The Ischiorectal Fossa: The Missing Piece in Postpartum Pelvic Floor Recovery

If you’ve ever assessed a postpartum client and wondered whether a pelvic floor “defect” was really a tear, or something else entirely, then this episode gives you the answers. Lynn shares a newly discovered and surprisingly powerful way to release the ischiorectal fossa, a structure that can quietly inhibit pelvic floor function and stall progress. What looks like weakness or a missing contraction may simply be tissue that can’t move. In this episode, Lynn reveals a simple but game-changing connection between the ischiorectal fossa and the adductors that can unlock rapid change. If you’re ready to stop second-guessing your findings and start seeing immediate shifts, don’t miss today’s episode.

✨ Episode Highlights:

• Why pelvic floor “divots” may not be true muscle defects
• The hidden role of the ischiorectal fossa in postpartum dysfunction
• How sphincter mobility impacts deeper pelvic tissues
• A powerful new IRF release using adductor compression
• Why IRF assessment belongs in every postpartum evaluation

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Transcript

This meeting is being recorded. Whether you're addressing it or not, I hope you'll listen into this episode as I share an amazing way to help it to release.

But before we dive into that, I want to just let you be all aware that this month the course highlight is the Pregnancy, Pain, and Beyond course.

And I would love to help you to understand how baby's position in the body might be causing pain, how to help shift baby into a better position so moms can have a smoother birth.

We also cover breech births and how to help create more space. This course focuses more on the superficial structures and the holistic treatment of the pregnant body focuses more on the deeper structures.

So that's how I kind of differentiate them. And there's two separate courses that are both really, really important if you're working with pregnant clients.

So, all right, let's go ahead and dive into the ischiorectal fossa today. I know I've talked about this in another podcast, but I've added, I've found a better way to help get it to release that I want to share with you today.

And so to review, the ischiorectal fossa is the area between the anus and so lateral to the anus and medial to the ischiorectal tuberosity.

And it's part of my protocol that I teach in the holistic treatment of the postpartum body course, there's a protocol that I teach doing intravaginal work.

And after we do the sphincter. sphincter. Muscle release, which you guys, I don't know. There's nobody else out there teaching how to work with the sphincter muscle like I do in my courses.

So please come learn, take the holistic postpartum body course so you can learn how to better assess that sphincter muscle because there are always knots in that muscle post-birth.

If you watch a birth and you see how much a baby's head causes that muscle to stretch out during the birth process, it's no wonder it has knots in it, and it's going to affect this ischiorectal fossa area.

So we want to address the anus first and release that muscle, but then afterwards we want to see what the mobility is like of this ischiorectal fossa.

And I want to give Nicole Cozine a shout out for this because she's the one that made me even aware of the structure in the first place.

I did not remember learning it way back when. So when she started talking about it, was like, oh, and then I just started.

And if you just put your thumb lateral to the anus and just press in up towards the head, so we're pressing in superiorly, the same amount mobility should be on one side as it is the other side.

And typically what I find in postpartum clients is that one side is definitely has less mobility. And I have to say that I'm finding more on the left side.

So the left side has less mobility, less ability to compress up in inside. And in another podcast, I know I talked about the, when you are assessing the pelvic floor muscles and you, you have your finger along the entire length of the muscles, like at four or five o'clock intra vaginally.

And they go to assess and they go to contract those muscles. And if you feel a gap. In the muscles ability to contract.

So you, you feel strength and then you feel this like divot and then you feel the muscle muscle. So it's this divot in those tissues where you're thinking, Oh my goodness, there's a divot.

That muscle is not contracting like the others are. So, huh? I wonder if it might be a defect, like that muscle got torn away from its attachment point.

Before you go there, if you're assessing and you notice that, please check out the mobility of the IRF. Okay.

The issue of rectal fossa. What I found in my experience is that when there is that divot and that muscle is not coming to the party, after I've released the IRF, boom, it was able to come to the party and it was able to contract.

It had strength in there. So it wasn't a defect. fact, it was just being inhibited by the inability of these tissues to move superiorly.

And what I'm also finding is that sometimes when I'm treating the IRF and I'm trying to get that tissue to go superiorly, I'm using the Schulte hold to compress that issue immediately to give it slack in that tissue, but sometimes I just don't feel like I can get it to fully release and be as soft and mobile as the other side.

And what came to me one day in the clinic was I started compressing the adductors on that left side.

And when I compress the adductors medially and then into its insertion point, which is the rami bone, the pubic bone, and the, well, the ischium, I am, let's see, so I've let go of the Schulte hold.

So I'm still internally and pressing in on the IRF. And then I bring my outside hand to the adductor.

And compress the adductors and then move my, and incur a superior force on the adductors towards its attachment point.

As I'm holding the IRF, I find the IRF just melts, melts, melts, melts. Okay. So the adductors and the IRF are very intimately connected.

And that's what I wanted to share with you in this episode. So please, um, know that I am in the process this year.

I will be updating the holistic postpartum. Both of the holistic courses are on my agenda to do this year, along with write a book.

Um, and I will be revamping the videos and I will add that video in. And if you have purchased my courses, if you've ever purchased the holistic treatment of the postpartum body course, you will get the updates.

Okay. So please know that. And, um, is, um, hopefully, I'm not sure. Hopefully by the summer, I'll have that done.

Um, But we will be updating that and everybody will get access to that, okay? But I will add this piece to the puzzle because using the adductors, compressing the adductors while you're trying to get that IRF to let go is a way better way to do it.

I found that it likes it and it allows that IRF to release, okay? So please, if you haven't been bringing the IRF into your assessment piece, please start doing so because it can give us a lot of great information, all right?

So check out the IRF. If the IRF is restricted on one side compared to the other side, compress those adductors and see if you get that release that I'm finding so beautifully in my clinic, all right?

Thanks so much for listening in, everybody. Please share this with a colleague if you know someone that might benefit from

Knowing this information, I'd love to expand the reach with this podcast, and I'd love your help in doing that.

So thank you so much. And here is to smoother burst, faster recoveries, and to releasing the IRF. All right.

Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.