cause of pelvic pain. Yes, it is possible for the pelvic floor muscles to be too tight and in spasm. The exercises are sometimes called “reverse Kegels” because they teach the skill of relaxation, rather than just tightening.
The User Guide is an additional resource to help people understand the pelvic floor muscles, why they are so often a source of pelvic pain, and what can be done about it.
The person with pelvic pain, associated with pelvic floor muscle tension, will be guided to use focused techniques to connect with, and relax, all the muscles of the body, including the pelvic floor. Progressive Muscular Relaxation is taught and also the skill of relaxing without targeted muscle contractions. Additional breathing exercises assist pelvic floor relaxation through movements of the diaphragm. The exercises also help people with pain to practice switching on the ‘relaxation response’ to cope with pain and stress. The exercises are practiced in lying and sitting so they can be easily applied in everyday life. Regular home practice with these audio tracks will develop life skills to improve the quality of life of people with pelvic pain.
Please note: To ensure that the appropriate resource package is selected, in this User Guide and Tracks, I refer to users as women and refer to anatomical terms, Including the vagina. This product is suitable for use by people who are comfortable being identified as a woman and who refer to their anatomy with these terms.
Disclaimer:
This relaxation training is intended for use by women, diagnosed with chronic (or ‘persistent’) pelvic pain by a medical practitioner, and who have undergone medical assessment to eliminate causes of pain other than pelvic floor muscle tension, such as infection or inflammation, which require specific medical treatment. The training is useful for women diagnosed with endometriosis, as pelvic muscle tension often contributes to their pain, including persistent pain after endometriosis surgery.
The audio tracks in this resource package have been produced by Dr. Patricia Neumann, Specialist Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. Learn more about Patricia in the 'Instructors' section of this page.
What's Included in this Resource Package
5 audio tracks are included:
Track 1: [30 minutes – lying]. Whole body and pelvic floor Progressive Muscular Relaxation with breathing exercises.
Track 2: [12 minutes – lying]. Whole body and pelvic floor muscle passive relaxation with body scanning and breathing exercises.
Track 3: [3 minutes – seated]. A relaxation exercise with breathing and scanning to do during the day.
Track 4: [3 minutes – seated]. A ‘grounding’ exercise to calm the body and pelvic floor for those who find focussing on relaxation hard.
Track 5: [20 minutes]. The wonderful relaxation music in a stand-alone track to play at any time to help you breathe and be calm.
You can sample one of the tracks by going to the 'Course materials' section. Click on the lesson titled 'Audio sample: Seated relaxation'
There are also accompanying educational materials that can be shared as well as the entire user guide (PDF). Templates have been created in this resource package to make it quick and easy to prescribe the content to your patients. Please see the FAQ section below for more information about using Embodia for HEP.
Audience
This resource package is available for healthcare practitioners who are interested in using the practices with their patients. Please note that an Embodia Membership is required in order to prescribe the audio practices - more information is provided in the FAQ section below.
Disclaimer: People with pelvic pain should be assessed by a medical practitioner first to rule out causes of pelvic pain requiring medical attention. These exercises are most effective when used with professional guidance from a pelvic health physiotherapist, as part of a comprehensive pain management program.
The instructors
Specialist Physiotherapist in Women's, Men's and Pelvic Health as awarded by the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 2010
Trish is an Australian Specialist Physiotherapist, (awarded by the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 2010) and has a PhD from the University of South Australia. She was awarded the Ruth Grant Prize for dedication and achievement in physiotherapy research.
She worked clinically in the area of pelvic health for 30 years and co-designed the University of South Australia course on the “Conservative management of Pelvic Organ Prolapse”, which awards a Professional Certificate in pessary management for Australian physiotherapists. She continues to lecture on this course.
During her later years as a clinician, Trish worked within a multi-disciplinary team and focussed on treating people with complex pelvic pain. She became interested in the potential to incorporate Pain Science Education into her treatment and developed a group education program. She saw the need for a resource to help her patients with pelvic pain practice relaxation, pelvic floor ‘down training’ and breathing techniques at home. And so, in 2014, she developed this audio resource, with subsequent editions developing and improving the content.
Trish’s research and publications span a wide range of pelvic floor topics, including competency-based physiotherapy training, female stress urinary incontinence, vaginal pessaries, pelvic pain and male post-prostatectomy urinary incontinence. She has authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications, with nine as first author, and three book chapters.
Material included in this course
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Information about this Resource Package
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Welcome!
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A disclaimer and a note about terminology
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User Guide for Women (Downloadable PDF)
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Audio Sample Free
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Audio sample: Seated relaxation
Patient exercises included in this course
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Women's - Progressive Muscular Relaxation
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Women's - Scanning for Relaxation
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Seated Relaxation
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Grounding Relaxation
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Relaxation Music
Patient education included in this course
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How to apply this training
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The female pelvic floor muscles
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What is chronic (or ‘persistent’) pelvic pain? (for women)
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Information about the Audio Track: Progressive Muscular Relaxation
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Information about the Audio Track: Scanning for relaxation
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Information about the Audio Track: Seated Relaxation
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Information about the Audio Track: Grounding relaxation
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Information about the Audio Track: Relaxation Music
Templates included in this course
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Complete program
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Relaxation music
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Grounding relaxation
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Seated relaxation
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Scanning for relaxation
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Progressive muscular relaxation
What is a Resource Package?
A resource package is not a complete online course. Rather, a resource package on Embodia contains patient exercises and/or education that can be prescribed to patients by an Embodia Member (subscriber) with a Tier 2 or 3 Membership. You can view membership pricing and what's included in the membership tiers by going here.
While you can access/purchase resource packages without an Embodia Membership, you will get the most out of a resource package if you have a Tier 2 or 3 Membership.
If you have any further questions, please email us at support@embodiaapp.com.
How do home exercise programs work on Embodia?
Embodia provides patients with easy access to their home exercise programs from free mobile apps (Apple and Android) and online (via all modern web browsers).
A simple interface with clear instructions guides patients through a program tailored by their practitioner.
Practitioners can prescribe from our growing library of videos, easily record a patient being coached through exercises and share these private videos securely with the patient, or prescribe from their own library of videos. Practitioners are empowered to monitor patient progress via the patient dashboard.
Key practitioner features of the Embodia HEP platform include:
- Quick onboarding -- use it right away without extensive training required
- Customize HEPs with videos from the Embodia library
- Upload your videos quickly and easily
- Create a clinic library of content
- Ability to record patients in session on private, secure mobile app
- Improved patient-practitioner relationship and adherence to HEP
- Share educational resources with your patients
To learn more about Embodia for HEP please visit this page.
If you are a pelvic health practitioner, we also recommend that you review the information on this page.