What is Biofeedback Therapy? A Guide and Explanation of the Popular Pelvic Health Modality.
We’ve had several prospective patients reach out recently asking if we do biofeedback. This question always makes us chuckle a little, because it’s like calling a personal trainer and asking them if they use free weights as part of their exercise routines. Biofeedback is one tool that we can use, and there are many different forms of biofeedback.
So what is biofeedback? In its simple form, biofeedback is means of giving our body an idea of what it’s doing. For simplicity sake, we are looking for feedback on whether the muscles contracting or relaxing.
For example, when you go to the gym and you see mirrors everywhere, those mirrors aren’t there just for selfies… those mirrors are there so that clients can see what their body is doing as they are performing exercises (ex: are the shoulders shrugging when they shouldn’t be, are the knees caving in during squatting, etc).
There are many different types of biofeedback. Biofeedback can be used in the form of:
Mirrors to see whether the muscles are contracting or relaxing, or to see whether the body is moving in a way which it shouldn’t.
Your hand to touch the muscle to feel whether it’s contracting.
Imaging such as an ultrasound. Using an ultrasound probe right over a muscle can show us on a screen whether the muscle is contracting or relaxing.
Sensors or electrodes that are placed on the body, or intravaginally/intrarectally. These sensors then communicate with a computer which then displays a spike on a line graph when a muscle is contracting. Often times, this form of biofeedback is typically synonymous when thinking of biofeedback in pelvic floor therapy.
Pelvic floor therapy should be more than just biofeedback. It is one modality in a vast array of other treatments that a pelvic floor therapist can provide. If however this is the only thing that your “pelvic floor therapist” knows how to do, that is a HUGE red flag.
Remember, the ability of a muscle to contract in one position doesn’t necessarily mean that you will function better. When we are moving, the pelvic floor doesn’t contract in isolation, there are many parts of our body (including other muscles and joints) that need to move and coordinate with the pelvic floor. Therefore, pelvic floor treatment needs to address how your pelvic floor is working with the body.
