The Body Literacy Programme
Eight weeks of 1:1 treatment for pain during sex
Your 8-week individualised care plan comes from your history, not just from pelvic floors in general. I work out and prioritise which parts apply to you and in what order and each week I adapt it based on what actually helped and your experience. By the end you can do that yourself, which is the difference between managing a flare up of symptoms in the future and starting again from scratch. One to one, by video, across the UK.
Every woman starts with the initial consultation.
The 8-Week Body Literacy Programme
1:1 / £700
Eight weeks of one to one work built on the Body Literacy Framework, which teaches you what your pelvic floor is, how it works and how breath, posture and tension patterns change what it does.
The reason that matters is that symptoms do not stay still. A woman who can read her own body notices a new trigger and responds to it herself, instead of starting the two year search again.
The programme starts with a live call where we set your plan and from there most of it is delivered through video and audio resources made for your situation, with a weekly review form where you report what you practised, what changed and what did not. Live calls are booked when something needs a real conversation rather than sitting on a fixed weekly schedule. Treatment that fits into your week is treatment you finish.
Two review sessions are banked as part of the programme and can be used any time up to twelve months after it starts, because symptoms shift with surgery, pregnancy, treatment changes and life. The exercise videos are yours to keep.
Weeks 1 and 2
Mapping and breath
Your history becomes one picture, with entrance pain, deep pain, the burning that keeps testing negative and the flares around your period separated out rather than lumped together. The breath work starts immediately, because that is what gives the muscle its range back.
What changes: you can tell when your pelvic floor grips, for example, reading emails, or in traffic and you have something to do about it in the moment.
Weeks 3 to 5
Downtraining
Teaching the pelvic floor to lengthen when you need it to, through positions, timing and specific release work, with the habits keeping it short corrected alongside it. The stomach held in, the jaw clenched at a desk, the bracing that happens without you noticing.
What changes: penetration stops being something your body braces against before it starts, tampons become possible again for some women, and you have a plan for the weeks when everything feels worse.
Weeks 6 and 7
Graded exposure
Meeting the thing that hurts in steps small enough that your nervous system does not need to brace, using dilators properly if they belong in your plan, with breathing and downtraining underneath them rather than instead of them.
What changes: intimacy stops being all or nothing, because there is always a next step small enough to take without setting yourself back.
Week 8 and onward
Reading your own body
Once there is length to work with, we start asking the pelvic floor to do its job again, including during sex. By the end you know why yours started holding and which of your habits kept it there, so you recognise it if it starts again.
What changes: you stop needing someone else to interpret your symptoms, which is the entire point of the programme.
"I have my self esteem back and life is restored."
This only works if you do the work
The programme runs on what you practise between sessions and the sessions exist to direct that practice rather than to replace it. Ten years of pain will not shift from one consultation and no practice and it will not shift from listening to the downtraining audio once and meaning to get to it properly next week.
The practice itself is small, a few minutes at a time, several times a week, fitted around a normal life. Most women can find that. Some cannot, not right now and there is no judgement in that at all, because a hard few months is a hard few months.
If this is not your moment, wait until it is. The work will still be here.
Start with the consultation and decide about the programme afterwards.
Everyone begins with the initial consultation. Sixty minutes, £95, by video. You leave knowing what I think is causing the your pain during sex and where to start. It is worth doing whether or not you go any further.
The Body Literacy Programme is where we work on the pain itself and it is not a condition of being seen.