Podcast: Play in new window | Download
People may find themselves seeking pelvic health physical therapy for any number of reasons. Dr. Amanda Olson’s journey into the world of pelvic health physical therapy began with jumping off a 40 foot cliff.
In this interview, Dr. Ginger Garner and Dr. Amanda Olson, both DPTs and business owners talk about entrepreneurship, parenting, work-life balance, and the most challenging aspects of pelvic floor rehabilitation.
What will you learn from this podcast interview?
Check out the podcast audio or YouTube video for the amazing interview!
Dr. Olson earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Pacific University, and a Doctorate Degree in Physical Therapy from Regis University, graduating as a member of the Jesuit National Honor Society. She holds a Certification of Achievement in pelvic floor physical therapy (CAPP-PF) from the American Physical Therapy Association, and the Pelvic Floor Practitioner Certification (PRPC) through the Herman and Wallace Pelvic Institute. She is also a certified Stott Pilates instructor and RRCA certified running Coach. She is the president and chief clinical officer of Intimate Rose where she develops pelvic health products and education. She is passionate about empowering women and men with pelvic health issues including pelvic pain, incontinence, pregnancy, and post-partum issues.
Dr. Olson teaches internationally on various pelvic health topics including pelvic floor dysfunction in runners. She has written newspaper and magazine articles on pelvic floor dysfunction, and running and also authored the book Restoring the Pelvic Floor For Women.
00:00 Dr. Ginger Garner: Hi, everyone. We’re back again, and I’m here with Dr. Amanda Olson today. She’s a pretty special guest for us because, well, there’s a lot of reasons actually. She’s a pelvic PT. She is an entrepreneur, a woman powered business with great ideas. So welcome. Welcome, Amanda.
O:29 Dr. Amanda Olson: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me.
0:32 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah, I’m so glad that you’re here, that you’re taking time out of your busy schedule to do this. So before we get started, I want to kind of celebrate you a little bit and read a little bit about you for our listener. So here we go.
Dr. Olson earned her BS, her Bachelor of Science from Pacific University, and her Doctorate in PT from Regis University, as a member of the Jesuit National Honor Society. She holds a couple of certifications, both in pelvic health, the certification of achievement in pelvic floor physical therapy from APTA, and then Pelvic Floor Practitioner Certification through Herman and Wallace Institute.
She’s also certified in Pilates and a certified running coach, too. I learned something new. I didn’t know that. Yeah. She’s the President and Chief Clinical Officer of Intimate Rose, where she develops pelvic health products and education. Obviously, she’s very passionate about empowering women and men with pelvic health issues, including pelvic pain, incontinence, pregnancy, and postpartum issues and kind of, you know, all people with a pelvis.
1:42 Dr. Amanda Olson: All the people.
1:44 Ginger Garner: All of them. So I’m going to make sure that we put, you know, where we can contact you in our show notes. That’s IntimateRose.com and on Instagram, @intimaterose and @aolsonDPT.
But I really want to hear your story first. So just tell me, tell us about yourself. And my question is, what got you fired up to take such a big leap? Because starting a company is not a small thing.
01:54 Dr. Amanda Olson. Yes. Well, interestingly, so I am a pelvic health physical therapist, and I’m also a mom. But before all of those things, I took a big leap off of a cliff. I was at the time, a pediatric specialist, and I specialized in pediatric physical therapy.
So had a doctorate degree, had gone to PT school expressly to specialize in pediatric neuro. And I found myself as a new practitioner out in nature here in Oregon. It’s very beautiful. And I was in a group of young men who were cliff jumping and jumping off of a cliff into the water at 40 feet. And I don’t know why, but I decided to join them.
Apparently, when you jump off of a cliff, you’re supposed to land straight. And I landed in an L bottom burst at 40 feet. And that caused significant injury. I was very, very, very badly hurt. And really, and truly, if I rotated a little bit more and hit my head, I would be gone. So I’m very lucky. I came out of it okay. But with significant injury to my low back and pelvis, and I had to go see a pelvic floor colleague. And this was, gosh, now it’s been like 15 years since this happened.
Back then, there was a couple hundred in the country, you know, pelvic health, physical therapy has grown so much. And I just got so lucky that we had a phenomenal one in Portland, Oregon, where I live. And yeah, we have a great team there. And I went and I got treatment and I went through the process. And she totally changed my life. I went on to run marathons, have two babies vaginally, you know, for all intents and purposes, I’m fine. But it completely changed my life.
And she told me, Amanda, you need to quit PEDs, you need to do pelvic health, you have the right personality for it. There’s not enough, we need more practitioners. And so I did. And I went back and I recertified and you know, it took several years to board certify and all those good things. And then I was a practicing pelvic health clinician, and I was one on one and I was in the treatment room all day, every day, hearing people stories and seeing what was working and seeing what wasn’t working.
And I recognized that there was a need to create products to help empower them at home and beyond after they’ve discharged or as a means of, you know, self managing their symptoms even while they’re in therapy. And I wanted them to be really, really comfortable. And I also wanted them to be cheerful and bright and easy to use. And that’s where Intimate Rose was born.
04:57 Dr. Ginger Garner Wow, I had no idea it was a literal cliff. I thought this is going to be a fantastic story. And it really, it actually was a cliff. Wow. Oh, my gosh, I can’t imagine going through that. But to have used that experience to launch what you did is incredible, is really amazing. And so I’m just kind of taking a pause for that, to kind of digest that story a little bit.
So, you know, what was your just to revisit your story for just a moment, you know, for those who are listening and, and you made two points. One is 15 years ago, there wasn’t a lot of pelvic PTs. And 20 years ago, 25 years ago, there was even less known about pelvic therapy at all. Much less having any tools or anything like that.
So, you know, for those of you listening, I never want anybody to beat themselves up and go, Oh, I should have gotten pelvic PT. Well, honestly, things, it’s only been available recently, honestly, and there’s still not enough of us. And it can still be hard to access and hard to find that kind of thing. So you really did get lucky to be in a place where you could actually even find pelvic PT. There are plenty of places in the country that there’s not a pelvic PT in the Tri County area, you know, and you have to drive.
So what was your process from beginning to end, you know, in treating that injury? How long did that take? And what were some of the things that, that you took out of that experience that helped you just launch your company and where you are now?
06:38 Dr. Amanda Olson: You know, there was two, there were so many lessons, there was two really key, I think, like, like that changed me as a clinician and changed me as a person. And one is I was in therapy weekly for about three months, which when I look back now as a clinician, I’m like, Wow, I scooched right through that, you know, that’s a relatively short time. But I would say the healing process took more like six to nine months where I was still doing a lot of my own at home treatment after I discharged.
And, you know, the fact that I was already a physical therapist, I was very adherent to my program, I was able to put that into my schedule, you know, all of those things worked for me. So that I think is attributed to that short period of time, but the healing process took considerably longer to really get through and feel like myself and get to the point where I was running marathons again, and then years later having children.
So one is that that healing phase takes time, and that can be compounded, mine was a fresh new acute injury that can be compounded when it’s a more ongoing issue, or there’s other other injuries or other issues happening at the same time. And then the other one was, it was a very humbling experience to be in a vulnerable position to be the patient on the table in that regard. You know, I am the kind of person who I don’t cancel dentist appointments, I don’t, I don’t not show up for my appointments, because, you know, I’m able to attend, and I’m able to get myself there.
I know there’s a lot of social factors that come into people’s schedules that create reasons where they can’t necessarily attend. But I want to be honest, when I say the first month, every day that I had therapy, I strongly considered canceling my appointment, I didn’t want to do it. It is hard. And you know, it is a vulnerable thing. My therapist was very gentle. She provided wonderful treatment. I’m so thankful that I was able to push through, but it was extremely humbling. And that has changed me as a clinician, too.
So I have a lot of empathy and understanding as to why it’s really hard to get in the door in the first place, and why getting the wheels turning and getting the therapy process in motion is really challenging for people. And I haven’t really admitted that a lot out loud. But yeah, she was phenomenal. But every single day, I had to like really give myself a solid talk about you are going to your appointment today. You are not going to cancel this appointment.
09:10 Dr. Ginger Garner: That is such an important thing to mention, because I think it would be easy to assume that we’re PTs, we go to our appointment, if we need our own pelvic PT, yep, we got to go find one, can’t do your own pelvic PT. And it so it’s really important to kind of admit that universally, we’re all going to struggle with that. Especially if there’s also been trauma, like a lot of women experience trauma inside the healthcare system. And that makes it even worse. They’re much more likely to say, you know, I can’t do this, because they’ve already experienced harm inside the system already.
09:48 Dr. Amanda Olson Yeah, absolutely. And so by the time they get to us, you know, I, I like to really support them and remind them that they’ve done a great job of just showing up for themselves by showing up to their appointment that day.
10:02 Dr. Ginger Garner Yeah. Yeah. And that that kind of segues into like your mission for creating Intimate Rose is to have the all the tools and, you know, toys in the toy box. I have a little rolling cart and I have a bunch of your stuff on the cart and I roll it around. It’s like my little toy box to make them approachable, accessible, affordable, all of that. So tell me, and I know a little bit of the backstory because I came to pelvic PT from ortho, you know, so in ortho, we have all these tools and tricks of the trade. We have magazines that are like hundreds of pages deep with all these tools in them. But we didn’t, we didn’t have that. We had nothing in pelvic PT. So tell our listener a little bit of the backstory about, you know, how that came to be and kind of what pelvic PT’s had to do starting out before we had some of these tools.
11:04 Dr. Amanda Olson You know, I think, I think we, as physical therapists, we’re used to being the Guyvers anyways, and coming from a pediatric background, you know, it’s, it’s bubbles, it’s balloons, it’s toys, it’s all those other things that you do to make therapy fun. And I think that mindset has definitely helped in the creative process. And certainly I hope it’s reflected in the colors and the choices that I’ve made.
But yeah, the whole company started with one product and it’s kind of just one foot in front of the other. So as soon as one thing is created, I’m thinking about what else needs to change. And I always had my eyes set on pelvic pain. But to start with, we started with vaginal weights. I have a business partner who I’m very lucky to have. He is, he’s very helpful on the business end and also just in terms of technology and getting things to go. And so together we thought through the process of making something that’s easy and understandable to use.
And then from there, the very next thing was dilators. I wanted dilators that had that smooth silicone. It’s a very unique type of finish and that were very gradual and had a lot of support behind them. And so with the company, each product comes with a step-by-step instructions, but also on the website for free, we have hundreds of different resources there to help people if they get stuck on, if X then do Y or I’m having trouble with this particular section of my therapy. So we are providing that on the tech side, on the website. And then the next thing to come was wand and one wand became four wands. It just kind of grew from there.
12:32 Dr. Ginger Garner So tell everyone about what each of those products would be particularly used for when they might actually need them.
12:50 Dr. Amanda Olson Absolutely. So wands and dilators are both tools to help people who have pelvic pain. Dilators are specific to people who have insertion pain. So people with a vagina who are having insertional pain with tampon, speculum exam, intercourse, that need to retrain their brain and their pelvic floor to be able to drop and relax in order to not just tolerate, but have zero pain. And when the goal is intercourse to be able to actually enjoy penetration.
So they start very small. They start the size of my pinky and they gradually and slowly incrementally get a little bit longer and a little bit wider. So we have these silicone tubes and the person is engaging with their whole body. They are learning to understand what signals their body is giving them in the sensory realm.
And they are learning to use like a top-down approach of learning to coordinate the pelvic floor. So that includes breathing. It includes different body positions in order to be able to relax the pelvic floor and then getting the vaginal canal used to having something in there.
And then the wand I specifically created, there are two different ends. All four wands are the same shape and size, but each different wand has a different function. So either end can be used vaginally or rectally for people that are needing to use it rectally. There’s a long thin end that can be inserted and used to do myofascial release, tender point release, working with any scar tissue they may have or restrictions or discomfort, and also has a tactile cue inside the pelvic floor to be able to properly locate them.
So again, still working with the brain, still involving the coordination system, but as a means, just like if you got a knot in your back or your neck and you used a theracane, you know, borrowing from the orthopedic realm to release that tissue and to get that tissue to relax and be mobile and flexible again, that’s what the wand does. So the two different curves can reach into the intricacies of the pelvic floor behind the bladder and off to the very far side of the pelvic floor that backs up to the hip and then also deep into the back half of the pelvic floor as well.
15:03 Dr. Ginger Garner The last thing you said was pretty important that I think I want to repeat to the listener and that is for getting to particular points of the pelvic floor. So all of these things are obviously good for the pelvic floor, but then you said two other things that I think people may not realize are interconnected quite intimately and that is that the wand can reach areas that back up to the hip and that actually are involved in hip function, strength, even relaxation of those muscles.
We don’t often think of muscles needing to relax in the hip, but if they don’t, then that can really flare the pelvic floor. So if you have hip pain, these tools can be really good for hip pain. And then the other piece of that is sacroiliac joint dysfunction, tailbone pain, and back pain. People may not think of the pelvic floor influencing back pain or vice versa, or is it a chicken or an egg thing?
And so if you have back pain, SI joint pain, hip pain, tailbone pain, then the tools can actually go a long way and no pun intended in helping you reach those. I tend to always do that and it’s always by accident to help you reach the spots you need to reach because back pain isn’t just always back pain.
16:30 Dr. Amanda Olson: Absolutely. They are a team.
16:33 Dr. Ginger Garner: Unfortunately, and fortunately, because it means there are multiple variables that we can treat and the ones that we can’t reach, the tools are really wonderful for that. But yeah, I wanted people to understand that because oftentimes if you are in the orthopedic realm, they’re not thinking about pelvic health. And so you could end up in an orthopedic office, or PT or surgeon, and it’s being limited to just, oh, it’s just hip pain or it’s just back pain. And that’s why I think we need the intersection of orthopedics and pelvic floor, which is what I appreciate coming from orthopedics into the pelvic floor, realizing, oh my gosh, there is so much that we treat in orthopedics that really is just a pelvic floor problem or a pelvic health problem.
17:22 Dr. Amanda Olson: Absolutely.
17:24 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. So I hope that helps you guys feel a little bit better that if you’re struggling with chronic low back pain, maybe it’s time to look into the pelvic health origins of that. There’s probably a contributor to it or hip pain being the same way. And in a really far-flung way, I’ll mention this because I end up talking about it a lot, is that I see changes in the pelvic floor changing people’s voice or their voice actually changing pelvic floor tone, mobility, strength, that kind of thing. So I see lots of interesting things about that day to day doing imaging and that kind of stuff, but I see you’re shaking your head too. So what’s your experience with that?
18:10 Dr. Amanda Olson Yes, it’s so interesting. The first time I had heard about that concept was in another PT course and it made perfect sense between the relationship of the diaphragm and the pelvic floor and that creating a pressure system. And when that pressure system is disrupted, it’s certainly going to affect beyond the diaphragm. We get so locked into our region that we care for as clinicians. And to think about the segment above, above the diaphragm made perfect sense to me. And then I started observing it in my patients.
And I remember I very specifically had a patient who was female who had come in with very low pelvic tone and her voice was very, it was very scratchy and it was very light and she had a lot of trouble projecting to speak. And through the course of our therapy that improved and it was such a light bulb moment for me. It was just so interesting. And that makes me think we need to have really good relationships with our speech therapists too.
19:18 Dr. Ginger Garner That’s right. That’s right. Cause you know, historically both therapies stopped at the respiratory diaphragm speech only went to respiratory and pelvic stopped at respiratory and there’s not much exchange. So I’m excited about what I see in the clinic and what I’m teaching day to day too with the voice to pelvic floor connection. But, you know, so if you’re listening and you have a voice issue and you also have a pelvic floor issue, they are probably intertwined in some way.
And then the other thing that’s pretty cool about it is that I’ve actually, I don’t know if your tools have been used this way or intended to use this way, but certain hertz frequency helps with vocal restoration and preservation. So I’ve actually used your vibrating wand on the laryngeal area.
20:11 Dr. Amanda Olson: That is amazing.
20:14 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. For restoring vocal function and having it help people to treat the vagus nerve, not just the laryngeal area so that they not only can voice better, but they’re not perceiving as much anxiety and kind of angst. So yeah.
20:30 Dr. Amanda Olson: that’s incredible. Where do you have them place it?
20:33 Dr. Ginger Garner: It’s over the cricothyroid junction. Yeah. Area. Because it should vibrate equally bilaterally, but it doesn’t in a lot of people. So once we go into this area and then palpate it, if I find that it’s not vibrating equally on one side versus the other, you can use your TheraWand the vibrating one though, right? That one’s the teal one and the purple one.
20:59 Dr. Amanda Olson: Blue and turquoise.
21:01 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. Blue and turquoise. Okay. Yeah. And I have the turquoise on at the office. And so yeah, I’ve been using it for other things, all pelvic floor related.
21:06 Dr. Amanda Olson But that’s incredible. Actually, at a conference once had another orthopedic therapist come up and say that they had discovered my wand and they were using it for TMJ. Yes. So it’s to help manage TMJ patients
21:23 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. Those two were so related. So yes, that whole pterygoid, TMJD population and muscle tension dysphonia, chronic hoarseness, laryngitis, and then breath sustaining. People who have to worry about sustaining the breath. I call it ‘sustaining the phrase’, which if you’re singing, if you’re instrumentalist, like woodwinds, brass, I mean, you’ve got to hold that note for a long time sometimes.
And when I’m imaging, what I’ll see is that they can only sustain a note. Like I’m working with some vocalists now and the sustaining the phrase is about was like six seconds, which is not long enough to even, you know, if you think about how long you can talk before you have to inhale, it’s longer than six seconds, you know, typically, but in not being able to sing more than six seconds, you can imagine that’s pretty limiting on what you can do as a performing artist.
So yeah, I’ve been using some of the tools to help them increase their, you know, sustain their phrase, whether they’re singing or playing instruments. Yeah. So your company’s doing so much good.
22:37 Dr. Amanda Olson: I love it.
22:38 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. All the way across to performing arts. So now that we kind of have a better idea of like how this launched, because, you know, honestly, and I’ve still had to order some pelvic health models from like going incognito on a website to go to a, you know, a sex shop or something like that to order models for demonstration purposes, to teach people how to use the tools, because there’s just not anything out there.
So all this, if, you know, if you guys knew the whole backstory, it’s funny, but it’s not funny because at the same time that we’re shopping all the stores, you know, as pelvic floor PTs, that’s also speaks to how much help people weren’t getting, help people weren’t getting, you know, because if there’s no tools for it, then who’s getting educated? If it’s being relegated to, you know, taboo topics, and historically it has, then people are thinking they’ve got to suffer from pelvic pain or whatever it may be leakage, because it’s what happened to their, their mom or their grandmother or another person, you know. S,o this conversation too, I think is very much about talking about the stuff that we haven’t talked about.
23:55 Dr. Amanda Olson: Absolutely. And that is the hill I will die on is especially when it comes to classification of, of our tools and of, you know, products that are enabling people that have sensitive pelvic health issues that they may already have feelings about. And then when they go to search or their tool or their item and they’re, they’re seeing a visual stream of, of all those sex products that can retraumatize them, or it can make them think that the medical problem that they’re trying to address is a shameful one and thrown in with whatever feelings they have about those.
And so we have fought a lot with Amazon and with Google and with Instagram and Facebook and Metta to ensure that the right people are seeing these in the right classification, which is as a medical tool. And that helps to protect people in their search for their solutions. And especially when, when their provider, whether it’s their public health physical therapist or the urologist or gastroenterologist has told them to go buy this thing. And then the thing is thrown in as an adult item and they’re being shown all that it, it creates a lot of doubt. And that can really tear at the threads of their trust in the medical system or in themselves. So.
25:24 Dr. Ginger Garner Yeah, absolutely. I don’t, I don’t know if there’s like a, a recent experience or a personal story you can draw from to just kind of, I don’t know, I want to elaborate on that a little bit more, because I think it’s so important that we de-stigmatize this, that we talk about these things. So it’s not a direct question so much as is there another way that we could elaborate a little bit more to just help people normalize the fact that everyone has a pelvis and you’re going to have an issue with it more than likely. If you don’t, amazing, you know, you’re an exception to the rule, but most of us are going to have some kind of pelvic issue. What did you come up against early on where you realized, holy cow, there’s pushback to this, you know, and how did you overcome that?
26:13 Dr. Amanda Olson :The two biggies were actually like very big situations. First was Amazon notified us over a series of times, multiple times, that our product was classified and the rest you could find just the same way you could buy toothpaste on Amazon. You could find our pelvic health tools. All of our images are very, very, I would say professional and appropriate. We don’t ever, there are some companies out there that really like to like push some of the boundaries and they take creative imagery to a different direction and that’s totally fine, but that’s not a direction that we have ever taken.
And Amazon notified us that they were going to classify our products starting on a certain date as an adult product, which means that in order for somebody to find our product on Amazon, they were going to have to testify to being 18 and older. And then they were going to enter like the back end sex shop of Amazon where there would be very explicit imagery. And then there would be our beautiful white image of our products and my clinical media in there. And you know, it’s not to, it’s not to say be in that sex shaming frame of mind or say that sex is bad or those products are bad because they are not. But when someone’s not in that frame of mind and they’re looking for a tool to help with pelvic pain and they have a history of trauma, that is a terrible user experience.
And it was enraging for myself and for all the other clinicians that knew that this was happening. And so we fought very, very hard. We wrote letters to the highest levels within Amazon, anyone that will listen, they did not listen, you know, somehow or other, we’ve been able to fight through that for the last three years. And most of our products are readily available on the regular Amazon side, but because of that reason, we have worked very hard to keep our website shoppable so that people can go direct and that they can be buying there. We do two day shipping just the same as Amazon. So there’s really no need to send them into that environment.
And we’ve just worked very hard to make our website inviting and very welcoming.
28:24 Dr. Ginger Garner: It is absolutely is.
28:26 Dr. Amanda Olson: Oh, thank you. Yeah. So that was a big one. And then the other one was Metta and it was Facebook. So a really interesting thing, again, with our white images and whatnot, we were banned from being able to make ads on either Facebook or Instagram.
And then, so I have a male business partner and he shared screenshots because we actually entered a collaborative with other women’s health and men’s health brands. Men’s health products are extremely explicit and they are popping up. So he, I mean, his were unspeakable. Some of the ads that he was being shown were unspeakable. And our ad of a man and a woman hugging with their clothes on was banned from Facebook.
So that was another way that we advocated. We wrote letters, senators got involved, Hillary Clinton got involved. She reposted about it. And that’s not to be political. It’s just to say that there are people that are advocating and that are looking out and we are really working hard to ensure that people don’t feel shame about these products.
29:33 Dr. Ginger Garner: I think that’s important to mention because we live in such a divided world. It’s not just country, a divided world now with everything trying to be politicized. And I always emphasize that healthcare is not like political dodgeball or it’s, you know, it’s far more important than a political issue to have access to healthcare. And that healthcare and education are one of those things, just like clean drinking water, that it’s not a political issue. It’s just a basic human rights issue. And so it’s wonderful to see that we have, we’ve had other guests recently who, you know, have experienced similar things. It all circulates around this idea that anything to do with the pelvis at all is taboo or reproductive organs in any way is taboo and that you can’t talk about it and there’s no care for it. We’ve just kind of been busting those things. But I just want to take a minute to kind of acknowledge that healthcare moves far beyond a political realm.
30:53 Dr. Amanda Olson: Yeah. It’s just people.
30:55 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. Yeah. It is people with a pelvis who deserve to have access to the care to make it affordable. That’s the other thing that I love too about what you’re doing is that, you know, the tools are accessible to people in a way that, you know, they don’t have to start a payment plan. That’s really important. And it’s not a scary thing. You know, I still, the people that I will introduce things to come to me, come to us, come to all pelvic health PTs on a range across the spectrum.
So, you know, people listening, I just want to emphasize that, you know, your therapist that you do find to help you with your pelvic health issues. It’s a good idea if they have some trauma informed training, you know, because we don’t know what you’ve experienced. I know what I’ve experienced. I know I’ve experienced plenty of medical gas lighting about pelvic issues and otherwise my whole life. And if we have a background in this and we know what our rights are and we know you’re creating the tools for this stuff for crying out loud and we still get this treatment, I just want to shout out to all the people with pelvises out there that these tools are available, this care is available and you have a right to it.
And it’s not anything to feel shame over.
32:25 Dr. Amanda Olson: Absolutely.
32:26 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. So what’s the thing that, because I know you see challenges, you know, being you’re in business as a woman, as a mom, and as a pelvic practitioner, like you could pick any one of those things, like as a woman in business or, you know, as a mom juggling a business or as a practitioner. What’s like your hot topic challenge that you have right now and like what would you like to see change for the future so it can be better?
32:55 Dr. Amanda Olson: Yes, I think the hottest one is the one I just mentioned about equality and visibility and removing the shame and stigma. You know, with regards to being a mom and like, you know, running the business and being busy, I think that there’s phases, there’s just phases of life, you know, and they ebb and flow and it feels overwhelming at some times and there’s no such thing as balance. You just have to give your attention and direction in the places where it’s needed most and that’s going to fill your family’s cup the most.
I have two little boys and they know exactly what I do, not exactly what I do. They have a general sense of what I do and they have for a long time they know that I’m a pelvic PT and that I make tools and that I help people that have sensitive issues. And I think that that’s a big step that I’m proud of in the right direction is that I’m educating them as to, you know, that these issues exist and, you know, when they’re old enough to like truly understand them where it’s appropriate, like we’ll talk more about what that entails and hopefully I’m sending two people out into the world that can continue to advocate, that are going to have a totally different platform. And whatever their little lives become, you know, whether or not they’re in healthcare or doing whatever makes them happy and brings them joy that they see that there are ways to just support people and give back.
34:29 Dr. Ginger Garner Yeah, what do you find challenging, I think, and I liked what you said about, you know, there is no such thing as balance. Like, I took a long weekend and I so hesitated to use the word hashtag work-life balance, you know, because it doesn’t exist but I used it to say that this is what balance looks like currently. I’m taking a solo weekend as a mom trying to raise a bunch of kids and run a business and a clinic all at the same time.
So I have a question based on that because I would fully wholeheartedly, both hands in the air, agree that work-life balance doesn’t exist but it’s kind of like we don’t reach homeostasis, like where everything’s just balanced, it’s allostasis, like it’s a process, you know, and so I think of work-life balance like that.
What advice would you give to, you know, the listeners out there who are maybe interested in being a business owner and making a shift because, you know, going from a clinician to, you know, a product developer is a huge leap. So what advice would you have for someone starting out who is feeling overwhelmed because there’s not a lot of examples of moms who own businesses who can like sustain it for a long time? So what would your words of wisdom be?
36:00 Dr. Amanda Olson I think first and foremost, carve out and make independent the moments in the day and the days in the year that are non-negotiable for your kids. So for me, that looks like morning, like the morning time when I’m getting the kids ready, I take them to school.
So like, I do get up early and I do scan through my inbox first thing just so that I can have an understanding of what my day is going to look like. But then the times where it’s like breakfast to when I drop them off, it is like we are locked in together and I make sure that we’re not rushed and that we are, you know, the three of us are kind of in our flow. So they start their school day, you know, on that positive step. And then I take their birthdays off like the whole day. Those are their days.
And then everything else, I think I really love and I didn’t need to be like so aggressive about there’s no such thing.
37:00 Dr. Ginger GarnerI totally agree. Couldn’t agree more.
37:05 Dr. Amanda Olson: But I like what you say about the allostasis where there is an ebb and a flow to where, you know, when there’s a fire in your business, you have to put that fire out because that, you know, you need your business to be healthy. And so there are times where, you know, mommy’s going in the office and I need to handle some things. I’ll be out later. But then like their times are those little moments are non-negotiable for them. So that’s where I’m at at this particular phase. My kiddos are seven and almost 10. So, you know, they’re…
37:35 Dr. Ginger Garner They’re so cute at that age. They’re so sweet. And you are their champion and they’re, you know, you’re the sun, the moon and the stars. I love that age. Mine are teenagers now. And I am not the sun, moon and the stars. It’s very different, but you get love in other ways when they ask you about a college essay. You know, they want your input and you feel, oh, thank you. Like, you know, I do know one or two things, you know.
So it’s lovely and hard in different ways, but I love that you’re doing that. And I often have been guilty of not prioritizing, you know, things, especially when if you have a moment where, you know, the business proverbial head is on fire or something like that, where it’s easy to lose sight of making the non-negotiable. [Yeah] The non-negotiable.
I remember Brene Brown talking about that. I was listening to one of her interviews or podcasts. I can’t remember, but listening to her brilliance about putting non-negotiable time on her calendar, on her Google calendar. And then her agent said, oh, you can do it here. That’s just a block time. She was like, no, I can’t. And then they would persist, but it’s open. You’re not doing anything. Yes, I am. I’m doing nothing. That is something.
39:07 Dr. Amanda Olson: I love Brene Brown.
39:09 Dr. Ginger Garner: I loved that. And several years, you know, before I had heard it, it just sealed the message. Then I was like, now I’m going to put some do nothing time on my schedule, because as a mom, you’re always trying to make every moment productive. It’s a teaching moment. It’s a learning moment. It’s a quality time moment.
And that is putting a whole lot of pressure on ourselves that we already get enough of that from society as it is, speaking across the range of making pelvic health topics taboo and trying to make tools inaccessible. And then we’re also getting the cultural message of, oh, you should just try harder and lean in, that kind of message. It’s very stressful. And gosh, that alone, that little mouthful is enough to cause a pelvic health problem. You can feel your pelvic floor going into tension.
So everybody, let’s take a collective inhale and stretch the pelvic floor out and exhale. So I like that advice. I often couch it and say, reverse engineer. Like if I’m mentoring, you know, a young PT or a student, I’ll say, block out that time, reverse engineer it. If you don’t want to work at night, don’t accept a job where you have to work at night.
It sounds so obvious, but I didn’t do that in the beginning. I didn’t. I was like, oh, I love to teach yoga. I love teaching Pilates. No problem. I can teach a six o’clock class. And then all of a sudden, I was like, but I don’t get to eat dinner. And then when I do, it’s too late. And then now I’m up at 2 a.m. So it seems some of those things that seem so easy, like we would think taking a breath and stretching the pelvic floor is easy, but it’s hard. That’s why we need tools to do that sometimes to help us learn where the pelvic floor is and how to relax it.
So I really like that advice on, you know, being a mom, being an entrepreneur, because it really applies to pelvic health too. Like you’ve got to carve out that time to sit down and do your homework, whatever that is, whatever that looks like.
So what piece of information then would you share? What do you share? Let me rephrase it. There’s so much that people don’t know about pelvic health, right? And again, I’ll use myself as an example, like going from ortho to pelvic, I learned so much. I felt like I knew nothing when I first started to get into it. So what’s the most surprising thing you usually share with people about the tools or your practice as a pelvic PT that’s kind of surprising that you feel like, you know, our listener may not know about yet? What’s a really practical piece of information that people may not be aware of when it comes to what you do?
42:08 Dr. Amanda Olson I think that it’s one of the things that I’ve observed in myself and in my patients is that learning how to drop and relax the pelvic floor is a lot harder than learning how to activate and locate. And it’s not to pin, you know, a certain diagnosis against another, but when you’re elevated and when you’re short and you’re tight and you’re in a subconscious guarding state, it simply takes a lot more time and practice to come back down to neutral and to learn the coordination piece than it does to go the other way. And so I think that that just warrants a lot of grace and a expectation of process and time.
42:53 Dr. Ginger Garner Yeah, that is so important to talk about. I see it when I use imaging, you know, in the clinic and I’m trying to measure someone’s inhale and they get two millimeters of movement of a stretch to the pelvic floor. And I’m like, okay, we can work on this.
And I think about it in terms of if someone came in with trauma and they’re hurting, hurt is trauma, pain is trauma, but maybe they’ve also experienced some hurt inside the system [healthcare system]. Maybe they didn’t get listened to. Maybe they feel like they were a victim of medical gas lighting, right?
Think about how when you’re upset and you’re crying or you’re hurt, you’re in pain. How long does it take before you feel like you’re okay? Where you can get up and go make a cup of tea or go cook your family dinner or engage at work again after you’ve been upset. It takes time. And so if you allow, let’s say, if someone was upset and crying about something, they may say, well, it took me 10 or 15 minutes to kind of relax and, you know, and then just pull myself together. That may be what your pelvic floor needs, right?
Is…maybe it needs 10 or 15 minutes. You can’t just expect on demand, especially when you, if someone has kind of white coat syndrome where they walk in and with pelvic PT, you can be a little nervous, like what’s going to happen? You know, are they going to do internal every time? The answer is no, we’re not.
But if we just kind of acknowledge the anxiety out there about it and, you know, if you’re hurting and you have other trauma, yeah, it could take a long time to get through it. But if you’re not, you know, you’re not going to be able to do it. So, it’s a little bit of time to get the pelvic floor to just relax and go with the flow and to put you back in charge again.
44:52 Dr. Amanda Olson: Absolutely. Yeah.
44:56 Dr. Ginger Garner: So be patient with yourself, everybody. It’s your pelvic floor won’t relax and play well with others immediately.
45:03 Dr. Amanda Olson: Exactly. Your pelvic floor will respond, if you’re upset and someone says ‘ just relax’ then it agitates you further.
45:15 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yes. That is pretty bad. Yeah. And you know, and people hear that a lot too, when they go in with a complaint of, you know, that they say I’m having pain with any kind of penetration or intercourse or anything like that, and they get the phrase and you can finish the sentence for me. What are they told?
45:37 Dr. Amanda Olson: Have a glass of wine. You just need to relax. Take a bubble bath.
45:45 Dr. Ginge Garner: Yeah. And you just want to, you just, your top wants to just, you know, just wants to fly off. Your head’s on fire. You’re like, how dare they say that? But then we can hear it in the medical system, but I always want to encourage people like, we don’t want to gaslight ourselves and say, oh, well, just relax because it’s not always that easy.
So yeah, I liked the word that you used, grace. Give yourself some grace. It’s our self-talk is just as important and can be just as damaging as that which we hear from other people, you know, other practitioners that aren’t informed that, no, you can’t just have a glass of wine and relax your pelvic floor.
46:29 Dr. Amanda Olson: If it were that easy, we wouldn’t have a caseload.
46.33 Dr. Ginger Garner: That’s right. We wouldn’t even exist if, you know, if grapes could relax the pelvic floor, but unfortunately they can’t. Oh my gosh.
So, I’ve got a few rapid fire questions, but my last one is, do you have a favorite thing to teach people that just, you know, to feel, in your work as a pelvic PT to help them just feel better about themselves and hopeful that pelvic PT and pelvic health (because OTs are pelvic health practitioners too) that it works and that it can help.
47:07 Dr. Amanda Olson: Yeah. I use the phrase little by little, a little becomes a lot. And so when we’re looking at big goals and dreams and, you know, for a lot of people, a different life, if they could just get this one symptom under control, or if they could just do this one thing, it’s the small work of showing up for themselves. And even if they’re having a totally chaotic day and that one thing is two minutes of breathing, or they’re able to do their full 15 minutes with their wand or their, all of their pelvic stretches, little by little, a little becomes a lot.
And then the other visual that I like to use is that healing looks a little bit like an upward trajectory when you step back and look at it, but within that there are dips. So you’re still moving up and you’re still making progress, but there are dips in it. So it’s almost like a healthy stock market where like over time, if you step back and look at the year, there’s growth in that stock. But if you look at the day by day, there were dips in it.
And that’s very normal. And that’s part of the human experience that bad days are going to happen. Busy days happen, stressful days, but just treat the next day as ‘today I’m going to do what I’m able to do. And hopefully that involves all of my things that take care of me. But even if it’s just this two minutes of breathing right before I go to bed, I’ve shown up for myself and I’ve done that thing.’
48:32 Dr. Ginger Garner I love that visual. I love that visual. I often use little bell curves in the office and things to describe it, but I really like that kind of 40,000 foot back out stock market view and then in the daily inflections happening. I love that. I hope that helps you guys listening because it certainly makes me feel better too about a lot of things because we can apply that curve to so much. We could talk about a pelvic floor not relaxing or relaxing, but we can also talk about the dips and the bends and the curves and the road for being an entrepreneur, for being a parent, for just being a clinician because we want to help and we want to kind of cure everyone.
Healing isn’t linear. Healing isn’t linear
49:34 Dr. Amanda Olson. Yes.
49:35 Dr. Ginger Garner: So I have a few rapid fire questions for you. What book are you reading right now?
49:43 Dr. Amanda Olson: Oh my word. I am so nerdy. I am reading a book called France, An Adventure History. I do a lot of scientific and pelvic health reading. I just want to preface I spend most of my day in that space. So my night time reading tends to be a lot in art history, French history, and this one’s really interesting because he covers a lot of the intricate facts about civilization at that time, like Roman civilization that like a lot of us just aren’t aware of. So I just started that and it’s a good two inches thick.
50:19 Dr. Ginger Garner: Tell me what the name of it is again.
50:21 Dr. Amanda Olson: It’s called France, an adventure history. Adventure history.
50:25 Dr. Ginger Garner: Okay. All right. Let’s stick on the book line. What’s your favorite fiction?
50:32 Dr. Amanda Olson: Okay. It’s called the Midnight Library. It’s here in my office right now. I don’t read. So I read all the time. I am a voracious reader, but I actually don’t read a lot of fiction. I love the Midnight Library. It goes through looking at different life possibilities. So the Midnight Library is all of these different life paths this one young woman could have taken. It’s her each chapter kind of analyzing, oh, if only, these kind of like regrets that she’s had and her coming through and realizing that she’s on the path that she’s on because of daily choices that she made and she’s where she is supposed to be, but she needs to start making different choices to move forward in life. So the Midnight Library.
51:13 Dr. Ginger Garner I love that. I’m pretty guilty of not reading enough fiction too. I think I might’ve once said life is too short for fiction because there’s so much nonfiction to be read. [Yes.] But then I felt bad because then there’s all these incredibly talented people writing fiction. I’m like, their work is good too. I just don’t know how I can have enough time to read all the fiction and all the nonfiction things. So the Midnight Library.
51:40 Dr. Amanda Olson: The Midnight Library. I literally feel the same way too, but this was recommended and it was good.
51:51 Dr. Ginger Garner: Okay. I got to pick that one up because I set a book goal for myself every year and I think I’m a little bit behind this year. So I’m going to pick up the pace and pick that one up too. All right. Two final questions because I really want to know what you have to say about this because I know you’re going to have great answers. The first one is, what do you do? What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not fighting for the cause?
52:08 Dr. Amanda Olson I’m a very active person. I live in a beautiful space. So I either like to be out running or even just going for a walk. And I love looking at the wildflowers and the deer and the birds. I’ve become quite the naturalist in my, in my phase of life. So I have, I’ve recently gotten into butterflies. So, I mean, just looking at them, I’m not like capturing them or anything, but I really, I really love nature and being outside and getting my boys outside. So that’s a passion area.
And then I really love cooking and being in the kitchen. We have a lot of allergies myself and my boys. So I cook like 90% of our meals from scratch and I love getting new cookbooks. I love cookbooks and just trying new things in the kitchen and kind of shaking it up a little bit.
53:03 Dr. Ginger Garner Yeah. Oh my gosh. We’re, we’re so similar. I’ve been doing that lately and trying new recipes on the boys and some have been winners. I’ve had two or three winners. Like this makes me want to eat dinner actually, mom, like…
53:16 Dr. Amanda Olson: That’s the best feeling!
53:19 Dr. Ginger Garner: It is. That’s the reward. That’s the ultimate reward for being a parent. It’s just that your kid is eating your dinner. Yes. It’s good enough for me. Yeah. That is a love language. Absolutely. Yeah. So two apps that I just downloaded for the naturalist nerdy person in us.
One is a bird call because I was in the mountains this weekend alone and I heard something. I’m like, is that an eagle? It sounded like a bald eagle. So all of a sudden I’m looking up bird calls. Of course there’s an app for that. Mm hmm. And so I’ve got to use it. Now I’ve got to use it. I’ve got to whip out my bird app, but there’s a lot of birds around me and I want to learn more about that because I’ve, I’ve never been that bird savvy.
And then the other one was, um, Peak Finder. It’s when you’re hiking, have you used peak finder? [No.] All you have to do is hold your phone up as long as you have a little bit of a signal. And if you want to go completely minimalist and just leave your phone at home and you can do your peak finding later. But if you do have it with you, just point it at the horizon and it shows you in the mountains, like what all the ranges are, like 70, 80 miles away.
54:26 Dr. Amanda Olson: I love that. Yeah. It’s amazing.
54:29 Dr. Ginger Garner: Yeah. So two more tools for the toolbox and a bunch of books. Um, tell our listeners again where they can find you on social media and on the web
54:37 Dr. Amanda Olson. Yes. On Instagram, we are @intimaterose or I am @aolsonDPT. And then on our website, we are intimaterose.com.
And again, hundreds of different blog articles, videos, resources, everything’s free on there. Um, we are on Facebook and on Facebook, we have a private support group that anyone can join. You don’t have to have been a customer. It is the Intimate Rose private Facebook group. They can just go on and apply there. Then we are on a limited basis available on TikTok, the lighter side of social media. We don’t do a ton on there right now, but there are some pretty cute videos on there.
55:19 Dr. Ginger Garner Okay. Awesome. Yeah. I’ve seen some of the things that you’ve done and of course, I love to follow you and see all your posts.
All right. Thank you so much, Amanda, for your time. Thank you for your dedication to the cause. Keep fighting the good fight to keep all of these things accessible and out front for people so that we can ditch the stigma and, you know, move forward with everybody having a happy pelvis.
55:46 Dr. Amanda Olson: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely.
https://youtu.be/u8QFPB7MqAk Follow us for Free: About the Episode: What if your pain isn’t “normal” — it’s been misunderstood? In this episode, Dr. Ginger sits down with Dr. Madhu Bagaria, a...
https://youtu.be/04zjmpV1td4 Follow us for Free: About the Episode: Men’s sexual health is often misunderstood and reduced to quick fixes. In this episode of The Vocal Pelvic Floor, Dr. Ginger...
https://youtu.be/p3A1foLw6wI Follow us for Free: About the Episode: What if your desire isn’t broken — it’s just been misunderstood? In this episode, Dr. Ginger Garner sits down with Dr....