Whole Person Pelvic Health

• The first ever Trauma-Informed Pelvic Health Certification by Lindsey + Lara
• Pelvic OTPs United -- Lindsey's new off-line community!
• Get Lindsey's 9 page OTs Map to the World of Pelvic Health.
• Meet Lindsey on the OTs for Pelvic Health Facebook Group!
• Check Out More OT Pelvic Health Content here.
• Find Lindsey on IG! @functionalpelvis

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Pelvic OTPs United - Lindsey's off-line interactive community for $39 a month!
Inside Pelvic OTPs United you'll find:​

• Weekly group mentoring calls with Lindsey. She's doing this exclusively inside this community. These aren't your boring old Zoom calls where she is a talking head. We interact, we coach, we learn from each other.
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• Highly curated forums. The worst is when you post a question on FB just to have it drowned out with 10 other questions that follow it. So, she's got dedicated forums on different populations, different diagnosis, different topics (including business). Hop it, post your specific question, and get the expert advice you need.

More info here. Lindsey would love support you in this quiet corner off social media!

Transcript

Intro New and seasoned OTs are finding their calling in Pelvic health. After all, what's more ADL than sex, peeing and poop? But here's the question What does it take to become a successful, fulfilled and thriving O.T. in Pelvic health? How do you go from beginner to seasons and everything in between? Those are the questions and this podcast will give you the answers. We are inspired, OTs. We are out of the box OTs, we are Pelvic health OTs. I'm your host Lindsey Vestal and welcome to the OTs and Pelvic health Podcast. 

Lindsey Vestal It is no secret that I am kind of obsessed with the vagus nerve, especially as it relates to pelvic health. The vagus nerve is kind of like the epicenter, if you will, of our mind body connection. It controls are autonomic nervous system. And I think one of the biggest misnomers about understanding the vagus nerve and understanding a healthy nervous system is the fact that it's not always calm. Yeah. It's not always calm. We're. We're. We're not actually meant to always be at ease. What's ideal is being flexible and resilient. What's ideal is to have what Dan Siegel refers to as a window of tolerance, the ability to. Once a stressor has occurred, to be able to be adaptable and come back to a place where you are regulated. So it's actually healthy to get angry. It's actually healthy to have a reaction to something that in your environment isn't optimal. But staying there, staying in that heightened place is what can often lead to. An unregulated nervous system. And so the vagus nerve is kind of like the key to our emotional health. It's that communicator between gut and brain. It has a huge impact on digestion, which is so key, so key in public health. And when I talk about it having an impact on the digestive system, I'm talking about things like even how the vagus nerve sends signals down from the brain to the gut actually controlling the esophagus propulsion or how food comes down from the esophagus. So once we actually swallow our food, it enters our esophagus and then it goes to the stomach. And so the vagus nerve, when we have access to it and it's functioning well, actually relaxes the sphincter between the esophagus and the stomach. And so people who are spending a lot of time in an upregulated or sympathetic nervous system state have a hard time digesting. Now, the vagus nerve also increases gastric emptying. So as we know, the stomach has a really low age, which is optimal. Right. It really helps the food be chemically processed. It helps steer away bacteria. But gastric emptying can actually slow down when our vagus nerve isn't regulated. And so, again, this is this has a huge impact on our client's ability to actually digest our food. Now, the vagus nerve, now the vagus nerve also has a huge role on peristalsis, having a smooth, regulated process there. So when the contractions of peristalsis aren't smooth and regular, a lot of our clients will have like one big squeeze. And that expansion causes pain and bloating. And, you know, those those bulges actually press on our receptors. Now, this is just one aspect of it and how it's involved in Pelvic health. It also has a huge role in immune functioning and endocrine function. Right. So are hormones. So this could be a very long podcast. If we talk about all of these various incredible, let's call it tentacles of the vagus nerve and how it impacts the mind body connection. But what I really want to lean into today is this idea of facilitation of whole person pelvic health healing and how by working with the vagus nerve, you can really build more capacity even in the face of stressors and adversities. So feeling safe and being able to navigate back into that window of tolerance to me is really the foundation of Pelvic health right? You can have the most exciting state of the art exercises or manual therapy techniques, and if your client doesn't feel safe in their body and have the ability to regulate their nervous system, their goals are likely not going to be easily met. Here's the thing You don't learn movement or new strategies unless you're motivated, connected, available and really feeling present. How can our pelvic floor therapy clients learn this amazing education or strategies that we're providing or how to use their core system efficiently when they're not in these important states? It starts with safety and availability. And then and only then can we move to learning. And the thing is, when I first started in Pelvic health over a decade ago, I really tried working the way many of my incredible, incredible mentors did, right. So I listened to my client. I heard their goals, and I used my O.T. approach of the just right challenge, and I addressed their ADLs in the context of their pelvic health. And they did get better. They got better. Of course they got better. But upon further reflection, I really feel like they got better because they felt heard and feeling heard is such an important component of regulating the nervous system. And I began to lean more into being a trauma informed practitioner. I actually started to address the nervous system first, actually making it the priority and then incorporating movement strategies and manual therapy. And then my clients got better even faster. So understanding the vagus nerve and prioritizing the nervous system of your client is is really, to me, the foundation of how I practice and I believe is what is truly a bio psychosocial approach. With bio, we know that addressing the tissues and doing movement and having manual therapy is such an important part of. But I really believe that leaning into the psychosocial aspects first allow us to see what remains in the bio structure. And in by doing this, we are really respecting our client and their past by not immediately putting hands on them, not immediately thinking that they're not worthy of a multi pronged approach that really takes into account all of the aspects that go into their life. I would be very hard pressed to meet a pelvic health practitioner that could look me in the eye and say this client is at this level of dysfunction purely because of a trigger point, purely because of a lack of coordination in the pelvic floor. It is always so much more than that. And I find that we can really respect them and help them to feel safe in their bodies again in a very fundamental way. When we leave the bio part down the road. And so, yeah, this sometimes means I don't do an internal exam in the first session. In the second session in the third session, all depends on the safety and the ability for my client to have a vagus nerve connection. And that is really how I move through my own treatment process. Have you ever have you ever had a client that asked you why? Why did my body respond that way? You know, so I'm thinking about maybe a client who was hiking in the woods, let's say in in Canada, in beautiful Vancouver. And they went around the corner and they thought they saw a bear. And, you know, it ended up being another hikers dog. But their first initial reaction was they thought it was a bear and this client peed their pants. They literally soaked their garment and the client looked in the eye and said, Why did my body betray me in that way? Why was that my response? How was that going to help me survive? And I find that feelings of shame really influence our client's experience and understanding that whatever way their body reacted, it was what we call an intelligent adaptation. It was their bodies way of keeping them safe. We may not understand it cognitively, but it was our nervous systems reaction to the situation and understanding that it was an intelligent adaptation for the amount of information that our body had in that moment is really the springboard for change. And when we think of our body as our ally and don't think of it as someone something that let us down, it's a huge shift for our clients. You know, our brain is designed to keep us alive, and every strategy that we acquire is an adaptive response to protect ourselves. It is incredible to reduce shame when a client. Has this conversation with us. Right. When we when a client when a client can see that in a split second, they're very, very intelligent body made a decision to say it's safe. Even if we don't understand it. It's a form of taking care of ourself. And this can be a profound healing opportunity. I always love to share with our clients that we continuously have the ability to reorganize. Right? So when you find yourself maybe even listening to this podcast kind of wiggling in your seats or maybe spontaneously yawning, it's often our nervous system bringing online our parasympathetic system to kind of dial back down into homeostasis. Right. And Kim Barthel, an occupational therapist, has this beautiful quote that says homeostasis is a dance within our bodies to use both sympathetic and parasympathetic at the same time. And I just love that because that balance of the dance is what resilience is. And so being able to find the tools to shift back into balance is really is is a pivotal part of our work. And I do think this is where intersection comes into play. Because interception allows us to get a sense when our body and our mind is starting to shift out of that window of tolerance. So it could be, you know, some fatigue. It could be a little bit of annoyance. It could be that you're very, very frustrated with, you know, whenever your individual body is giving you some indication that it's shifting out of that window of tolerance, it's an opportunity to reassess and to find a find what your body's individual needs are to shift back closer to the window of tolerance. And this is a and this is also this is that dance. This is that dance that Kim Berthoud talks about. So this was a short and snappy podcast episode this week. I've just been thinking so much about the role of intersection, and our body's sending us cues and, you know, sharing with our clients just how much intelligent adaptations are important in reducing shame is is really the cornerstone of approaching our client from that biopsychosocial lens as well as considering the psychosocial first. I think those are my biggest takeaways for today's episode. 

Intro New and seasoned OTs are finding their calling in Pelvic health. After all, what's more adult than sex, peeing and poop? But here's the question What does it take to become a successful, fulfilled and thriving OT in Pelvic health? How do you go from beginner to seasons and everything in between? Those are the questions and this podcast will give you the answers. We are inspired, OTs. We are out of the box. OTs We are Pelvic health OTs I'm your host, Lindsey Vestal and welcome to the OTs and Pelvic health Podcast.