Whiplash, Digestion, Reproductive Health, and the Pelvic Floor: It’s All Connected!
We all say it—'It’s all connected.' And we’re not wrong. But how often do we actually follow that thread all the way through the body?
If we know this, why is it so hard for us to break out of our habit of always treating where the client has the pain? We know that pain spot is probably hypermobile, not hypomobile, yet we insist on stretching it to get it even looser, more mobile, which just exacerbates the problem, giving that spot even more adaptability, which just allows more stuckness to get embedded in the real problem area.
Let’s talk about the pelvis and how it is related to many problems that we see our clients come in with. We can look at just a few examples and see how if we are not proficient at treating the pelvis and its restrictions, we might be missing the boat. Three things pop into my mind immediately:
Whiplash
Gut Trouble
Migraines
Whiplash
Here’s a short version of what happens with whiplash (keep a future class on this on your radar, because this is a big subject).
Take a car accident, being rear-ended, as a typical example, and think of what happens to the body during this assault.
The first action is the head whipping posteriorly, straightening the thoracic curve, and driving compression into the spine. At the same time, the entire gut tube is pulled superiorly, and the brain is thrown posteriorly and hitting the back of the cranium, if the head is facing forward, but oftentimes the person is looking in the rearview mirror, so there is an oblique angle to all of this.
The next action is the head whipping anteriorly, driving traction into the spine, as the gut tube returns inferiorly. The brain is thrown forward and slams against the front of the cranium, or obliquely towards the front left.
Then there’s the seatbelt and how that is involved in the way the body comes forward around the strap as well as the lap part and how that affects the pelvis directly.
If the airbags exploded out towards them, there is another assault to consider.
We get a jostling of the guts, a compression AND traction injury of the spine, and a concussion in multiple parts of the cranium. Remember that the dura mater attaches firmly at the tip of the coccyx, so those compression and tracion injuries go all the way to the tip of the coccyx.
Stop and think about the complaints people with whiplash usually have: neck, shoulder, and low back pain, at least.
Have you ever noticed that after some time they start to complain about tummy trouble, low thyroid, or hormone problems?
Yes, it is all related to their whiplash injury.
We can’t treat all of that without addressing the pelvis and how it was affected, namely:
The relationship of the lumbars to the sacrum
The relationship of the sacrum to the coccyx
The relationship of the coccyx to the pelvic floor
The relationship of the digestive tract to the pelvis (think small intestine, mesentery, cecum, sigmoid and rectum)
How all of this affected the bladder/uterus/prostate
How the diaphragm is driving pressure into the pelvis (so we need to treat the diaphragm as well)
The SI joints and pubic symphysis and their relationship to each other
The relationship of the dura from the pelvis to the brain
In my experience, most people come in complaining about their neck pain, and in the beginning I focused a lot of energy on “fixing their neck.”
With more experience, I have realized that there is a lot more to treating whiplash, and as I have accumulated skillsl to treat all of those above things, my results have improved drastically.
Gut Trouble
You can see from what happens in a whiplash how it is also related to gut trouble. But even if a person hasn’t had whiplash, gut trouble is always related to the pelvis (and surprisingly, a big cause of neck pain, by the way).
Why is the gut related to the pelvis?
The root of the mesentery (the peritoneum that is anchored to the back wall and then encases the small intestine tube/loops) attaches firmly at the anterior, superior, right side of the sacrum, and a little bit on the ilium. Inflammation of the small intestine will give a small, but meaningful, tug on the right side of the sacrum, pulling it superiorly and anteriorly, which gives the pelvis its universal pattern.
Granted, the small intestine isn’t always the cause of this pattern, but it can be.
Other causes of this pattern could be childbirth, the size of the liver, the position we had as a fetus inside our mother, or many other things. There are a lot of theories about why we have this pattern, but I’ve never heard anything conclusive about the why.
Very often I find the sacrum in this position, which goes along with anterior rotation and outflare of the right innominate, and posterior rotation and inflare of the left innominate (fancy name for the pelvis bones). You will also notice on most people that the right clavicle is lower (rotated anteriorly) and the right eye is lower. That’s the universal pattern I’m talking about.
You rarely have small intestine trouble without also having this pattern, and you rarely have this postioning pattern without small intestine trouble.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Think about when you walk, and how with proper mobility, the pelvis will massage the colon and rectum, as well as the small intestine.
But if one or two or three of the joints of the pelvis get restricted in motion, how does that massaging of the guts get affected?
What if the coccyx is pulled out of its normal motion?
If it’s pulled to one side or tucked under, what does that do to pelvic mobility in walking?
How does the pelvic floor relate to pelvic mobility, and then how does that affect the gut?
(As a side note, the SI joint resonates with the ankle, so if the ankle is restricted, the SI joint will also get restricted, and then we could also start a cascade of events with the pelvis and gut.)
How might freeing up the pelvis help the people with gut trouble then? Can you see how important pelvic freedom is for health? More on this in my Balancing the Pelvis class.
Migraines
This is much more simple. The dura has the familiar firm attachments to the inside of the cranium that you learned about in massage school: the falx and the tentorium.
The falx attaches firmly to the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone, right behind your third eye. That’s the superior end.
The inferior end of the dura is where it attaches firmly to the tip of the coccyx, after exiting the sacrum at the hiatus.
Say you have a hard fall on your tush, and the coccyx gets bent forward, or tucked under, or pulled to the right or to the left. What happens at the superior end of the dura? Essentially, a displaced coccyx exerts a strong inferior pull on the entire brain, reducing the amount of circulation that can happen in and around the brain and cranium, causing the dreaded migraine symptoms.
Well-meaning therapists traction the head away from the spine, trying to get space in there, but it ends up exacerbating the problem sometimes, because the dura is 95% inelastic. So when we apply traction to the head, we may think we're creating space, but we may actually be increasing the inferior pull on the brain.
Because of the incredible power of therapeutic touch, the client might leave the office feeling better, but the migraines don’t stop. This is your cue to learn how to free up the coccyx.
Concluding Thoughts
Now that we know all of this, what can we do with it? Keep learning! And see that it’s not all about muscles.
My passion is to spread the word to the thousands of LMTs in the US that we can raise the bar for our bodywork and learn to treat ALL of the body systems, not just the muscles. When we see the big picture of what is happening in the body and how it relates to the various pains that our clients come in with, our minds start to open up to the importance of treating what’s inside the meat suit, or soma.
We need to treat the viscera.
We need to treat the dura.
We need to treat the blood vessels, the nerves, the nervous system… all of it.
Relatively very few bodyworkers in this country are doing this. And those that are doing it need to continue learning… I know I do! There is no end to what we can learn about the body and how to apply basic treatment principles to all of the parts. Every class I take is an inspiration to keep learning and finding out about my blind spots.
If this feels like a lot—that's okay. It's taken me years of study to even start seeing how connected all these systems are. But the good news is: you don't have to learn it all alone, or fly across the country to find high-level training.
I invite you to take advantage of the local classes I offer. Continuing education can be a big investment—but when you can stay close to home and still access deep, hands-on training, you can grow your skills without the financial strain. When I travel for classes myself, I often spend $1,500–$2,500 once tuition, flights, lodging, and meals are factored in. It adds up quickly—and I know many LMTs simply can’t swing that kind of investment more than once a year, if that.
My passion is to make this kind of work more accessible—especially in rural areas and smaller towns where advanced training is hard to come by. If you'd like to bring a class to your community, email me, DM me, or call or text me. I’d love to talk with you about how we can make it happen.
