From Pelvic Pain to Pelvic Wellness w/ Dr. Emily Mason

Today, I'm thrilled to have Dr. Emily Mason, a pelvic floor physical therapist, women's health coach, and yoga instructor on the show. Emily brings an abundance of knowledge and passion to our conversation that you won't want to miss, especially if you find yourself struggling with pelvic pain. 

So, grab a cup of tea, settle in, and prepare to be empowered with valuable insights into pelvic wellness and holistic health care from Emily.

In this enriching episode, you'll hear:

- Emily Mason's personal health journey, from struggling with persistent back pain to discovering the transformative power of yoga and pelvic floor therapy.

- An introduction to the fundamentals of pelvic floor health and its significance for both pain relief and overall well-being.

- A discussion on common misconceptions around kegel exercises and why individualized pelvic floor therapy is crucial.

- Dive into holistic approaches to managing pelvic floor issues, including the synergy of yoga, nutrition, and lifestyle choices.

- Exploring how tracking menstrual cycles and adjusting life rhythms can lead to better hormonal balance and wellness.

- Insight into the unique treatment methods used in pelvic floor therapy, such as heat applications, tens units, and topical pain relief.

- An eye-opening look at how stress, sleep, and relationship dynamics can impact your pelvic floor health.

- Real-life examples of how Emily's pelvic wellness practice incorporates a comprehensive approach, from internal examinations to personalized health coaching.

- Learn about cycle syncing and how adapting to the four phases of the menstrual cycle can improve your life.

- Resources provided by Emily Mason, including access to her website, social media, and newsletters, for those eager to learn more about pelvic floor health.

Whether you're dealing with endo belly, pelvic pain, or simply interested in enhancing your overall health, this episode is packed with actionable advice and heartfelt encouragement for your journey. So, let's deepen our understanding of the intimate connection between our bodies and our health.

Connect w/ Emily: 

Website: empelvicwellness.com Be sure to check out her Free E-Book - "Nurturing Your Pelvic Floor - A Holistic Guide to Pelvic Wellness" that goes through the 6 vital pillars to a healthy pelvic floor.

Instagram: @emilymasonpelvicwellness

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Connect w/ Alyssa:

• Instagram
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Work w/ Alyssa:

• Free Endo Diet Guide
• Work with me 1:1
• Join Endo Warrior Circle waitlist

Learn more about Alyssa

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. This may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or medical professional before trying or implementing any information read here.

Transcript

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome back to the Endobelly Girl podcast. I have a special guest on the show today. Her name is Emily Mason and she is a pelvic floor physical therapist as well as a women's health coach and a yoga instructor. And Emily and I have connected on so many levels. We have so much to talk about today, so much to share with you. She is so knowledgeable about the pelvic floor and how it can impact your health and your pain and works with many women with endometriosis and sees the benefit firsthand on how pelvic floor therapy can be helpful. And she's also going to be sharing some information on health coaching and cycle syncing and yoga and how really, as endowarriors we need a multimodal approach and that there are many different things that we can do, many different avenues to look at when we are working on getting to a place of healing. So I'm so excited to have Dr.

Alyssa Chavez [00:01:03]:
Emily on here today. She is just a wealth of knowledge and I know that you guys will all enjoy her. So let's go ahead and dive in. Welcome to the show, Emily.

Emily Mason [00:01:15]:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Alyssa Chavez [00:01:18]:
Well, I would love to hear first and foremost all of your story on how you came to be doing what you're doing today, what it is that you really do to help people, and just a little bit of your story so we can get to know you a little bit.

Emily Mason [00:01:35]:
Yeah. So do you want the long version or the short version?

Alyssa Chavez [00:01:39]:
Oh, absolutely the long version.

Emily Mason [00:01:40]:
All right. Because quite a long journey, but it really explains, I think, why I am where I am today. So the story that really brought me into the work that I do now began when I was 14. So in my teens, actually, around the time that I started my menstrual cycle. So I was playing competitive golf at the time and I began experiencing some low back pain and I had a doctor put me on birth control. That was the solution at the time, was like, oh, you're having pain around your cycle, you just should get on birth control. So I didn't know any better, but went ahead and did that and was on that for the next ten years. And that never really took my pain away.

Emily Mason [00:02:27]:
It might have doled it a little bit when I was playing golf, like around my cycle, it would be a little bit better, but my back pain just got worse and worse through the years. By the end of high school, I couldn't even swing a golf club, and I had already signed a contract to play golf at the University of Arizona. So I did some physical therapy back in California where I grew up. And then when I got to Arizona, I started doing some pretty intensive rehab, like six days a week. My first semester of college sat out my whole first semester couldn't, you know, it definitely helped a little bit. Enough that I could return to golf the following semester. But it was never gone completely. And it would always kind of revert back the more that I played.

Emily Mason [00:03:12]:
And so eventually, my college roommate invited me to go to a yoga class. And this was honestly life changing for me. I learned so much about my body and my mind, even in that one class, and kind of knew there was just so much there for me to learn. And so after trying different studios and teachers, I eventually found the style of yoga that I really needed at the time, which was more like restorative and yin style of yoga. And that really taught me a lot about breath work and body awareness and relaxation. Mindfulness, really just kind of like full body balance, which I did not have at the time. And I found that this helped my back more than anything, more than all those pt things I had done. Like, yoga was like opening my eyes to something new.

Emily Mason [00:04:04]:
And so this kind of motivated me at the time to integrate yoga. And know, since I had had both of those experiences, I really wanted to start helping people that were struggling with chronic pain. So I got my yoga teacher's certification at the yoga connection here in Tucson, Arizona. And then I went on to go get my doctorate in physical therapy from Northern Arizona University. And then when I was in PT school, everything changed when I had a guest lecture on the pelvic floor, and that was with Jocelyn Buckingham, who's like an amazing pelvic floor physical therapist here in Tucson. And my eyes were just opened to the connection between my back pain and the pelvic floor stuff that she was mentioning because she was talking about all these other things that I was having trouble with, like constipation and recurring utis and yeast infections. I was having, like, menstrual pain and cramps, pain with intercourse. And then she mentioned back pain and all these pain things surrounding.

Emily Mason [00:05:09]:
And I was like, this is so interesting. No one's ever told me that the pelvic floor could be the culprit of all of these. And I was just fascinated and curious and kind of begged her to let me do a clinical rotation with her, which is kind of similar to a residency in med school. And thank goodness she took me on. And that kind of brought me into the world of pelvic floor therapy. And then learning about all of this stuff with the pelvic floor continued to help me with my own symptoms so much, and my low back pain continued to get better, and then all these other things continued to get better. But there was still, like, a missing piece for me that was like, I don't know what it was holistically. There was other stuff going on, and I eventually learned how everything is so connected from our mind to our gut to our hormonal system.

Emily Mason [00:06:01]:
And I started to learn this again through more of my own health journey with a health coach. Her name's Stephanie Adler, and she's, like, a health coach and nutritionist. And we worked together for four months on my own health and wellness, and that was kind of know the PT to yoga, to pelvic floor, to nutrition and holistic wellness. I was, wow. Like, this is amazing stuff when you put it all together. And so in this time period, I started a couple different pelvic floor PT programs in Tucson and then moved to California, worked at a pelvic floor specialty clinic there with Jennifer Parker, who's, like, a really amazing pelvic floor. Just, I don't know. I continued to see some gaps in the care I was providing as a pelvic floor there.

Emily Mason [00:06:52]:
It's like, you can do really amazing work in a session. But I was getting kind of frustrated that I couldn't find the right people in the medical system to give my patients the care they really needed to really get better. Right. They're giving them a lot of band aids or quick fixes. And so I kind of, at this point, decided to take matters into my own hands and use my own personal experience with my health journey, in addition to getting some new women's health focused coaching and nutrition programs to really create something unique and special for the pelvic health population. And so that's how, like, formed my business. Emily Mason, pelvic wellness so that's the long story of my journey and kind of how I came to be.

Alyssa Chavez [00:07:37]:
Nice. I love it.

Emily Mason [00:07:38]:
Yeah.

Alyssa Chavez [00:07:39]:
And Emily and I really connected on this whole, like, once you learn one thing to help people, and then you realize there's this other thing that can also help. Like, we both are in that camp of just, we just can't learn enough. So I know you have so much to share with us today on all of these topics. So Emily and I are both yoga teachers, are both very interested in the health and nutrition space. And so I feel like we have so much to talk about. Like, we may need to just come back and do another future episode to cover it all. But we'll do what we can today. So I'd like to start out with the pelvic floor therapy piece of things, because I feel like this is something that a lot of people just aren't really familiar with, maybe haven't really heard much about.

Alyssa Chavez [00:08:25]:
And I would actually even like to start out with the very basics of what is your pelvic floor?

Emily Mason [00:08:34]:
Great question. So, really, it's a group of muscles that sit at the base of our pelvis, kind of like a hammock or a bowl. And it's many muscles, really. They function kind of as a group, but many muscles. Three layers of muscles, actually. And they go from your tailbone to your pubic bone, so from front to back, and then from your sit bone to your sit bone. So the bottom of the pelvis, side to side, and they surround all three openings. So they surround your urethra, where we urinate, your vaginal opening, where we have babies in intercourse, and your anal sphincter, where we have bowel movements.

Emily Mason [00:09:14]:
Right. And so I think many of us have heard of a kegel, or kegel, depending on how you want to say it. Basically what that is, it's a pelvic floor muscle contraction, where you close off all three of those openings, and you pull the muscles up and into the body. And then a pelvic floor relaxation is the opposite, where you let those openings open a little bit more. So that's the pelvic floor. It's like this muscle group at the bottom of the pelvis. And it's not just muscles. Right? There's ligaments in that area.

Emily Mason [00:09:44]:
There's nerves. There's the organs that sit right on top of the pelvic floor. So it's a pretty complicated region. There's a lot going on there, and it's a region that, I'll be honest, a lot of us are very checked out of and don't really understand that part of our body. And so that's kind of the fun part for me as a pelvic floor Pt is to kind of teach people a little bit more about what's actually going on down there and what can we do to help. Maybe some of this you're having.

Alyssa Chavez [00:10:11]:
Yeah, I can imagine there's a lot of education in what you do, just figuring out what all this does and why we should worry about it in the first place. Can you share a little bit about what you mentioned, a little bit about some of the symptoms that pelvic floor therapy can help with or symptoms that can be connected with pelvic floor in the first place. So things like the back pain and bowel symptoms and bladder pain, and certainly period pain and things like that. So can you talk a little bit about what pelvic floor therapy really is, what that entails, and how it can end up being a missing piece for women with endometriosis in particular? Because that's, of course, the key focus of this podcast. But even in general, because there's a lot of crossover between these symptoms, even symptoms that may not be specifically endometriosis related, but can come up, I know many people also struggling with back pain and general pelvic pain and urinary and bowel symptoms. So can you paint a little bit of a picture for us on what that looks like, what pelvic floor therapy is like, what that entails, and all of the goods?

Emily Mason [00:11:26]:
So let's talk maybe a little bit like with endo specifically, because pelvic floor pt can help with so many things. With endo specifically, we know there's tissue similar to the endometrial lining in the uterus, right, that can grow all over the pelvic. Well, really, like all over the body in general, they found it even kind of up into the diaphragm and in some pretty wild parts of the body, but definitely into the pelvic region. We'll find it around the uterus, around the bladder, around the bowels. And this causes, for most people, pain, right. They'll get symptoms including pain in the pelvic region. And generally when we have pain anywhere in the body, the body's natural response is to tense up and protect. Right.

Emily Mason [00:12:13]:
And so over time, what we find with endo is that there's like this pelvic floor muscle tension that starts to form in response to pain. And so that in itself will actually cause more pain. More tension will cause more pain over time. But then also we'll get other dysfunction, kind of like constipation or ibs. Maybe we're having pain or difficulty with urination or utis. We might start having pain with intercourse or tampon insertion or pelvic exams, things like that. So those are like the ones we see with specifically endo. And then when we actually treat these pelvic floor muscles in pelvic floor physical therapy, we can experience a lot of relief.

Emily Mason [00:13:00]:
And so while we're not influencing the disease condition, right, of the endometriosis, we're getting those muscles to respond in a way that helps with the symptom of pain. Right. Or it can dole it maybe a little bit. I've seen it work with some populations where it just completely gets rid of it. Right. And then with some people it's like, it's a helper. And then there's some other things outside of that, like on the nutrition side, things that you're probably helping with. Right.

Emily Mason [00:13:26]:
Or in some cases, maybe a surgery or another thing in the medical system is needed. It just depends. Right. It's so individualized.

Alyssa Chavez [00:13:35]:
Absolutely. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah. It's one of those things. Not everybody needs all the things, but I think it's good to have an awareness of all of the things that can potentially help you with endometriosis, be it from the medical world, from the holistic world, nutrition, pelvic floor health. And I think the more awareness there is of all the options of what can potentially be helpful, then you know that you have more places to look. So if maybe something wasn't working for you can try a different avenue and find something that is helpful for you.

Emily Mason [00:14:09]:
Exactly. But I think we both agree on the concept of, like, conservative is always the best way to go first. It's like, why not try everything you can that's milder on your body before you jump into things. Like sometimes in the medical world, we're pushed into birth control or surgery or other techniques before we've tried the simple things. Right. And sometimes those simple things are all that's needed.

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:36]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So if somebody were to come in for a pelvic floor therapy session with you, and I'm sure this just like when I work with clients, I'm sure it's different for everybody. It's not like you have an exact process that you follow for everybody. But what are kind of some of the general things that you do? Are there exercises? Is there physical manipulation? What kind of things are you actually doing with people if they come in for pelvic floor therapy with you?

Emily Mason [00:15:06]:
So on day one, the first session of pelvic floor therapy is a lot of history taking and kind of going through, really your full life. I think a lot of us pelvic floor pts are really good at going back in time and looking at what sorts of things might have contributed to the symptoms you're having today. And so we're going to do that off the get go, and then we'll do some sort of assessment that day. And I like to really spread my assessment out over a few sessions because again, I'm looking at the full body, but it might be a pelvic floor assessment that we do that first day where we actually do an internal exam of the pelvic floor muscles real slowly and help you to kind of understand what's going on with those muscles. So are they weak? Are they tight? Are they causing symptoms and pain? Are they not coordinating correctly with your breath? So I'm basically trying to get the patient to understand a little bit of what's going on with the pelvic bowl and how that's connected to any symptoms they're having. So if they're open to that day one, we might do that off the get go, and then we'll usually do some sort of treatment that day, too. So when it comes to internal work, like, we'll do trigger point release work. So I'll actually push on a muscle and have them try to breathe and relax and understand how to actually relax that muscle.

Emily Mason [00:16:37]:
Or I might do some queuing to try to get them to understand how to engage and do a kegel and a pelvic floor muscle contraction. We might do more external manual work. So there's a lot of things that connect into the pelvic bowl that influence our pelvic floor. Right. So especially with Endo, we might have some stuff going on in the abdomen, and so I'll do some abdominal massage and release work. Myofascial work, we'll always do some sort of movement. So that day one, whatever, usually I work on manually. That day, I'm going to connect it to something else that we can do as an exercise to maintain that.

Emily Mason [00:17:16]:
So it might be like, I like yoga stuff, right? So I might give them, like, a yoga exercise with some breath work, or if there is, like, a big, weak component to it where there's a strengthening thing we need to do, I might give a gentle strengthening exercise, kind of teach about how to engage the deep core and how to coordinate that with your breath. So there's so much we can do. And that first day always goes so fast because we want to fit so many things in, but each session after that just kind of builds on the last one. If there's a lot of pain, we might use things like heat or tens units or topicals. There's various things we can do for pain relief and really, like, a ton of education during our sessions, too. Again, just kind of teaching about what's normal with bowel and bladder health and how to understand our symptoms and our pain and work with them and how maybe they're even connected to our stress. So it can look very different. Like you said, for every person.

Emily Mason [00:18:18]:
But in general, those are kind of some of the techniques that we'll be doing in therapy sessions.

Alyssa Chavez [00:18:23]:
Nice. I love that. And I think it's an important point for people to hear, too, that it can go either side of the spectrum. For some people, that pelvic floor can get really tense and tight and need some releasing, whereas other people, it may have a weakness and you may need to work more on strengthening. And either side of that coin can lead to issues. And that's where I know I hear this from the pelvic floor therapy. A lot like kegels aren't for everybody. It may end up worsening things if your pelvic floor actually is already overactive and can contribute further to symptoms.

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:01]:
And that's where working with somebody like you who really understands the pelvic floor and all the pieces that connect with it. And I love that you're even talking about breath work and yoga and how we can incorporate all of those things and kind of blend those modalities, I think is a really beautiful thing because, like I always say, it's never just one thing. We want it to be simple, but it's just not.

Emily Mason [00:19:24]:
Yes, most people are told by their doctors, just do your kegels for every pelvic floor thing. Right. And we know that that's not the solution. So please stop doing that if you're being told to do your kegels and go see a specialist.

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:38]:
Yeah, I used to hear that. Even I was never told that directly by a doctor or anything, but it was just kind of one of those general health advice things that floated around the Internet where it was like, oh, everybody should do kegels so that when you get older, you don't have pelvic floor prolapse or when you have babies, you don't have issues with that because you've been strengthening all this time. And I was like, okay, I'm going to sit here and do kegels all day long. And then later learned that, okay, that's maybe not the best idea for everybody. Yeah. All right. And you did touch base a little bit on the connection with pelvic floor therapy and pain relief. But I was wondering if you can even dig into that topic a little bit more and just kind of the specifics.

Alyssa Chavez [00:20:25]:
And I know, again, this is going to be different for everybody because pain can come from many different sources, and I'm sure it very much depends on what's going on with that unique body. But I was wondering if you can just enlighten us a little bit on how pelvic floor therapy can help with pain relief. Like, what's really the connection on that?

Emily Mason [00:20:47]:
Yeah. So, again, I think a big piece of it for so many people is just having somebody touch something that's connected to their pain. So sometimes we feel like we know there's pain, but it can feel like we don't know where it's coming from. We don't really understand it. And so I'm speaking a little bit from my own personal experience with my body, but also from a lot of my patients experience, right. Where maybe they've gone through normal pt or they've tried some things on their own, but they've never really had anybody find the pain and say, like, hey, this is connected to this. It, I think, just empowers us a little bit to know where it's coming from and to know that we're not crazy and that it's normal. There's something that might be a physical thing going on that's causing your symptoms.

Emily Mason [00:21:40]:
And so that I find is the most helpful for people, usually, is to actually find where is the source and then to show them, even in one session, how we can control those symptoms and maybe help relieve them in that day. It just gives some good insight to, oh, this is something that could actually get better or change. Right. And so that's kind of what I find to be the biggest helper for people is to just really get them to understand, not just, like, I'm not doing something to you, right. It's like we're kind of working together to understand this thing and understand where this pain is coming from, whether stress does trigger it. Maybe, like, maybe you notice the stress engages your pelvic bowl, but then you start to make that connection and feel when your pelvic floor starts to tighten and give you some pain. And then now you understand how to breathe properly, you might understand how to do a trigger point release technique. I also teach people how to use pelvic wands and dilators, which are tools that you can use internally on your own at home.

Emily Mason [00:22:45]:
And so I find that's really empowering for people to understand. Okay. Like, Emily showed me in pelvic floor pt, where this trigger point was that was causing my pain. I'm feeling this pain. Maybe I should use my pelvic wand and go to that spot and breathe and try to release that symptom. Right. So it's just so much fun. I could talk about this stuff for days.

Alyssa Chavez [00:23:08]:
I love it. I really love what you were saying. About feeling empowered, like, okay, I know that there's something that I can do about this because that's a big part of what I like to talk about, too, because honestly, I hear a lot of kind of bashing of the holistic world many times because people say, oh, well, it's not your fault if you have these symptoms and you're in pain and you have endometriosis and all these things, which, of course, I agree, that's not your fault. It's not like anyone's out here intentionally doing things to make your body feel terrible. But it doesn't mean that there's not things that we can do to help ourselves. And that's the part that's really empowering, where if you're gearing completely away from that and you have no belief that there's anything that you can do, I feel like that's very disempowering. So even knowing a little thing like that, like, okay, I know that there's this particular spot that tends to get tense, and I know that there's something that I can do about it, and I have a tool in my toolbox. Then at least you have something you can try, something you can do on your own at home to bring you some relief instead of just either guessing or just feeling defeated and hopeless.

Alyssa Chavez [00:24:21]:
And that's not a place that anybody wants to be. So I love that.

Emily Mason [00:24:26]:
Totally agree.

Alyssa Chavez [00:24:27]:
Now, we've dug a lot into the pelvic floor therapy piece, which I think is huge and very beneficial for people. But I know that you do a lot of other things, too. You're also into health coaching and yoga and the breath work and all of these other things. I know you have even a lot of crossover with people that you work with who are doing a little bit of pelvic floor pt, but also coming in for some health coaching. Can you talk about why it's so important to kind of work from that multimodal approach and how the nutrition and lifestyle and pelvic floor therapy and just plain old breathing all connect with each other and can all be helpful to getting towards better health?

Emily Mason [00:25:14]:
Yeah, I have to make this connection a lot of the time for my pelvic floor pt patients because I kind of bring that in early on just based on some of the symptoms I'm seeing from the holistic part of things. And it's hard sometimes for people to connect those dots. And I can understand because that's how I used to think about things, too. It's like, oh, my pelvic floor is having issues. Why should I have to focus on my breathing or my stress or my sleep, right. How is that all connected? But we know even just looking at the hormonal system and how that functions, one little thing gets thrown off and that throws everything off in the body. And so that includes our pelvic health. Right.

Emily Mason [00:25:59]:
I just feel like looking at what's going on hormonally, what's going on with stress, because that's going to affect our hormones. Right. What's going on with sleep that's going to affect our hormones? How are we functioning in our relationships or in our work life? There's so many pieces to really put together to start to understand how this is influencing, again, symptoms like we're talking about in the pelvic bowl. Right. So trying to think of a specific patient that I have right now. I had somebody that I evaluated recently who she was postpartum. And we know the body goes through some crazy pelvic floor changes and just hormonal changes during that period. And postpartum, you're not sleeping great, right.

Emily Mason [00:26:53]:
You're up with baby a lot. Your hormones are trying to figure out where they are. So you don't really have a lot of time usually to do meal prep or focus on the nutrition. So maybe you're skipping meals or you're eating really quick, fast food type meals during that time. You're not moving as much. A lot of the time, everything's focused on the baby. You're not maybe going out and walking or doing anything for your body. And so when someone comes in to see me for pelvic floor, petite.

Emily Mason [00:27:23]:
So this person came to see me and just was focused on the core and the pelvic floor wanted that assessed. And it was really hard for me to just say, this is all great, we're going to do some of this, but also, this isn't going to get better unless we look at all these other factors that are playing a role in what's going on hormonally. Right. So there's like a decreased estrogen that's happening in the pelvic floor at that time that's going to cause more laxity. That's maybe contributing to her prolapse she's having. Right. And so a lot of it is like trying to, again, connect those dots for people and say, we hit on these components. That's actually going to help the tissues in the pelvic floor.

Emily Mason [00:28:04]:
It's going to help your pain levels. It's going to help the muscles to get stronger. Actually, when we think about all these other factors that contribute. So I don't know if that went on a tangent and answered your question or not, but that's kind of where my brain went.

Alyssa Chavez [00:28:18]:
No, that's perfect. That's exactly what I was thinking. Just like how some people might come in for a specific thing and then have other things that they need as well. And I think that's why it's important that we, even as practitioners of various types, connect with each other so that we can better support our patients clients. Right? Because when we first met, when we first were talking, I was talking about how, okay, I do a lot of work with nutrition and gut healing and all these things, but I am not a therapist. I don't have the training in that, nor do I even see people in person. So that would make that infinitely harder in and of itself. So I'm personally trying to build a referral network so that if I have people who are in Emily's area, which is Tucson, Arizona, for anybody who might be interested to know that I have someplace to send them.

Alyssa Chavez [00:29:13]:
And there are pelvic floor pts all over the place. So if you do not happen to be located in Tucson, Arizona and are looking to get that kind of support, know there certainly are great therapists everywhere, but I think it's excellent to be able to connect the dots for people and support them as much as we can as practitioners, but also be able to know how to guide them into getting other layers of support when need be as well. And honestly, that's a big part of why I even started this podcast, so we can have conversations like this and help people to understand where else they can look and what other type of practitioners they might need to work with and just continue looking for that place of better health. Right.

Emily Mason [00:29:58]:
And I think it's really important that we, as the people that are experiencing symptoms, know what's out there, right? Because I've just heard it happen way too many times now at this point where people are not told about certain services that they really need or are even advocating for themselves for a certain service and kind of being told, no, you don't need that and not kind of getting straight away. So it's really important for us to understand and start to connect these dots for ourselves so that we can feel empowered and get the care that we actually need.

Alyssa Chavez [00:30:34]:
Yeah, totally. I completely agree on that. Now, one piece that I wanted to talk about a little bit too, because I know this is something that you've become very passionate about in the health coaching side of things is the cycle syncing. And this is something that, again, many people may not have ever heard of or be familiar with, but I know that that's something that you talk a lot about with people, and it's something that I certainly discuss with clients as well. So I was wondering if you can just share a little bit with us about what cycle sinking is and how that can be beneficial for people as well in their healing journey.

Emily Mason [00:31:14]:
Yeah, cycle syncing is so cool. Again, kind of stumbled upon in my own health journey when I was working with my health coach. She did a lot of hormonal things and cycle syncing, and I didn't really jump into it until I went through the cycle sinking coaching program and then really started to understand this stuff and again, apply it to myself and my clients. And it is just really cool what happens when you do that. So we've got like, four distinct phases of our menstrual cycle. We start with our menstrual phase, and then we work into our follicular phase, go into ovulation, and then our luteal phase. So those are kind of the four phases of the cycle. And different things are happening hormonally with women.

Emily Mason [00:32:03]:
So female cycles every single month, we're just constantly fluctuating. And there's certain ways that we can optimize things in our lives to make our bodies feel their best, basically. And it's going to be a little bit different for everyone. But there's kind of like some general patterns through each of those phases where if we kind of tweak a few things here or there, we can really feel much better and have less symptoms, certain symptoms that we might be having. So this might look like how we exercise during certain phases, right. And how we move. So I don't know about you, but with me, with my golf history, we would just. All day, every day, we're golfing, we're doing workouts.

Emily Mason [00:32:47]:
There's no difference. Throughout the month and different times of the month. I was definitely feeling more tired at that time. I didn't realize there was any connection between where I was in my cycle and how I was feeling these days. It's very intuitive now that I've kind of done the work to figure that out. For example, during my late luteal phase into my menstrual phase, I'm really tired. I just get kind of exhausted. And that is the time where we're lower in our hormones.

Emily Mason [00:33:17]:
Like, our hormones kind of drop, and then we just don't have a lot to work with. And so we're really supposed to rest a little bit more during that time. Again, in general, everyone's so different. You're going to have to figure this stuff out on your own if that's what your phase is telling you to do. But in general, we want a little more rest, restorative stuff during that menstrual phase and then more ovulation, or like your follicular phase, kind of going towards ovulation. Our hormones are rising, certain levels, like our estrogen is getting higher, we're getting more energized, more social. And so that might be a time we ramp up our cardio and do a little bit more strength training. So that's just like an example with exercise.

Emily Mason [00:34:04]:
But we can also look at how we're optimizing our nutrition in these different phases, what certain foods we should be eating. One of the cool things that I learned in my coaching program was a cooler food versus warmer foods during different phase. So, like your follicular phase and ovulation phase, you can do like salads and smoothies and things like that. But when it comes to our luteal phase and our menstrual phase, we actually want to be doing more warm foods. And just so many of my clients that I work with eat salads all month long or smoothies all month long. Right. It's not always the best on our bodies during every phase. Yeah.

Emily Mason [00:34:42]:
And then other things like optimizing our relationship during different phases, like even intercourse as a pelvic floor pt, I nerd out about that. When's an optimal time to have intercourse? When's maybe a time to step back from that and maybe do some more self pleasure stuff. How we can optimize our work environment, like what different tasks we're doing at work so that we don't burn ourselves out again, I could talk about this stuff for hours, but that's kind of like the basics of cycle thinking and how we can really optimize our lives just by following some real simple little guidelines here and there.

Alyssa Chavez [00:35:22]:
Yeah, I love that. And it's one of those things, right? We are not really taught growing up that women are cyclical beings, but we are, we are not the same from day to day. Where men, their testosterone cycle goes within a 24 hours period is how that hormone fluctuates with women. It is fluctuating a lot throughout the month. I mean, if you actually look at the chart and you can do a simple Google search on that if you want to see the way that the hormones change throughout the month is crazy. I mean, the estrogen going up and down, the progesterone increasing in your luteal phase, your lH surge, the FSH, like, there's so much that happens and it's always changing. So when we are kind of forcing ourselves into this life of having to just kind of be the same day after day and be able to have the same energy and do all the same things and have that expectation of ourselves, it's not really realistic when there's so much changing within our bodies throughout the cycle. And that I know when I first heard of this stuff, I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm not crazy.

Alyssa Chavez [00:36:36]:
Because even before I really had developed the big endometriosis symptoms, because a lot of people, it starts when they're very young and are first starting to have a period, for me, it didn't develop or even start developing, really, until my late teens, was when I first had symptoms. But even before that, when I was having a period, I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to sit on the couch all day. I wanted to just lounge and be in my pajamas all day. I didn't want to do things. And I always felt like I was almost less than or I was being weak or I was being lame for not wanting to go out and participate in life during that time. But when I grew up and started learning this stuff and realizing, oh, my gosh, I'm not crazy, my hormones actually are dropping off the cliff during that time, it's no wonder I don't have any energy and don't want to do anything because that's really what we're intended to do during that time.

Emily Mason [00:37:35]:
So ignoring that, yeah, normalize that. I think in our world, because we are, our world is definitely based on more of this masculine system where it is like the whole, like, anything you can do, I can do bleeding mentality, and it's just not optimal for us in our bodies like we do. We need phases of rest throughout the month. And when we don't respect that and honor that, that's when symptoms start to come on. Right. Or things start to get imbalanced and go awry in our bodies. And so that's part of what I try to teach women is like, how do you build that space in for yourself each month? And it can be tricky. It can be really tricky.

Emily Mason [00:38:16]:
And that's where coaching comes in. Like, you know this because you're a coach, you have to really work at this stuff and figure it out and trial and error things. But there is a solution. And just with time and a little bit of effort, you can really start to change the way you live your life and feel amazing when you can understand and work with your cycle.

Alyssa Chavez [00:38:41]:
Yeah, absolutely. And by no means is it something you have to do overnight. Like by tomorrow, you have to change everything. Maybe just pick one of those things. Maybe in this next cycle you're just going to play with adjusting your movement, your exercise based on your cycle, going a little more during your follicular phase and then scaling back a little bit, going in your luteal phase and the menstrual phase and just see how it feels. Just kind of experimenting and seeing what works for you and go from there and then add the other pieces bit by bit and just kind of touch base along the way and see how you feel.

Emily Mason [00:39:15]:
Yeah. And I have people, because a lot of people don't even know where they're at in their cycle, right. They know when they bleed because that's really a tough one to miss. But besides that, people aren't really always in tune with like, well, what phase am I actually in? Right? And so that's where cycle tracking, like getting an app and starting to actually track where you're at. I'm a real big fan of temping and so I've got like a temp drop just because it's easy. But you can use a normal thermometer, too. But really starting to see your temperature shifts throughout the month, that can give you some idea of if you're even ovulating, which is a big one for people. Like, if we're not ovulating, right, we're not going to get that progesterone in that second phase of the cycle.

Emily Mason [00:40:01]:
We're going to miss out on a bunch of health benefits that come with ovulating. And so I get that question a lot with people that are on hormonal birth control. Like, how do I track where I'm at? And it's like, well, you're not really going to fluctuate like your body normally should. And again, that might feel good temporarily because it might help with a symptom, but just realizing that's a band aid and there's a way to work with your system and get those symptoms to go away if you really just dig deep and find the right people and resources to work with to help you understand that so that you can kind of manage that for good instead of just continuing to put bandaids on.

Alyssa Chavez [00:40:41]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Emily Mason [00:40:43]:
I agree.

Alyssa Chavez [00:40:43]:
I feel like that's a whole conversation we could dig into as well. There's so many things to talk about. We might have to have like a part two of this, but I think that is so much information for people today just to get some insight onto what are some of the things that I can look into to help with pain and some of these other symptoms that are going on with the bowels and bladder and back pain and so many things. So is there anything else that we missed today that you feel like is super important to share?

Emily Mason [00:41:19]:
Oh my goodness. I feel like we talked about a lot. I just want to encourage people out there to if you've never seen a pelvic floor physical therapist, even if you aren't sure why you'd be going, just going to get a little bit of the education and understanding can be so helpful at any stage in your life as a woman. And so I would just encourage you to go seek one out and if you need any help finding someone, let me know. There's some different resources out there to find pelvic floor pts in your area.

Alyssa Chavez [00:41:51]:
Nice. Well, thank you for that. Now, for people who either happen to be in your area, if they're interested in pelvic floor pt, or I know some of the work you do is virtual too for your health coaching practice and things like that. Can you share with us where we can find you if we want to know more? Connect with you?

Emily Mason [00:42:10]:
Yeah, my website is mpelvicwellness.com em like my initials, pelvicwellness.com. And on there you can actually book an exploratory call with me, whichever one of those feel like they're interesting to you. Like if you are local in Tucson, Arizona, you can obviously go on and book a pelvic floor pt call. But if you're elsewhere, health coaching would probably be the one that you want to select. And then I have an Instagram that's pretty active, so that's at Emily Mason pelvic wellness is my Instagram and I just post a lot about kind of all three of those things we talked about, the PT, the yoga, and the health coaching combining all surrounding pelvic health. And then I have a newsletter that I send out monthly too that you can always sign up for on my website. Those are probably the three areas.

Alyssa Chavez [00:43:06]:
Perfect. Well, I will be sure to link to all of that in the show notes. So if you are currently driving or cooking or taking a walk, because I know I'm always doing something else while I listen to a podcast, those links will all be there for you in the show notes. So don't stress. You can go back and look those up when you have the time. And thank you so much for being here today, Emily.

Emily Mason [00:43:28]:
Thank you for having me again. I can always talk about this stuff for a long time. Thank you for letting me share some of this.

Alyssa Chavez [00:43:35]:
Of course, I am very happy to have you. I think everyone will gain some wonderful insights from that. And I hope some people will come and find you as well and get some support from you.

Emily Mason [00:43:47]:
Thank you again.

Alyssa Chavez [00:43:49]:
Yeah, thank you. All right. Thank you, everybody. I will talk to you all soon. Bye.