Explore this page:
What is the pelvic floor, and what does it do?
Your pelvic floor is a hammock of muscles slung across the base of your pelvis, from your pubic bone at the front to your tailbone at the back. It has a genuinely busy job description. It holds up your bladder, bowel and for women the uterus. It wraps around the urethra and keeps it closed when you cough, lift or laugh. It’s part of your deep core, working with your diaphragm and abdominal muscles to stabilise your spine. And it plays a real role in sexual function and sensation.
Like any muscle group, it can become weak, or too tight, or simply badly coordinated. Pregnancy and birth stretch and load it. Menopause thins the tissues around it as oestrogen falls. Prostate surgery disrupts it in men. Chronic constipation, heavy lifting, a persistent cough and time all add up. When the pelvic floor stops doing its job well, the results show up as leaks, urgency, pressure, or discomfort during sex which is exactly why those seemingly unrelated symptoms so often travel together.
Is this you? A quick self-check
You might recognise one or more of these:
- Leaking when you cough, sneeze, laugh, lift, run or jump
- A sudden, urgent need to go that’s hard to defer — sometimes not making it in time
- Going to the washroom “just in case,” or more than about eight times a day
- Waking more than once a night to pee
- A feeling of heaviness, dragging or a bulge in the vagina
- Pain or reduced sensation during sex
- For men: dribbling after urinating, or changes in erections
- Planning outings around where the washrooms are
None of these are things you have to accept in silence. They’re things a Registered Physiotherapist can assess.
Take the First Step to Better Health Today
Schedule your personalized consultation with our experts and start your journey to optimal wellness.
How we help at Aniyah Care?
Pelvic floor physiotherapy the foundation. Supervised pelvic floor muscle training is the first-line, guideline-recommended approach for stress and mixed urinary incontinence. That isn’t marketing it’s the position of NICE, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, and the Canadian Urological Association. In the Cochrane review by Dumoulin and colleagues (31 trials, 1,817 women), women were improved or cured 67% of the time with pelvic floor muscle training versus 29% without and the benefit is greater still for stress incontinence. At Aniyah Care this care is delivered by Registered Physiotherapists, who assess what your pelvic floor is actually doing and build a plan around it.
Freedom+ sessions optional support. Some people add Freedom+ to their program. It’s a non-invasive option: you stay fully clothed and seated for a session of roughly 20–28 minutes while the device delivers pelvic floor muscle stimulation. We want to be straight with you about the evidence, because most clinics aren’t: the published research on this type of magnetic-stimulation chair is still early mostly small, single-arm studies without a placebo comparison so we offer it as a support option, not a cure, and never as a substitute for the assessment and hands-on work that physiotherapy provides.
How the two work together. A provider screening always comes first. If Freedom+ is appropriate for you, it’s woven into a physiotherapy-led plan with home exercises and progress tracking not sold as a stand-alone miracle.
How Freedom+ compares to Kegels, hands-on physiotherapy and Emsella
- Versus Kegels at home: The problem with DIY Kegels isn’t effort, it’s accuracy research and clinical experience show many people squeeze the wrong muscles or can’t hold a strong enough contraction, which is why supervision matters. Freedom+ prompts contractions passively; physiotherapy teaches you to do them correctly and carry the skill into real life.
- Versus hands-on pelvic floor physiotherapy: Physiotherapy assesses, diagnoses and treats including coordination, relaxation (for an over-tight floor, where strengthening alone can make things worse), and technique. Freedom+ only stimulates. That’s why we lead with physiotherapy and treat the chair as an add-on.
- Versus Emsella: Emsella (by BTL) is a similar chair-based magnetic-stimulation concept and holds an active Health Canada medical device licence. Freedom+ and Emsella are different products; we don’t claim they’re equivalent, and we describe Freedom+ only as a non-invasive session, not a licensed medical device.
Why pelvic health has been ignored for so long?
Here’s the part that deserves some honest anger. Women’s pelvic health has been under-researched, under-funded and routinely waved away “have you tried Kegels?” offered as the beginning and end of care. People are told leaks are the price of motherhood, that pain with sex is in their head, that this is just what midlife is. It isn’t. These are treatable conditions with a real evidence base behind conservative care. You deserved that information a long time ago, and you deserve a clinician who takes it seriously now.
Who this is for and when we'll send you elsewhere instead
The Pelvic Power Program is for adults with bladder leakage, urgency, mild prolapse symptoms, postpartum recovery goals, menopause-related changes, or post-prostatectomy recovery after a screening. It is not right for everyone. If your screening suggests something that needs a physician blood in your urine, suspected significant prolapse, pain that needs investigation, recurrent infections, or a neurological cause we’ll tell you plainly and help you get to the right care instead of selling you sessions. Freedom+ is not used during pregnancy, and certain conditions and implants are contraindications your provider will check for.
What it costs and whether insurance helps
Private pelvic floor services at a clinic like ours are generally not covered by OHIP. The good news: many extended health plans reimburse pelvic floor physiotherapy when it’s provided by a Registered Physiotherapist, so it’s worth checking your plan’s physiotherapy benefit. Full inclusions and pricing are on our What’s Included page.
Start Your Wellness Journey with Aniyah Care
Call now to schedule your personalized consultation and find a solution that works for you.
