Biofeedback helps make the invisible visible. It’s used either during an appointment or as home therapy.  Since we can’t see the pelvic floor muscles, biofeedback uses sensors to detect what they're doing in real time and display this either visually or through auditory feedback. This helps your brain and body learn how to connect with and improve the function of your pelvic floor muscles.

The objective here is to retrain your brain's response to bladder sensations by changing your thoughts and emotions from fear and danger to calm and safety. This involves understanding how the bladder functions and applying various mental and physical strategies that suppress the urge and increase bladder capacity. It may also include modifying your fluid intake timing, type and quantity.

You’ll learn positions along with mind and muscle techniques to ensure your urine stream flows steadily and your bladder fully empties.

This involves strategies to ensure good stool consistency, better bowel routines, urge suppression, and appropriate use of your abdominal and pelvic floor muscles to facilitate complete emptying without straining.

We’ll help you understand which positions work best, how to create the right amount of abdominal pressure, and how to apply abdominal and pelvic floor muscle techniques based on your specific needs. By understanding bowel emptying and practising it in the rooms and at home, you will improve both effectiveness and ease without excessive straining.

Calming the nervous system involves practices to help your body shift out of protective mode and recognise that it's safe. This reduces muscle tension and pain. It might include practices such as breath awareness and regulation, general relaxation, comfortable positioning, body scans and mindfulness.

There is a vast variety of breathing exercises that help calm your nervous system. Breath awareness and regulation signal your body to relax rather than stay in protective mode, which reduces tension and pain.

We’ll gently use a finger, thumb, wand, dilator or vibrator to touch the external genital and/or internal (vaginal or rectal) tissues to help your body learn that touch is safe and change the response of the nervous system.

This will be tailored specifically to you and what is relevant from your story. It may include learning about the anatomy of the pelvic bones and muscles, the function of the bladder, bowel and reproductive organs, and what happens when things aren’t working well. Or it may involve learning how pain works, the role of your nervous system and the mind-body connection, understanding changes that occur during life-stages such as pregnancy, after birth, menopause and following pelvic surgery and how this impacts bladder and bowel function, pelvic pain, intimacy and sex, as well as your ability to move and exercise.

This involves techniques like deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation or mindfulness to calm your whole body and nervous system. When you're relaxed overall, it's easier for your pelvic floor muscles to release tension, and you experience less pain.

We’ll show you cardiovascular exercises and pacing strategies, along with stretches and strengthening for the muscles of the back, abdomen, hips and pelvis.

We’ll teach you how to properly cleanse the genital area and which irritants to avoid. Proper skin care helps prevent irritation, supports tissue healing and keeps the sensitive skin healthy.

A variety of hands-on therapies delivered either externally or internally (vaginal or rectal) aimed at reducing tension, neural sensitivity and pain in the pelvic floor, abdominal, back, hip and pelvic muscles.

This includes a range of practices that involve paying attention to what's happening in your body without judgment or fear. It helps you notice tension, pain, or other sensations and breaks the cycle where worry about symptoms makes them worse.

We’ll teach you novel movement practices designed to reduce pain and retrain the brain's movement maps. Examples include Yoga and Qi Gong.

Specific to the individual, pain management strategies include pain education & understanding, physical therapy techniques, relaxation exercises, TENS, heat or ice therapy and lifestyle modifications. It may also involve developing a pain flare toolkit, multimedia resources, and skills to ensure self-management.

We’ll teach you how to use your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles correctly by using some or all of the following:

• Correct and isolated pelvic floor muscle contraction – This is surprisingly difficult to achieve, but an essential starting point for your training program. This also includes awareness of the connection between the pelvic floor and abdominal muscles.
• Strengthening exercises - Building structural support and improving muscle function.
• Relaxation techniques - Reducing muscle tension and normalising function.
• Endurance and coordination training – Ensuring the muscle works throughout the day and learning timing and control for daily activities.
• Functional training – This includes protective bracing with strain activities and symptom triggers, and ensuring the pelvic floor and abdominals work effectively when required.

A vaginal pessary is a silicone, removable device inserted into the vagina to support a pelvic organ that has prolapsed. Your physio will determine the best type and size and fit you with a pessary and, if appropriate, teach you how to self-care for it. Ongoing monitoring and support are provided to ensure safe and effective use.

This involves placing a small catheter with a balloon on the end into the lower part of your rectum. The balloon is then filled with air and used for defaecation retraining and for sensory and urge resistance training.

Also known as sleep hygiene, this involves improving your sleep quality by maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, creating a comfortable sleep environment and establishing a good bedtime routine. Restorative sleep helps your body heal, reduces pain sensitivity and decreases muscle tension.

Techniques for overall well-being that reduce the negative impacts of stress on your body and symptoms, including deep breathing, general relaxation, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, gentle exercise, journaling, and self-compassion (being kind and understanding towards yourself).

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation can be used to reduce pelvic, abdominal and low back pain when delivered via electrodes on the skin. Using different settings, it can also be used to improve the strength and awareness of the pelvic floor muscles via an internal vaginal or rectal electrode.

Therapeutic ultrasound is used to treat mastitis and blocked milk ducts in breastfeeding parents.  It uses a machine that emits sound waves into the breast tissue, causing a small amount of vibration and heat that helps reduce breast inflammation, swelling and pain.

Transcutaneous Tibial Nerve Stimulation uses a TENS machine with two square electrodes placed on the skin of the lower leg to deliver a low-frequency current. This has been shown to reduce bladder urgency, frequency, nocturia and emptying issues.