Complimentary Treatment Modalities
Complimentary treatment modalities can be helpful adjuncts to your physiotherapy care plan.
We offer the following Complimentary Treatment Modalities:
Pelvic floor biofeedback
Cupping Therapy
Hypopressives
Rectal Balloon Therapy
Therapeutic Ultrasound
Pelvic Floor Biofeedback
Pelvic floor biofeedback is a safe, painless, and highly effective tool used to help you “see” or “hear” your pelvic floor muscles in real-time. By translating muscle activity into visual or auditory cues on a screen, biofeedback helps bridge the gap between your brain and your body, giving you immediate clarity on how your muscles are functioning.
When is Pelvic Floor Biofeedback Helpful?
Biofeedback can be beneficial in treating a wide range of pelvic health conditions including:
- Difficulty isolating the pelvic floor muscles: If your pelvic floor muscles are weak, or if you struggle to feel whether you are contracting or relaxing them correctly, biofeedback may help you to to find that connection to the muscles.
- Pelvic pain & tension: For conditions involving hypertonic (overactive) pelvic floor muscles, biofeedback can help you learn how to consciously let go and relax muscles that are habitually tense.
- Urinary Incontinence: Biofeedback can help you coordinate the quick contractions needed to prevent leaks.
- Pelvic Organ Prolapse: Biofeedback can help you to retrain your pelvic floor muscles especially when they are weak or not contracting at all.
- Bowel dysfunction: In the case of chronic constipation or difficulty emptying the bowels, biofeedback can help you to learning to relax the pelvic floor during defecation.
- Postpartum or post-surgical recovery: Retraining the pelvic floor muscles after pregnancy, childbirth, or pelvic surgeries can be more effective with biofeedback, especially if there is poor awareness of the pelvic floor muscles to start.
Biofeedback can be integrated into your personalized treatment plan by combining it with individualized exercise prescription, education, and manual therapy to ensure you achieve long-lasting results.
Cupping Therapy
Cupping therapy is a practice that involves placing cups on the skin to create suction to target areas of scar tissue or restricted tissue mobility. Cupping helps to lift the skin and underlying fascia (the connective tissue wrapping around your muscles). This gentle pulling action creates space between tissue layers, relieving deep muscle tension, improving localized circulation, and promoting the breakdown of restricted scar tissue. Cupping is often used in orthopedic and pelvic physiotherapy and sports medicine to address a variety of musculoskeletal issues.
Benefits of Cupping
Cupping can be helpful in treating a number of common conditions including:
Scar tissue management: By using cupping over or near scar tissue, cupping can help to break up adhesions, improve movement, and reduce discomfort. This can be beneficial in cases like post-surgical recovery or following injuries. Cupping can be extremely helpful in restoring the mobility of abdominal surgical and C-section scars. It is important to recognize that your c-section and abdominal scars can contribute to bladder symptoms such as urinary urgency and frequency, as well as pelvic floor muscle tension.
Treatment of muscular and joint pain: Cupping can be applied to reduce pain and improve mobility in chronic pain conditions, joint stiffness, or tight muscles.
Improving range of motion: By releasing fascia tightness and reducing muscular restrictions, cupping can improve flexibility and reduce joint strain.
Trigger Point Release: Cupping can be used directly over trigger points (tight, painful “knots” in muscles), to reduce pain and tension.
Improving Lymphatic Flow: Cupping can stimulate the lymphatic system, aiding in the removal of toxins and reducing swelling, which can be especially helpful after injury or surgery.
Cupping Therapy can be used as part of a broader treatment plan, often combining it with other manual therapy techniques, exercise, and education.
Hypopressives for Pelvic Health
Hypopressives combine a unique breathing technique with various postures. Initially developed as a non-surgical treatment for women with pelvic floor health issues, Hypopressives has evolved into a full-body approach to core and pelvic health. Hypopressive techniques engage the pelvic floor and deep abdominal muscles through a controlled breath-hold technique, which reduces intra-abdominal pressure and draws your pelvic floor and deep abdominal organs upward and inward.
How Hypopressives Help Pelvic Health
Hypopressives can be highly effective in treating and managing several pelvic health conditions including:
- Pelvic organ prolapse
- Stress and urge urinary incontinence
- Diastasis rectus abdominus
- Pelvic floor muscle tension & pain
- Postpartum & post-surgical recovery
- Postural alignment and back pain
Because hypopressives involve precise postural alignment and breath coordination (including a brief breath-hold), they are highly technical and are best learned under professional guidance.Our first step is always a thorough pelvic health assessment. This allows us to understand your specific symptoms, check your pelvic floor coordination, and ensure hypopressives are safe and appropriate for you (as they are contraindicated for certain conditions, such as pregnancy or untreated high blood pressure)
Hypopressives can be used as part of a broader pelvic health treatment plan, often combining it with other manual therapy techniques, exercise, and education.
Rectal Balloon Therapy
Rectal balloon therapy is a specialized form of neuromuscular biofeedback training.
A pelvic floor physical therapist inserts a small, deflated, medical-grade silicone balloon attached to a thin catheter into the rectum. The balloon is then slowly inflated with small amounts of air or warm water via a syringe. Because the rectal canal is designed to sense pressure rather than sharp pain, the procedure is typically not painful. It simply mimics the feeling of fullness or stool entering the rectum.
The Benefits for Pelvic Health
Rectal Balloon Therapy can be highly effective in treating and managing several pelvic health conditions including:
- Corrects Dyssynergic Defecation: If you struggle with Dyssynergia—where the sphincter muscles accidentally squeeze shut when trying to push, the balloon provides physical feedback to help retrain these muscles to relax.
- Improves Chronic Constipation: Learning to safely relax and expel stool eliminates harmful straining, protecting the integrity of your pelvic floor over time.
- Reduces Fecal Urgency: If your rectum is hypersensitive, you may feel a sudden, intense urge to go even with very little stool present. Gradually filling the balloon teaches your nervous system to tolerate larger volumes of air/water, calming down that overwhelming urgency.
- Helps to treat Fecal Incontinence: If your rectum is hyposensitive, you may not feel when stool is filling the rectum, leading to accidents. Retraining through rectal balloon techniques helps lower your sensory threshold so you can notice the urge and get to the bathroom in time.
- Prevents Hemorrhoids & Pelvic Organ Prolapse due to chronic straining.
How a Training Session Works
Rather than guessing how to use your muscles, the balloon acts as a physical guide. A typical treatment plan progresses through these logical stages:
1. Sensory Mapping: Determining baselines.
The therapist slowly inflates the balloon and asks you to state exactly when you feel the very first sensation of fullness, when you feel a normal “desire” to go, and when you feel a strong “urgency” to go.
2. Sensation Retraining: Calibrating the nervous system.
Based on your numbers, the therapist will run “inflation/deflation” intervals. If you are hypersensitive, you will practice breathing through the urge to relax the rectal walls. If you are hyposensitive, you will practice detecting smaller volumes.
3. Coordination Training: Learning to push correctly.
While sitting on a medical commode, you will practice matching abdominal expansion (pushing) with pelvic floor relaxation. The therapist monitors muscle feedback to ensure you are not clenching your glutes, thighs, or jaw.
4. Balloon Expulsion: Functional practice.
Once you can coordinate the correct muscles, you will practice actually expelling the small, lubricated, air-filled balloon from your rectum. This builds the physical coordination and muscle memory needed to pass real stool effortlessly.
Rectal Balloon Therapy can be used as part of a broader pelvic health treatment plan, often combining it with other manual therapy techniques, exercise, and education.
Therapeutic Ultrasound
Therapeutic ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves (well beyond the range of human hearing, typically between 1 and 3 Megahertz) to target deep tissues.
The sound waves are produced by a handheld wand called a transducer. When applied to the skin with a conductive transmission gel, these sound waves penetrate deep beneath the surface—directly reaching muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joint capsules.
The Benefits of Ultrasound Therapy
The sound waves generate two distinct types of beneficial physiological effects depending on how the machine is programmed: Thermal (heating) and Non-Thermal (mechanical).
1. Thermal Benefits (deep heating)
By using continuous, high-intensity sound waves, ultrasound gently vibrates deep tissue cells, creating friction that generates localized heat.
- Relaxes Tight Muscles & Spasms: Deep heat reduces muscle tension, easing painful spasms.
- Improves Joint Flexibility: It warms up collagen fibers in stiff tendons, ligaments, and joint capsules, making them easier to stretch and improving your overall range of motion.
- Boosts Local Circulation: The heat causes local blood vessels to dilate (open wider), flooding the injured area with oxygen-rich blood and vital nutrients to speed up healing.
2. Non-Thermal Benefits (cellular stimulation)
By pulsing the sound waves on and off, the therapist can stimulate tissues without generating heat. This is ideal for acute, fresh injuries that are already inflamed.
- Accelerates Cellular Repair: The sound waves cause rapid, microscopic expansion and contraction of gas bubbles inside the tissue (a process called cavitation). This “micromassage” excites the cell membrane, encouraging the cell to work faster at repairing itself.
- Reduces Inflammation & Swelling: It stimulates the body’s natural inflammatory response, helping clear out waste products and fluid buildup (edema) from an injured area.
- Eases Pain: By altering pain signals sent to the brain and reducing pressure from swelling, it provides significant relief to irritated nerves.
Therapeutic Ultrasound can be used as part of a broader treatment plan, often combining it with other manual therapy techniques, exercise, and education.
