Mia Fine, MS, LMFT, CST, CIIP is the creator of the remote course, Sexual Interviewing for Pelvic Health Therapists. This course is for pelvic rehab therapists who want to learn tools and strategies from a sex therapist’s toolkit who works with patients experiencing pelvic pain, pelvic floor hypertonicity, and other pelvic floor concerns. Mia (they/she) is a student of Queer Theory, Intersectionality, and Social Justice and offers holistic, anti-oppressive, and trauma-informed therapy in the Seattle area.

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Medical Family Therapist and trained AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, Mia has clocked hundreds of hours in direct client contact, supervision, and consultation. She has also attended numerous sex therapy trainings, continuing education opportunities, and trains incoming sex therapists on current modalities and working with vulnerable client populations.

Sexuality is core to most human beings’ identity and daily experiences. Human beings are hard-wired for connection, intimacy, and pleasure. When there are concerns relating to our sexual identity, sexual health, and capacity to access our full potential, it affects our quality of life and holistic well-being. Practitioners who work with folks on issues of sexual health and decreasing sexual dysfunction are in the position to encourage awareness and healing. Mia shares, “Imagining a world where human beings don’t walk around holding shame or traumatic pain is imagining a world of health and happiness.”

How do you explain pain to a patient? How do you reeducate the nervous system to be less sensitive? These are the questions that Tara Sullivan, PT, DPT, PRPC, WCS, IF, and Alyson N Lowrey, PT, DPT, OCS address in their new course Pain Science for the Chronic Pelvic Pain Population. The chronic pain population is often dismissed or misled that they have something drastically wrong with them, or worse, nothing wrong with them at all. Alyson and Tara share that “this population often has the most functional deficits and the worst clinical outcomes. We want to change that.”

Tara has specialized exclusively in pelvic floor dysfunction treating bowel, bladder, sexual dysfunctions, and pelvic pain since 2012. Alyson became involved with pelvic rehabilitation through working in a clinic with Tara Sullivan. She is a board-certified orthopedic specialist and primarily works with the ortho patient population. When Tara came into the clinic she brought along the pelvic floor population and they joined forces. Alyson, with her ortho perspective, is better able to recognize that in some of her orthopedic patients, a lot of their pain was coming from the pelvic floor. The pelvic pain patient population crosses over from physical therapy to the orthopedic and occupational therapy worlds. By treating their patients wholistically Tara and Alyson have been able to make a huge difference to both of their practices.

By focusing specifically on the topic of pain science in their new course, Tara and Alyson delve into the true physiology of pain including the topics of central and peripheral sensitization. Pelvic specialists that can benefit from this course are those whose patients have chronic pelvic pain including endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, irritable bowel syndrome, vaginismus, vestibulodynia, primary dysmenorrhea, and prostatitis. The biggest thing is to learn how to recognize if there is a sensitization component to your patient’s pain.

Pelvic rehab therapists and physiatrists both focus on the return to life and function. In a recent interview, Allyson Shrikhande shared, “Physiatrists are extensions of physical therapy. We analyze and treat the muscles, nerves, and joints of the pelvis non-operatively.” Physiatrists bring a holistic viewpoint and are trained to look at the interplay between the different organ systems with each other, as well as the muscles, nerves, and joints.

Dr. Shrikhande is joining H&W to bring in the New Year with her short format course, Working with Physiatry for Pelvic Pain, on January 11th. This 4-hour course delves into diagnosis and non-operative treatment options for Chronic Pelvic Pain (CPPS). Allyson believes in an interdisciplinary team approach to treating patients and spends time discussing the interplay between professions for the betterment of patients.

Physiatrists often work with an interdisciplinary team of rehabilitation experts to coordinate a treatment plan that is based on each patient’s personal needs, abilities, and goals. Members of this interdisciplinary team can include several practitioners:

Herman & Wallace has more than 55 different courses with over 200 individual course events scheduled throughout the year to choose from. Our course catalog is growing all the time with new courses, new instructors, more course dates, and even more satellite locations!

In 2022 there are already six BRAND NEW courses available, with more to be planned. H&W is kicking off the new year strong with Dr. Michael Hibner on January 9th with Pudendal Dysfunction: The Physician's Perspective. Kristina Koch is back in 2022 with her newly updated and reformated course, Pharmacologic Considerations for the Pelvic Health Provider which is scheduled for April 10, July 9, and November 19th.

Do you live near Salt Lake City, Utah? Our first live, in-person course since the pandemic will be there on March 12-13, 2022: Dry Needling and Pelvic Health.

In an excerpt from a conversation with The Pelvic Rehab Report, Tara Sullivan discusses her course, Sexual Medicine in Pelvic Rehab. She imparts, "As rehab professionals, we are in a unique position to bridge the gap between disciplines with our extensive time for exams and differential diagnoses. Many causes of dyspareunia, vestibulodynia, and IC-type symptoms can be diagnosed by careful observation and testing of the vestibule. This is often the missing link in resolving the patient's symptoms of burning, itching, urgency, and pain."

Sexual Medicine in Pelvic Rehab covers lecture topics that are often taboo in Western cultures, such as hymen myths, female squirting, G-spot, sexual response cycles, hormone influence on sexual function, anatomy and physiology of pelvic floor muscles in sexual arousal, and orgasm. She also discusses vaginismus, dyspareunia, erectile dysfunction, hard flaccid, prostatitis, and post-prostatectomy issues.

So what is Vestibulodynia? Vestibulodynia is a localized form of vulvodynia. The Baylor College of Medicine defines vestibulodynia as "chronic pain or discomfort that occurs in the area around the opening of the vagina, inside the inner lips of the vulva. This area is known as the vestibule."

Did you know that Herman & Wallace provides continuing education courses for other weekdays than Saturday?

There is a wide selection of courses that fall on other weekdays. From Pelvic Floor Level 1 scheduled March 20-21, 2022 on Sunday and Monday to our specialty courses such as Working with Physiatry for Pelvic Pain scheduled for Tuesday, January 11, 2022.

Are you interested in attending a satellite lab course, but don't see a satellite available? Do you know a clinic that would be able to host? Feel free to reach out to us through the Host A Course form online.

Generally, H&W is looking for locations to host that have the following:

Dr. Michael Hibner is an international expert on pudendal neuralgia and chronic pelvic pain. Dr. Hibner joins Holly Tanner to discuss his new exclusive course with H&W titled Pudendal Dysfunction: The Physician's Perspective.

This blog includes portions of an interview with Ramona Horton. Ramona serves as the lead therapist for her clinic's pelvic dysfunction program in Medford, OR. Her practice focuses on patients with urological, gynecological, and colorectal issues. Ramona has completed advanced studies in manual therapy with an emphasis on spinal manipulation, and visceral and fascial mobilization. She developed and instructs her visceral and fascial mobilization courses for the Herman & Wallace Pelvic Rehabilitation Institute, and presents frequently at local, national, and international venues on topics relating to women’s health, pelvic floor dysfunction, and manual therapy.

How did you start in pelvic rehabilitation and visceral mobilization?

My PT training was through the Army-Baylor program, I was all in for orthopedics and sports medicine until October of 1990. I gave birth to my second child, an adorable, but behemoth, 9lb 9oz baby boy. His delivery, a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) was very traumatic on my pelvis, I sustained pudendal nerve injury and muscular avulsion. When I queried the attending OB-GYN about my complete lack of bladder control his response and I quote “do a thousand Kegels a day, and when you’re 40 and want a hysterectomy, we’ll fix your bladder then.”  As for the desire to study visceral mobilization, that reflects back to my PT training through the US Army which was 30 years ago, when the MPT was just getting started. It was an accelerated program, to say the least. We received a master's in physical therapy with 15 months of schooling. Given the very limited timeline, which included affiliations and thesis, the emphasis in our training was on critical thinking and problem solving, not memorization and protocols which in 1985 was not the norm. I can still hear the words of our instructors “You have to figure it out, I am not going to give you a cookbook."