Listening to the Tissues: How to Let the Body Guide Your Manual Therapy Techniques

Your clients are coming to you because their body is communicating that there is an issue.

Are you listening to what it has to say?

If you struggle getting the results you want with your clients or helping clients improve beyond a certain point – then don’t miss today’s episode as Lynn shares her tricks of the trade that will not only get you desirable results, but that will pull in the pieces that have been ‘missing’. You know the ones - the little thoughts or pings in your body that tell you – “you can do more” and “there is more to this work”.

Well, Lynn is here to tell you, “You can! And, there is!”

When working with clients, there is so much more to working with the body than just following the protocols you have been taught. Listen in as Lynn shares a recent case that involved working on a client’s cervix and the additional data you need to be watching for in all of your treatment sessions to attain more meaningful results.

Keep listening if you Are you ready to add in the missing pieces and improve client outcomes?

✨Episode Highlights:

• Tuning into what the tissue “wants”
• The evolving skill of sensing tissue response
• Importance of foundational techniques and flexibility
• Adjusting to individual presentations

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To learn more visit: InstituteforBirthHealing.com

Visit Institute for Birth Healing to learn more about how to care for the pregnant and postpartum body: CLICK HERE

Transcript

 Welcome to this episode. And today I would like to talk to you about connecting the external with the internal.

And what do I mean by that? Is that when we, before we do any internal work, we must be working externally with the body first.

If you've taken my course at any of my courses, I talk a lot about making sure that we get the bones back into their proper place.

And we also want to make sure that we work with the lower abdominal fascia and the lower pelvic organs, not lower, but in the.

We want to be assessing the uterine mobility, assessing bladder, assessing uterus on bladder, and those are all techniques that I teach in the holistic treatment of the postpartum body course.

And first off, what I'm finding with that is that when I find restrictions in the pubovesical ligament, so the bladder is restricted on one side, or I find the uterus is restricted in the broad ligament, before I go treat either structure, I'm actually finding by doing the movement of the uterus on the bladder and moving them in opposite directions and checking that out.

If I treat that first, I find that the other two structures, the bladder structure and the uterine structures actually release better.

So that has been my go-to first when I'm working with my postpartum clients. And treating the uterus on the bladder, releasing that, and then reassessing uterus to see what's still restricted, because if we have too much tension, and I'm finding a lot of left side, too much left sided tension between uterus and bladder, that can feel and appear like a broad ligament restriction.

But if you release the uterus on the bladder on that left side, then you go to reassess the uterus, you may find that that broad ligament tension is gone.

So definitely do it in that order might help you to have less work to do. And we want to be as efficient as we can in our sessions so that we can get the most covered in our sessions with our clients.

And so as we are assessing that uterine mobility externally, you want to keep in mind where is the restriction externally.

. Also want to keep in mind, what did you find in the pelvic bones externally? And then we want to correlate that with what we're finding internally.

And when I talk about bringing or connecting the external with the internal, it's having all this information about the external structures so that when we go internal, we have a better understanding of what the forces and play is happening internally and externally.

Because in my intravaginal protocol that I teach, I want to see how bladder is sitting in there. I want to assess the cervical mobility and how I address and treat the cervix depends on what I found externally.

So if I find the cervix is tucked over to the left. So And so when I'm to correct that, I want to forces to help correct it into midline.

If I cervix and fundus is sitting in there at an oblique angle. And so when I'm trying to correct that, I want to use the forces to help correct it into midline.

If I find the cervix internally off to the left and the fundus is tight on the left, then my force of treatment is going to be moving both structures to the midline from the left.

So I'm going to be encouraging the structures to move to the right together so that we can help that uterus find a greater sense of ease and movement internally.

And so knowing what's happening in that lower abdominal. down the I'm In the pelvic organs externally can help you internally in releasing those tissues.

So I just had a two week postpartum client come to see me. And she had a lot of tension on the left side, left pubic vesicle ligament, uterus stuck on the left side on the bladder and what I thought was broad ligament.

And so I released all that, but I released the bladder, the uterus on the bladder first. And then I really didn't have to treat broad ligament because it really wasn't a tension in the broad ligament.

It was the connection between the two. And once that was released, uterus had much greater mobility in there. When I went internally, I found that that bladder tension was greater on that left hand side.

So I did the external and internal bimanual technique that I teach with her. And then I found the cervix to the left as well.

And so then I had a better understanding of Of what really needed to happen in order to make this, make the uterus happier in there.

And then the other thing to keep in mind, so that's the cervix and the bladder. When you go to the pelvic floor muscles, remember, and I did a whole nother episode on just the pelvic floor muscles, the tension in the pelvic floor muscles, they tell you what's actually been going on with the pelvic bones.

If you have not treated sacral flexion externally, and please, everybody, treat every postpartum client with the external sacral flexion technique, you can learn about it in the free course.

There is also another technique that I use all the time, and that is in the advanced postpartum online course.

So please, after you complete the postpartum, holistic treatment of the postpartum, Of please make sure put that on your list, the advanced postpartum technique course, because there is a technique that I do all the time for sacral flexion.

And I just love how you're able to, you know, the clients can feel it, you can really feel it.

And it just helps to release that sacral flexion, I think even better than what I teach in the free online sacral flexion course, which may not be free much longer, everybody.

Just FYI. Um, so if, and, and this has happened to me in the past, so I, I understand how easy it is to miss sacral flexion.

If you've treated the sacrum, you've treated the ischamelium rebalancing, and then you go internally and you find bilateral coccygeous muscle tension, you may have missed sacral flexion.

Okay, um. um. Um. So if you do find bilateral coccygeous tension and you've already treated externally sacral flexion, then keep working with those muscles and work on bringing sacrum more anterior.

But if you missed it, if you go internally and you forgot to do the sacral flexion and you find bilateral coccyx tension, coccygeous tension, take your finger out vaginally and go work externally on bringing the sacrum more anteriorly, bring the sacrum more into extension, bring the tailbone closer to the pubic bone.

That is going to help take off the tension of the coccygeous muscles. And so recognize that the tension you're feeling internally is giving you a sense of what's happening externally with the bones.

So this is why it's important for us to work both externally and internally. Combine the two together so that we can best help our clients be able to function well after birth.

So the body is always giving us clues. It's always giving us signs and signals. We've got to be paying attention to those.

So think about what's happened. Think about the mechanics of what's happened as that baby has come on out. That's why it's so important that we ask the question, what position were you in when the baby came out?

And addressing what we find in the body is so important, okay? I'm just, today, just got done being in the clinic, and I was, again, astounded by how much stronger the pelvic floor muscles are after I get done doing what I do.

And there was one client that I saw that I was wondering if she had an... Because there was a bulging of the structures on her left side.

And she had didn't have really good strength in that bulge. And to me, when I feel bulge, that's, that's a sign of a potential defect, where maybe the structures have pulled away from their attachment point somewhere.

And actually, though, it wasn't it. And she, when you feel that bulge, when you feel one section of the levatorini muscle group not coming to the party, you'll feel a divot as they go to contract, please make sure you check out the IRF, the ischiorectal fossa, and release that ischiorectal fossa.

So this client that I saw, she had a slight bulge, and I was wondering if it was a defect, I really had to work hard and releasing the IRF she had, she was, she was stuck in sacral flexion for two years.

What, so. Interesting with her case because she had, um, her pregnancies were hard, she said, but, um, she wasn't in a lot of pain with the first one, but after the birth of her first daughter, who she delivered at home on hands and knees, she said it was super smooth, but she had a ton of pain afterwards.

And, um, another thing that I'm really starting to appreciate, I'm sorry, I'm kind of all over the place on this podcast, but these are just really cool thoughts that I think they're cool thoughts that have come up to me.

And as I work with my clients is that there is a huge difference in people who have a lot of bendiness.

a lot of collagen threes in their body, they're hypermobile, they're, um, bendy. Um, they respond so much differently to birth than people who don't have a lot of, uh, three call it type three collagen in their bodies and aren't as bendy.

So they're more stiff. And this person was more stiff as I was working with her and, um, helping to release the IRF really did help that whole side of the muscle to, um, to work better.

I do still feel she has, I thought the defect was more in the levatorani group, but I think she did have a minor, um, defect in the more superficial structures, maybe bulbo.

Or, uh, transverse perennial, um, something right at that four or five o'clock in the opening, there was more, um, it just wasn't working well on the left side as the right side.

And so I do what I can to release what I can. And, um, you know, her EAS was so tight from being stuck in flexion for two years that she had tension at 12 o'clock and a lot of tension at six o'clock of her sphincter complex.

And I helped to release that the IRF and she definitely had more strength. But it was hard to say whether this defect was it from this second birth where she was only two weeks out, or was it from the first birth and her senses that was actually from the first birth.

She had a ton of pain, especially with the second pregnancy. And her labor was awful. And I was just like, Oh, man, if only you could have come in and seen me during that pregnancy, we could have helped.

But wasn't meant to be and she feels way better in her body. Now she's way aware of her body.

And, and it was really interesting how automatic things were for her once we helped to release some of the things she was like, way aware of everything kicking in that usually I do a sit to stand with all my clients after I get done doing the internal work, the standing assessment piece.

And then I have them, okay, just stand on up and she stands up, she goes, Oh, my belly and pelvic floor kick.

And I was like, okay. And then I had her cough and everything was more reflexive for her. And that's always my goal with my postpartum clients is to make sure that their core is acting reflexively.

And hers really was after this one. So after this one session, you guys, we got to get this workout into the world, please help me please help me turn, turn other therapists on to wanting to take the course and learn this material.

And start implementing it so that we can get more clients or more therapists helping more clients be as effective in helping them to get stronger and better in their bodies after birth.

All right. I'd appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening in. I hope that you have a better understanding of how you can combine what you're finding externally and what you're finding internally and how to make them help you to work those two together in your sessions.

Okay. Thanks everybody for listening in. Here's to smoother bursts, faster recoveries, and really listening to the body. All right, take care and we'll see you all in the next episode.

Bye-bye.