My “Why” Part 3 of 8: Coaching

by Dr. Sarah Shimanek, PT, DPT, WCS, PRPC

The past couple of weeks, I have been talking about why I do what I do. So far, I have talked about the importance of Listening to my patients and having a truly Holistic, or whole person approach to treatment. Today, I’m focusing on Coaching. We may not always think of our healthcare providers as coaches, but I would argue it’s an important element, especially in physical therapy. Have you ever had a coach or mentor who inspired you to be the best you could be at something and gave you the realistic tools to actually get there?

Coaching may mean different things to different people, but to me, it’s about helping you to figure out where things actually fit into your life and how to make small changes that will actually work within your lifestyle without being overwhelming, but still being effective. This approach inspires more lasting changes that you can maintain when therapy is over.

Help to figure out where things actually fit into your life and how to make small changes that will actually work within your lifestyle

Let’s take the example patient I talked about last week. She was a woman coming in for sexual pain that had contributing factors of work stress, a hip injury, core weakness, and anxiety around sex. Let’s call her Kelly. Imagine being told that all of those things are contributing to your pain. And now imagine your provider giving you a long list of things to work on to help. How would that make you feel?

For me, that would be extremely overwhelming, and I wouldn’t do any of the things. But this is where coaching fits in. In Kelly’s case, we had talked about the things going on in her life, so then we could talk together about 1-2 steps to take to start working on addressing some of those factors. We started with scheduling weekly physical therapy sessions to directly address the muscle tension, as well as starting with some breathing and mindfulness techniques to help manage her stress and learn to consciously relax her muscles.

Kelly and I talked about when and how to fit these things into her new routine, and at each appointment, we evaluated whether those strategies were working, whether we could introduce new habits into her routine, or whether we needed to change either what she was doing or when we were hoping to have her do it.

With that individualized coaching support, Kelly was able to leave each session feeling empowered and not overwhelmed, which helped her not only achieve her goal of pleasurable, pain-free sex, but also gave her the tools she needed in her life to manage her stress and anxiety, as well as stay strong and mobile so that she could prevent this or other issues happening in the future.

Sometimes we know some of the things we need to do to have better health, but we need someone to help walk us through the steps and figure out how those steps fit into our lives. Other times, we need help figuring out what things we need to do. Physical therapy at Akasha can help you actually implement these changes in your life to achieve whatever your goals are, from pain-free and pleasurable sex, to doing jumping jacks without peeing yourself, and more.

Contact us today to make an appointment.