It’s easy to medicalize pelvic pain; to view it as a purely physical disease or disorder instead of a stress response tied to chronically tighten up the pelvic floor. In seeing it simply as a physical pathology and a medical problem, you miss out in understanding what pelvic pain in fact is and what it needs to heal. As we wrote in our Gold Urology Journal publication recently, pelvic floor pain, sometimes called prostatitis/CPPS in men, is psycho-neuromuscular state. To say that pelvic pain is psycho-neuromuscular means that it affects muscles, nerves and mind which interact with each other. It is not simply some physical event like a broken bone or a cold. Mind and body do meet in the pelvic floor.

Most important, only treating pelvic floor related physically typically doesn’t resolve it. While physically loosening of a chronically tightened pelvic floor can bring some short term reduction in pain, and is central in its effective treatment, the experience of the vast majority of sufferers we have seen who have been diagnosed with prostatitis or chronic pelvic pain syndrome, is that there is typically no enduring resolution of symptoms by only treating it physically. In only treating it physically, there is no opportunity given to the sore, tightened, irritated pelvic tissue, to have a chance to heal. Anxiety strongly interacts with the pelvic floor related pain, tightens it up, activates the electrical activity of related trigger points and perpetuates its sore irritation-related pain. The sore irritated tissue of the pelvis intimately aggravates a person’s thinking and emotional state as part of a self-feeding cycle of pain, chronic tension, anxiety and sore, irritated pelvic tissue. The sufferer of pelvic floor related pain knows all too well that this condition somehow takes on a life of its own.

Repetitively returning to one’s natural state makes the resolution of pelvic pain possible

When we were in our happy natural state as children, we didn’t have pelvic pain. Absence of pelvic pain reflects a certain kind of ease in the body and mind, one where the pelvic floor muscles are not chronically tightened, irritated and sore, and are not being targeted by, and does not bear the brunt of the stresses of life.

Over the years I have come to see with myself when I was symptomatic and with patients I have seen that returning the pelvic tissue to a quiet, undisturbed state is what is necessary to stop the chronicity of pelvic floor pain. Our natural state is one in which there is an ability to relax, to experience peace and pleasure. It is a state in which the pelvis is not irritated and on a hair trigger to protectively guard, flaring up pain and contraction prompted by many triggers including the heightened the survival alarms of the nervous system in a person living with a chronically painful pelvis.

The question is, how do you return yourself to the own natural state of the body when you have pelvic pain? We have designed our protocol, we aim to help patients return themselves to the state they were in before their pelvis started hurting. We are of the necessity to give control over the restoration of this state to the patient. Healing pelvic pain is an inside job. Ultimately no one can do it for you.

Self-treatment is something we have written about extensively. Physically, we train our patients to regularly loosen up the knotted-up tissue that has become their default state in response to the stresses of life. We do this by teaching our patients physical therapy self-treatment, both externally trigger point release with our Trigger Point Genie and the Theracane and internally by training patients to use our FDA approved Internal Trigger Point Wand to restore the internal pelvic floor tissue to a state of ease and relaxation.

The external and internal physical therapy must be done repetitively to have a chance to release the automatic, default contraction of muscles in and around the pelvis. Typically the stresses of life have been intimately connected to tightening the body for a long time. In most of our patients, the body habitually has been overly tightened for a very strong lock-down. This lock down ultimately hurts the pelvic muscles. If we made a fist day and night for months or years, our fisted hand would soon hurt. We have to repetitively release this lock-down of pelvic floor fist. This is the physical intervention we train our patients to do.

Extended Paradoxical Relaxation is the relaxation method we have published studies on. It is aimed to free the irritated pelvic tissue from its protective guarding for regular, extended periods of time. It is a practice of shifting focus away from thinking, bringing ourselves into a state of effortlessness. It is a practice of stopping the chronic guarding and squeezing that tends to be ongoing in the pelvis pain patient. Learning how to do this at first is not easy when one is anxious and in pain. It requires practice. It is doable with enough practice and intention. This state of not exerting any effort, of not activating any tension in yourself, of resting attention outside of the mental narrative that usually consumes our attention, is the essence of the method.

Babies know how to be in the natural state of ease without any training at all. When you observe a sleeping baby or a happy baby just hanging out, you can see that the baby is not worried about anything. They have (unbeknownst to the baby) outsourced their survival to their parents and the baby’s body is working well and happily and all systems are at ease. The baby doesn’t protectively guard itself. Happy babies trust that they will be protected and taken care of. The pelvis is relaxed. That state is what we want to enter regularly in the journey of healing pelvic pain.

In summary, what I understand about healing pelvic pain is that nothing has to be added to the body, nothing has to be taken away, no drugs need to be given for it to heal. In the restoration of the natural state of the pelvis, we want to repetitively return our body and mind to its natural, undisturbed state on a regular basis by loosening it and controlling our attention in a way that allows the tissue in our body to quiet down and heal. This is our aim at the Wise-Anderson Protocol. This is something you have to practice and get good at.

The sore pelvic tissue present in pelvic pain yearns to be loosened and released and then needs to rest in this state over and over again. This provides the very best chance of providing an environment in which the sore and tender pelvic tissue can heal.