Period Pain: What Your Pelvic Floor Has To Do With It with Pelvic Health Physio Caitlin Fris

Your pelvic floor has more to do with your period pain than you might think.

In episode three of our period pain miniseries, Jess is joined by Caitlin Fris, pelvic health physio, founder of Unity Studios, The Cyclist's resident pelvic health expert, and the woman behind @thevaginaphysio on Instagram.

Caitlin has been on the podcast before and if you haven't heard her first episode, Pelvic Health Demystified: Pain, Pleasure & Power, we'd highly recommend going back to that one too.

This conversation starts with something deceptively simple, the term "painful periods", and why Caitlin thinks it does a disservice to everyone who experiences them. When the language we use doesn't capture the full picture, it becomes easier for symptoms to be dismissed, minimised or misunderstood. And that has real consequences.

Caitlin shares her own experience of uterine fibroids and the moment she dropped to the ground mid-Pilates class, flooded with blood and excruciating pain, and why that moment changed how she thinks about the language around period pain entirely.

She explains what normal period pain looks like versus what warrants investigation, and why the addition of symptoms like painful sex, bladder pain, or bowel pain alongside period pain should always prompt further investigation.

We get into what a pelvic health physio assessment actually looks like from start to finish, so there are no surprises before you walk in, and why the majority of that first hour is simply talking.

Caitlin explains the central sensitisation picture, how the nervous system gets turned up in volume after months or years of chronic pain, and why that's not weakness or drama, it's biology. She also walks us through the connection between a hypertonic pelvic floor and period pain, explaining how up to 70% of people with endometriosis will experience pelvic floor dysfunction, and why learning to relax the pelvic floor is often much harder than learning to contract it.

There's also a beautifully simple breathwork exercise in this episode that Caitlin takes us through live, something anyone can do at home, including a visualisation technique involving a rosebud that we won't spoil here.

They also go deep on painful sex, how it presents, what structures might be involved, when it's entry pain versus deep pain, and why even one negative experience can set up a pain cycle that takes time and the right support to unwind.

And Caitlin finishes with honest advice for anyone who has been told their pain is normal when it really doesn't feel that way: get a second opinion, write everything down, and find someone who will actually listen.

This is episode three of five of The Cyclist's period pain miniseries. All episodes are available now.

Find Caitlin at Unity Studios or follow her on Instagram @thevaginaphysio. She's also listed on The Cyclist's practitioner directory at wearethecyclist.com.

Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com

Hit play. Your pelvic floor will thank you.

Listen to Caitlin’s episode, Pelvic Health Demystified: Pain, Pleasure & Power with Caitlin Fris

Here’s the link to it on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4PMxhbNRBoKocQifgy4QC9