Talk with Women’s Health Physiotherapist Maria Elliott at the Royal Surrey Hospital

I was really happy last night to be part of the talk that Maria Elliott  gave on pelvic physiotherapy. It was part of the hospital led support group for ladies with Endometriosis, run by Wendy Rae Mitchell, Carole Pearson, Julie and supported by Sharon. For more information on Maria see her website is http://www.simplywomenshealth.co.uk/

It was well attended mainly by ladies, although two partners came along which was good.

Maria started the evening by giving a presentation about her background, where she trained, what she does during treatment and the types of patients she treats. With me piping up every now and again from my perspective as an Endometriosis sufferer.

Maria then went on to show what she would do in a session, using me as her model. I have to say if you told me I would be laying down in front of a room full of people in my pants last year, I would have laughed at you! I wouldn’t normally do that and certainly not by choice but pelvic physiotherapy is something I strongly believe in to help the muscles and nerves of the pelvis. I really want to get the word out there.

When I talked about my experience I spoke a lot about Ending Female Pain, a Woman's Manual: Ultimate Self-Help Guide for Women Suffering from Chronic Pelvic and Sexual Pain, this link will take you to the correct book on Amazon if you want to purchase the book. It explains everything that Maria was saying with diagrams and pictures that make it easy to follow and use. It covers learning to drop and relax you pelvic floor, self massage, trigger point therapy, scar mobilisation,  yoga series and lots more. I keep my copy of the book next to my bed and use it all the time for various things. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I spoke about my last surgey, I had a bowel resection with a small part of my vaginal wall taken out and my left side cleared up at Guildford hospital  in April 2010. It was my sixth operation for Endometriosis  and I have to say the most major I have under gone.  The team at Guildford really looked after me. (I’ll talk about the bowel resection and other surgeries in another post in the future).

 When I got Isa’s book I was still recovering from my surgery. I read the book cover to cover, there is also lots of information for vulva pain as well as pain in the pelvis. In  January 2011 I got my yoga mat and started by doing the first  two  yoga positions, I was so unfit and sore that my legs used to shake after just doing those two. Afterwards I would get into a hot bath with 7 drops of lavender oil Tisserand Lavender Ethically Harvested Essential Oil 20 ml. Then over time I added another position until I managed to be able to do the whole series.  

As time progressed I have added in more exercises from the book and I now use the foam roller (66Fit Elite Foam Roller - White, 15 cm X 90 cm), skin rolling, yoga, stretching my muscles with dilators, castor oil packs, drop my pelvic floor muscles and go for a 20 minute walk. I can only do all these on certain days due to my level of pain and lack of energy but I do these as much as I can. I have found introducing these exercises slowly to be the best way for me. 

I would like to Thank the company Yes for both the Oil and water based organic lubrication samples they sent to me to give out during the talk. They were well received. If you would like to find out more information see their website http://www.yesyesyes.org/


I hope the ladies I met last night will be reading this, you may have noticed that I post  under Lily-lou, a little blog nick name for me, thought I would mention that so not to confuse anyone. It was really great to meet you and I'd really love to hear how you are doing.


I won't be posting next week as I am off on holiday tomorrow, yay! But will be back with you all the week after. I hope you all feeling as well as possible x