Resource Package - Pelvic Floor Relaxation for Men

Overview

These relaxation exercises offer hope and help for people of any age with chronic pelvic pain, including painful sex. Your patients can use these recordings to practice ‘down-training' their pelvic floor muscles at home.

This series of guided audio recordings is specially designed for men with persistent pelvic pain to learn how to relax tight muscles, especially the pelvic floor muscles inside the pelvis, which are often tense and a cause of pelvic pain. Yes, men also have pelvic floor muscles and they can be too tight and cause pain in the pelvis. The exercises are sometimes called “reverse Kegels” because they teach the skill of relaxation, rather than just tightening. 

The User Guide is an additional resource to help people understand the pelvic floor muscles, why they are so often a source of pelvic pain, and what can be done about it. 

The person with pelvic pain, associated with pelvic floor muscle tension, will be guided through focused techniques to connect with, and relax, all the muscles of the body, including the pelvic floor. Progressive Muscular Relaxation is taught and also the skill of relaxing without targeted muscle contractions. Additional breathing exercises assist pelvic floor relaxation through movements/excursions of the diaphragm. The exercises also help people with pain to practice switching on the ‘relaxation response’ to cope with pain and stress. The exercises are practiced in lying and sitting so they can be easily applied in everyday life. Regular home practice with these audio tracks will develop life skills to improve the quality of life of people with pelvic pain. 

Please note: To ensure that the appropriate resource package is selected, in the User Guide and Tracks, I refer to users as men and refer to anatomical terms, including the testes and penis. This product is suitable for use by people who are comfortable being identified as a man and who refer to their anatomy with these terms.

Disclaimer:

This relaxation training is intended to be prescribed by a healthcare practitioner to men who have been diagnosed with chronic pelvic pain and who have undergone medical assessment to eliminate causes of pain other than pelvic floor muscle tension, such as infection or inflammation, which require specific medical treatment. 

The audio tracks in this resource package have been produced by Dr Patricia Neumann, Specialist Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. Learn more about Patricia in the 'Instructors' section of this page.

What's Included 

5 audio tracks are included:

Track 1: [30 minutes – lying]. Whole body and pelvic floor progressive muscular relaxation with breathing exercises. 

Track 2: [12 minutes – lying]. Passive whole body and pelvic floor muscle relaxation with body scanning and breathing exercises. 

Track 3: [3 minutes – seated]. A relaxation exercise with breathing and scanning to do during the day. 

Track 4: [3 minutes – seated]. A ‘grounding’ exercise to calm the body and pelvic floor for those who find focussing on relaxation hard.

Track 5: [20 minutes]. The wonderful relaxation music in a stand-alone track to play at any time to help you breathe and be calm. 

You can sample one of the tracks by going to the 'Course materials' section. Click on the lesson titled 'Audio sample: Seated relaxation'

There are also accompanying education materials that can be shared as well as the entire user guide (PDF). Templates have been created in this resource package to make it quick and easy to prescribe the content to your patients. Please see the FAQ section below for more information about using Embodia for HEP.

Audience

This resource package is available for healthcare practitioners who are interested in using the practices with their patients. Please note that an Embodia Membership is required in order to prescribe the audio practices - more information is provided in the FAQ section below.

Disclaimer: People with pelvic pain should be assessed by a medical practitioner first to rule out causes of pelvic pain requiring medical attention. These exercises are most effective when used with professional guidance from a pelvic health physiotherapist, as part of a comprehensive pain management program.