By Ian Chow, Dip BmP – Certified Massage Therapist / Infant Massage Instructor / Oncology Massage Trainer
Length: 2 mins read (418 words)
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When it comes to pelvic floor therapy, first thing that comes to mind is always Kegel exercise. But do you know that this therapy is actually not a new millennium invention but can be traced back to 1936 in Margaret Morris’ book, Maternity and Post-operative Exercises – In Diagrams and Words. Twelve years later, Dr. Arnold Kegel, a gynaecologist then introduced the concept of pelvic floor exercises and coined the term in what we now known as “Kegel exercise”.
Meanwhile, the next thing that comes to mind could be “it is only for women”. This is certainly a misconception because men do have pelvic floor as well. Just like the women, pelvic floor consist of a group of muscles and connective tissues spanning from our coccyx (tailbone) to our ischial tuberosity (sit bone) and pubis (pubic bone). Just imagine these layers of muscles stretching and forming a hammock supporting all the structures and organs in our pelvic region. Men tend to have thicker pelvic floor while women tend to have larger and wider one.
These firm and thick structures support our urinary and reproductive tract, responsible to maintain proper function of urination, defecation and sexual arousal. By the weakening of the structure, we will not be able to control our pee, poo and wind (fart) properly. We may also start to develop chronic pain on our pelvic region due to trigger points. For men, as the muscles are connected to the erection and expulsion muscle of our penis (the perineum region), a weak pelvic floor will affect our erection quality and its ejaculation.
Besides Kegel exercise, pelvic floor therapy may include manual therapy, biofeedback, electrical stimulation and postural education. For manual therapy, it can incorporate both external and internal massage. For external massage, the therapist will mainly work on the perineum region, similar to the step in manhood therapy. For internal massage (for men), the therapist will insert their gloved finger via anus to massage the surrounding pelvic floor area. For me, when I do prostate massage for my patient, I also do work on the pelvic floor muscle.
Unlike manhood therapy, pelvic floor therapy is gaining a lot of traction in the medical field with more medical journals and researches being done on it.
Next: Prostate Massage
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