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Simple Email Marketing for More Acupuncture Patients – Michelle Grasek

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi there, my name is Michelle Grasek and I am the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, and today I’m looking forward to talking with you all about effective email strategies to get more patients on your schedule. And before we dive into this, I’d like to take a moment to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.

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I absolutely love teaching marketing, so I am thrilled that I can have this opportunity to teach you for free. So let’s get into the slides. Alright I broke this talk into two segments. So the first segment is really about why email marketing is worth your time and your energy. And then the second segment is ideas for making your emails more effective so that they actually work to get new patients on your schedule.

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So let’s start by talking about the goals of email marketing and really why does email marketing work? What are we doing that makes it effective in getting people to take an action? So the most important thing, I actually put it third on this list, is that email marketing is a reminder that allows you to stay top of mind.

So every time you send an email, you hope that people who are reading it, sit up and take notice and say to themselves, That’s right. I’ve been meaning to make an appointment with this acupuncturist, right? It’s just a reminder. And I find that’s a really nice way for people to think about it. If they have some reluctance to send emails, if they’re worried they’re going to be annoying their audience, you’re really not annoying them, but I know it’s a common concern.

Just remember that email is a simple and easy reminder that you, your business, And your practice exists. Okay. So then the second reason that email is so effective is it’s a really nice medium for teaching people about acupuncture and how it can help their specific symptoms. And it also allows you to talk a little bit about your clinic so that people get to know you and the way that you practice.

And that really leads into the third purpose of email marketing, which is to build your know trust factor. So in marketing, we. We know that people like to buy things from people they know and trust. You’re probably familiar with this concept. And the way that you write an email newsletter, the way that you teach people concepts or share information will allow people to buy things.

understand, what kind of person you are how you approach this medicine, what it might be like to work with you, and that builds trust, right? It’s building up that know trust factor. So we are going to talk about each of these in a little bit more detail. But first let’s talk about why email marketing is worth your time.

The first is that you own your list of email subscribers in a way that you can never own your social media subscribers. Now I have seen a lot of small business owners put an enormous amount of energy into social media and growing their following. And that’s why You know, there’s really nothing wrong with that, especially if you enjoy social media a lot.

I say go for it. It can be a really nice opportunity to get in front of, real life people in your community. But, I think that if you are on the fence about social media, or feel like you don’t have enough time to be consistent with it, email is a really nice alternative. And this is one reason why that’s the case.

So if you think about Instagram, for example, there have been several instances in the past couple of years where Instagram just stopped working. It went down for a day and all of the influencers on Instagram who have built their business model around selling something to their followers. They panicked because they didn’t know if or when Instagram was going to come back up.

They didn’t know what their income dip would be like based on how long Instagram was going to be out for. And at this point we know Instagram came back, obviously, right? It was only a day each time, but it’s it’s not the best business model if you’re only focusing on growing followers because you don’t have that control over these people that you are making such an effort to build with, right?

By contrast, you own your email subscriber list, and you can really control the way that your message is delivered to them. So we know that the social media algorithms change all the time, and you can spend a lot of energy creating Reels, for example, but then have only a very small portion of your followers actually ever see that content.

Whereas at least when you send an email, you know that it landed in the person’s inbox. And of course, there’s a certain small percentage that might end up in spam. That’s normal. But at least 95 percent of the emails you send are going to be they’re going to arrive at their destination. Okay. And I think that is building your email list is a good way to build stability in your marketing in a way that social media is not because social media can be unpredictable.

And again, you don’t get to control the way your message is delivered or whether you will even have followers in the future. Okay. So that’s one thing to think about. The second reason email isn’t a really good choice is that it is so low cost in the marketing world. You almost, you can’t find anything to beat it.

So for example, if you have 250 email subscribers on your list and you’re paying about 20 a month for something like MailChimp or Constant Contact that, and you send one email a month, that is 0. 08 per email, and It’s really hard to find another marketing strategy that only costs eight cents a person.

So your investment is low, right? There’s you just, you don’t have that much to lose. And another reason that email is a great choice is that it’s a very low pressure way to educate people and to get visible. So especially if you are an introvert, or if you don’t love the idea of learning to dance on TikTok, then email is a nice alternative.

I always tell my marketing clients that they get to write their email newsletters at home, in their pajamas, on their with their cats, whatever suits you, right? And especially if you already enjoy writing, email is a great medium for it’s like an opportunity to be visible in front of a lot of people while you actually get to be behind the scenes.

Okay. I hope that makes sense. And that is a much more comfortable way for a lot of people to do marketing. So I always say that if that We’re not consistent with things that we don’t like. It’s really hard to do marketing over the long term if you don’t enjoy it or it’s not a good fit for your personality.

So choose something that is a good fit. And for many people, email marketing fits their strengths. Very well. And then lastly, email is much cheaper or has a higher ROI, forgive me, than social media. So for every dollar that you spend on email marketing, the return on your investment is around 38. So that is 3, 800 percent return on your investment.

That’s outrageous. And that is partly because it’s so low cost to begin with, but also because it is very effective. at the same time compared to social media, which generally if you spend a dollar on social media, your return would be about 2. 80, which is a 20 28 percent ROI. Okay. So for all of these reasons, email is just a really good choice.

for reaching your patients, converting them and getting them on your schedule for a very low cost. So let’s switch gears then and talk about some tips and strategies for effective emails. So I have been teaching marketing in our industry for about a decade and have been doing marketing coaching for almost five years.

And I find that most acupuncturists have an email newsletter opt in. on their website, something that says, you know, sign up for our monthly email newsletter or something simple like that. But they very rarely or never send the email newsletter, right? So you’re collecting the emails, but you’re not sending them.

And remember, email is this beautiful opportunity to stay top of mind with people just to remind them they meant to make an appointment, if you’re only sending a quarterly email newsletter, for example, I find that most people send something maybe once every three or four months. If you’re sending a quarterly newsletter, that is a lot of time for people to forget about you and your practice, to forget their intention to make an appointment.

So I recommend sending emails twice a month. That is a sweet spot. Now, don’t panic. Whenever I say this, people’s response is immediately, I don’t have time to write content for one email a month. How am I going to write two emails? So we will talk about that in a moment. I have some really effective, helpful ideas for that.

But they’re also worried about annoying people by sending emails twice a month. So the reality is That twice a month is a polite volume of emails to send. It really is not too often and I find that it’s just enough for potential patients. and regular patients to remember that they meant to make an appointment, right?

You’re staying top of mind just often enough that they’re not forgetting about you completely. And I find that is a number of emails that is actually doable for people if they’re using the tips that I’ll share in just a moment, okay? And think about your favorite clothing brand. When something is on sale, they will email you multiple times a week.

Sometimes they’ll email multiple times a day. So we are not doing that. We are As I said, we are sending a polite number of emails at just twice a month, okay? So don’t worry that you are annoying people. You’re really not. People opted into your email list for a reason. They want to learn from you about Chinese medicine and how it can impact their health.

They want to hear from you. And I have a little note down at the bottom of this slide that I want to point out because this is pretty common experience. If you have not been sending emails and then you start sending, people are going to start unsubscribing. And this is totally normal. You actually want the people who are not a good fit for you to unsubscribe from your list because you don’t want to pay for them to be on your list.

So most email platforms like MailChimp will unsubscribe. It’s like a free monthly subscription until you hit a certain number of email subscribers, whether it’s 300 people or 500. If there are people who read your emails and they say, Oh, I don’t think I’m actually going to see this acupuncturist, and they unsubscribe, that’s fine.

It’s better to just let them go, to not take it personally, because it’s almost always going to happen. Every time you send an email, you’re going to get a couple unsubscribes, but you don’t want to have to pay for them to have this bloated email list filled with people who are not going to become your patients.

So just know that it’s going to happen. It’s totally normal. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong and it does not mean you’re annoying people. Okay, so let’s talk about two things that allow you to send two emails a month. Like, how can you be that efficient? And the first the first perspective is that you can send very simple email newsletters with only one message in them.

So you only need one reason to send an email in order to hit send. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But do you remember? And I don’t know I graduated about 14 years ago, so these kinds of email newsletters were very popular at that time. But it was very common for an email newsletter to have multiple different parts, like three or four different sections, and they usually had a theme like the liver in springtime, something like that.

And they were long, and they were complex, and they took a long time to put that content together. So There’s nothing wrong with that type of email newsletter. It’s very effective, but I don’t think it’s any more effective than just having one section, one message. And what I have found over the years with those long, complex email newsletters is that most people who intend to write them, they never finish writing them.

And then they never hit send. So it really is a barrier to actually doing the thing and sending the email. So when I say you only need one message, I am referring to, you could have one research article that you want to summarize briefly and share with your audience, and then have a call to action.

If the research is about acupuncture and knee pain, At the bottom of your summary of the research, you could say, as your call to action, If you are struggling with knee pain, we would love to help. Click here to schedule now. Okay, so it can be very simple and brief. And then the second concept that will really help you in putting these email newsletters together is the idea of repurposing content.

So I can almost guarantee that you have written or created a lot of content already. over the years for your practice, you do not need to keep writing that content from scratch. So if you’re not familiar with it, repurposing content is when you take something that you created for one platform, for example, Instagram, and then you copy and paste it and you make some edits so that it makes sense for another platform, which in this case would be email, an email newsletter.

And I really believe that repurposing content is the only way to maintain your sanity in digital marketing. If you are trying to create brand new content every week for eternity, it’s just too hard and you just don’t need to. It is totally acceptable to copy and paste and kind of reconfigure content you already wrote so that it makes sense for whatever platform you’re copying and pasting it to.

So people often ask me, what can I repurpose? The answer is everything. Anything you’ve created in the past can be cleverly repurposed so that you don’t have to write it from scratch again. And I recommend starting with what’s often called evergreen content on your website. It’s sometimes also called core content or pillar content.

You may have heard of that, but this is These are usually the pages of your website that people are reading or skimming when they are making the decision about whether or not to come see you for acupuncture. They’re deciding if you’re a good fit for them. So if you have a specialty, for example, then the page where you describe how acupuncture works for your specialty, like Fertility, Orthopedics, Cosmetic.

That page is going to be core content or evergreen. And it’s called evergreen because this is the kind of information that doesn’t change very much, but it is always relevant. It’s always helping people make a decision about whether you’re the right acupuncturist for them. So repurposing evergreen content is always a good choice.

It’s a nice place to start. If you’re thinking about planning your email newsletter several months in advance. I would begin with evergreen content. And your frequently asked questions section on your website, if you have that, is a type of core content. I also recommend incorporating that into your email newsletter.

Each Q& A, can be its own email. Okay? If you have written blog posts in the past, you can repurpose that content. If you have published Instagram or Facebook posts and they got a lot of good engagement, like your followers ask questions, they were curious, they were sharing a lot, then that could be really great content to repurpose for emails as well.

And you could either You could just copy and paste the caption, for example, from Instagram, or we’ll talk in a second what to do if you have a lot of video or visual content. So a couple examples of repurposing if you are the kind of blogger who writes like 3, 000 word blogs because you like to be really thorough and we know that Chinese medicine is complex.

So we like to explain everything. I’m one of those people. I’m a long form blog writer. You don’t want to copy and paste the whole blog post into an email. That’s a little too much for an email. So I recommend breaking it down into three or four sections or concepts and then send each as an email, right?

And You could send it as a series of related emails where you are teaching your audience something about acupuncture for this particular topic. So that’s one idea. I mentioned copying and pasting an Instagram caption. Of course, you could also do this with Facebook. Again, if you have social media content that people engaged with, that is a good trigger for you to know that this might also make a really good email content.

And then Let’s say that you are less comfortable writing, but you are pretty comfortable on video, or maybe you have a podcast, something like that. You can use free software online to make a transcript of the video or the podcast, and then you can use that text that you just transcribed, make some edits, and then send that as an email, okay?

Because people who often have a really library of Instagram Reels will say, I didn’t write a lot in the caption. How am I supposed to transform this content into an email? You can transcribe it for free. Okay, so that’s one idea. And then again, I really encourage you to take a look at your Frequently Asked Questions page and consider sending each of those questions and answers as an email, because that is really the information that people need to help them decide if they want to make an appointment with you.

And a really good example of this is how many treatments do I need for, and then your specialty, right? So how many treatments do I need for fertility? How many treatments do I need for cosmetic acupuncture? That is really important. Question and answer makes a really beautiful email newsletter. Okay, so just a couple of tips for writing effective emails so you can get better results for your efforts.

In any marketing, you always want to write from the perspective of your potential patient and think about questions they are subconsciously asking, which is, why should I read this? What’s in it for me? Why should I get acupuncture? What’s in it for me? Think about the benefits from their perspective.

And Angle all of your writing towards that, okay? So that’s number one. And then most email newsletters are successful when they focus on content that the audience would find useful in some way. So teaching and educating your audience is really great. Answering questions. I’ve mentioned the FAQs multiple times already, but that’s a great option.

Solving a problem. So a good example of an email that you could consider solving a problem would be, um, how to reduce abdominal bloating with Chinese medicine. That could be your subject line. And then the email talks about avoiding ice and raw foods, maybe avoiding smoothies, those kinds of things, teaching them something about Chinese medicine that they can put into action at home, get good results.

And then of course you have a call to action. If you want more help managing your digestion with acupuncture and the wisdom of Chinese medicine, click here to make an appointment. Okay. So that’s like a solving a problem that the patient has email. You could also think about what might be the doubts or the barriers that prevent people from making an appointment with me right away.

And then answer those doubts in an FAQ format. And then of course you can always share an email. If you have an announcement about your clinic, maybe you hired a massage therapist, you have a new receptionist, maybe you’re hosting an event that you want to invite people to. Maybe you’re just going on vacation and you want people to get on your calendar before you leave.

Okay, so all of those are just one single message that you are sharing that is a good enough reason to send the email. And I mentioned call to action several times, so before we end I just want to define that for you. So a call to action is when you tell people what you want them to do and how to do it.

Click here to schedule now. Schedule now is what you want them to do and click here is you telling them how to do it. You could also think of a call to action as letting people know what is the next step they need to take if they’re ready to work with you. Okay? So in email, really in all marketing, it is very important to include calls to action because that is literally the part that makes people take action, right?

It gives them the initiative. It turns a little light bulb on their head like, okay, I am ready. and I’m going to click the link. So I recommend having three repeating the same call to action in your emails three times. So have a button at the top and the bottom of your email that’s very simple that just says, ScheduleNow or call for a free consult, something like that.

And then you can also have a call to action in the text or in the body of your email. So if your email was about knee pain, for example, you could say, If you’re struggling to manage your knee pain by yourself, we are here to help. Click here to schedule now, and then you have the hyperlink. Okay? The idea with The frequent calls to action is that people do not like clicking around on the internet trying to figure things out by themselves.

They get distracted. They end up watching cat videos for 30 minutes and they forget their intention. So we just want to make it super obvious, no matter where they are in the body of the email, we want to make it quick and easy for them to find a link so they can schedule now or do whatever your call to action is.

Okay, so that’s a very important piece for making your emails effective. All right, so if you have any questions with me, you are more than welcome to send me an email. My email is michelle at michelleGrasek. com. You can send questions about your email marketing or just marketing questions in general.

And I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council one more time for the opportunity to be here with you teaching marketing. I absolutely love teaching marketing and I genuinely believe that it’s just a tool that allows us to reach more patients. So it’s always a pleasure to be here with you.

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NanoNeedling Self-Care – Michelle Gellis

So I’m going to do a little demo today of how I do nanoneedling on myself. But first, a little bit about me.

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Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis, and today I am going to do a demonstration of nanoneedling with a microneedle pen, so you can go ahead and go to the first slide.

I teach facial acupuncture classes, and part of that is Micro needling and nano needling and one of the questions I get asked a lot is do I do these things on myself? And the answer is yes, I do. So I’m going to do a little demo today of how I do nanoneedling on myself. But first, a little bit about me.

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I, as I mentioned, teach facial and cosmetic neuromuscular acupuncture classes internationally, and I have for about 20 years now. I’m currently on the doctoral faculty at Yosan University, and prior to that, I was on faculty at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, and I also worked as a clinical supervisor there.

And I’ve just completed my very first book. It is a 500 page hardcover book on treating the face, and the reviews have been great. I’m I’ve opened it up for pre sale and you can get more information about the book at facialacupunctureclasses. com and then the products that I am going to be demonstrating today can be, you can learn more about those at aculiftskincare.com

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Okay, I am done with the slides. So let me move these slides out of the way. Okay, so the pen I am using today is made by, everything’s backwards the pen I’m using today is made by AccuLift and it comes in a metal case. And the pen itself when it arrives, everything is wrapped up like this. I’m not going to be using this pen.

This is a brand new pen. But it comes with two batteries, and the If you want to plug it in, it comes with a charging cord and also a plug in adapter, which is on the pen right now. And the pen also comes with a really nice set of very large instructions for those old people like me who have trouble reading instructions from time to time.

These are just instructions on the pen itself. If You want to know how to do microneedling on a patient. The purchase of a pen comes with a four hour continuing education webinar that is included. So let’s just hop into it. So before I record before this webinar, I did microneedling on one side of my face.

So if you see my face is a little red, that’s why. But I am going to be doing nanoneedling on this side of my face, and the difference between microneedling and nanoneedling is a microneedle cartridge has These on this particular one, there’s 16 needles, and what happens is when you do microneedling, the needles go like this, and they make little, teeny, tiny, microscopic puncture wounds into your face, and as you can see, I’ve already done it to my face, and it’s, it shouldn’t cause anything too traumatic but So it builds collagen.

Nano needling, on the other hand, uses these nano needle cartridges, and they look different. They’re more like, if you can see this, they are more like a, almost like sandpaper. It’s a really great way to exfoliate, like the dead skin. And it’s something you can do a couple of times a week, whereas microneedling you can only do once a month, nanoneedling you can do a couple of times a week, and you can also do nanoneedling inside the orbital rim and on your lips.

What you need to do, and you don’t need any numbing cream for nano needling. What you need to do is make sure your hands and your face are clean. I like to do a little pre exfoliation before I start. And then just to make sure my face is extra clean, I take a makeup remover wipe and I spray it with rubbing alcohol and I rub I’ll go ahead and even though I just did it, I’ll do it again.

But I spray it with rubbing alcohol and then just make sure if there’s any makeup or anything on your face that. If you don’t have any issues with that, yeah, I’m gonna, everything done.

Once you’ve done that if you don’t like the alcohol, you can also use witch hazel, which is good for cleansing the skin as well. And then with nano needling, I like to grab one of my serums. I brought a couple with me. I have a superb serum, which is Vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, and collagen. I also have my peptide serum and you can use one or the other or you can mix them together.

And since my hands are clean, I’m just going to put a little of the nourish right in the palm of my hand and I’m just going to work on half of my face. So I’m going to work on this half since I micro needled the other half. We’re ready. Put a little serum on. The nanoneedle cartridges come in a sealed pouch like this and then you just tear it open.

You put the nanoneedle right on the pen, this particular pen, and there are a lot of great pens out there. And this one’s made by AccuLift and it has a triple locking mechanism. You take the, Little cap off. Don’t forget to do that. And then the way you determine the proper length for the nanoneedles on this pen is you turn it on and then you are going to dial it up just until you can just see the top of those nanoneedles coming out.

And once you can see them coming out, then you can do your nano needling, and you don’t have to press very hard, the nano needles will do all the work. And this is just a really great way to give your skin a nice refresh when I’m working around my eye area. I actually use my eye cream. Because you’re not needling anything into your skin, you’re just working on the stratum corneum layer.

You can put your eye cream on and just work right inside the orbital rim. Just make sure you’re pointing the pen towards the orbital rim and you’re gentle. You’re not pointing towards your eyeball. And it looks just like this, just like that. And then right inside, just like that. Gentle. And this is great for Those little lines we get under our eyes from smiling and it’s a great way to just stimulate blood flow and real nice healthy qi in that area.

Moving along to the cheeks,

you can do your nose, your cheeks, you just want to go right in there, left to right,

all the way down

and then you’re going to go up and down.

And right around your lips. Again, I’m only doing half of my face. And make sure you do along the jawline. Get your chin.

Oh, and I forgot to say this in my other video, but make sure you pull your hair back. That’s why my hair is back. You don’t want to get your hair tangled up in your device. So a headband or a ponytail, whatever you need. If you have hair that hangs in your face. Now I’m going to do my neck. and my chest area.

And even though I’ve done microneedling across my neck and down my chest, it’s okay to do the microneedling, the nanoneedling. I was pretty gentle when I did the microneedling. You can see I’m just a little red in this area, so I’m good for the So you’re going to go underneath your chin.

And up and down on the neck. Actually feels really nice. It’s not painful at all. And then you’re going to go down on your chest

and back and forth.

So I’m not recommending that you do nano needling over the microneedling. I’m just saying if you did for some reason it cause any harm. It might be a little painful for you. You or your patient, but for the purpose of this demo, that’s what I did. If you want, if you would like, when you’re all done doing your nano needling, you can you can go ahead and put on whatever creams or lotions you would be using.

I happen to have some of my calm aftercare, and I’m just going to use that. And I realize I forgot to do my lips, so I’m going to go back and do that. So for my lips, I usually use some serum, and if you have any kind of serum for nano needling is fine.

And you can just nano needle the whole red part of your lip. It really helps to exfoliate them and plump them up. You don’t want to nano needle, you don’t want to micro needle the red part of your lips, but you can nano needle them

and you can see, makes them look really nice afterwards. Helps to bring that blood flow out and helps with the pleating, lip pleating. That is an entire nanoneedling session for half of my face. And you can see it’s quick and it’s easy. And if you are interested in learning more, you can go to my website, aculipskincare.

com. You don’t have to buy a pen. You can just There’s plenty of demos on there, and the four hour CEU training is on there as well. And my 20 I’m not supposed to say dates anyway. My teaching schedule is on the website as well. And you can also find me on social under my name or facialacupunctureclasses.com. And that’s it. Thank you for joining me.

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Pelvic Floor Introduction – Krystal Couture

I was also really drawn to treating the pelvis because these clients kept showing up in my practice.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome! Welcome! Welcome! This is an introduction to the pelvic floor. My name is Krystal Lynn Couture and I am the pelvic acu. I want to first take an opportunity to thank the American Acupuncture Council for hosting this webinar. this video, as well as the many other educational video series that they have on their vlog.

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Let’s get started. First off, I want to let you know just a little bit about me. I became a PT in 2006 and later became an acupuncturist. I actually started dry needling in 2009 and very quickly I found that the power of a needle was more than just muscle release. I was immediately drawn to Eastern medicine.

And as doing so, I was also really drawn to treating the pelvis because these clients kept showing up in my practice. They didn’t know that much about it. I didn’t learn about it in school, in PT, in school for acupuncture, just, And it just kept happening that these clients needed help, they trusted me, they were seeing me for something else, and then it was like, hey, by the way, I’ve got this thing going on that I really don’t know who to talk to about it.

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And so at first I just listened, and I educated myself and educated myself. And eventually, I developed a system to bring pelvic care to clients. Through the lens of acupuncture to create successful treatment plans for these clients that address the root of the dysfunction through the physical body, through the emotional body, and of course, through the spirit, which is what we do really well with our medicine as acupuncturists.

Today, we are going to have a very brief introduction to the anatomy of the pelvis and the pelvic floor. First, we’re going to talk about the bony structure of the pelvis, then we’ll start talking about the superficial and deep musculature layers. We’ll talk about the differences between the female and the male pelvis.

We’ll get into the functions of the pelvic floor in relation to organ support, in relation to sexual function and reproductive function, as well as bladder and bowel function. And then finally, we’ll have a quick chat about qi and blood. If we can understand the science and the physiology of the pelvis.

and the organs that are contained within it, as well as the muscles and also the energetics that are contained within the qi and the blood, we can start to produce a really amazing way to treat the pelvis comprehensively. And this is what I love about bringing pelvic care into your acupuncture practice.

So let’s start with anatomy.

All right, I have my amazing pelvis here, and I’m going to use this as a model to serve us. So what can see first in the bony anatomy? We’ve got our iliac crests. Our iliac crests come into the pubic bone and the pubic symphysis. This forms our ischial, there we go, ischial tuberosities, or our sit bones.

And then on the back of the pelvis, We’re going to have our sacrum right here in the center with the sacral foramen, right? And then we’re going to come down to the coccyx. So that’s the basis of our pelvic bony anatomy. Now if we orient ourselves to the pelvis in the position from inferior to superior, we’ve got on each side those ischial tuberosities.

We’ve got our pubic bone, pubic symphysis, and then we’ve got our tailbone, right? So that forms a diamond. That diamond is what supports the hammock like structure of the pelvic floor musculature. Speaking of, let’s talk about the pelvic floor musculature. All right, so this is a very brief lesson today.

We’ve got a female pelvis here, so let’s go ahead and just orient ourselves. So we’re going to have the tip of the coccyx or tailbone. Then we’re going to have the external anal sphincter and the opening of the anus here. We’ve got the perineal body, right? And then we’ve got the vaginal opening. So if we want to talk about the superficial musculature, first off coming off of that perineal body, we’re going to have the transverse perineal muscle.

Okay. Next we’re going to have. Next to the vaginal opening, we’re going to have the bulbospongiosus muscle. And then coming right along the ridge, the underside of the ridge of the pubis, we’re going to have the ischiocavernosus muscle. Now let’s go to the deep layers. So we’ve got the levator anni, which is the magic of the pelvic floor muscles that most people refer to.

So levator anni is going to be these layers here. We start off with the puborectalis muscle. Then next we have the pubococcygeus muscle. And next we have the ischiococcygeus muscle. I hope the anatomy lesson provided you with the start of a foundation for understanding the pelvis and the pelvic floor.

Now let’s talk about the differences between those assigned female at birth and those assigned male at birth when we’re talking about the pelvis. So first up we’re talking about the inlet. Okay. This is the inlet. This oval shape here of the female pelvis is going to be wider and oval shaped. In the male pelvis, we’re going to see a little bit of a narrower opening, as well as a more heart-shaped inlet.

When we talk about the sacrum in the assigned female at birth pelvis, we’re going to see a wider and shorter. sacrum with a greater curve to it. In the male pelvis, we’re going to see a longer and narrower sacrum. But when we talk about the coccyx, what we’re going to see is actually the male coccyx has a little bit more curve to it than the female coccyx.

The female coccyx is going to be a little bit straighter, which allows that opening to be a little bit more open and spacious when we push A baby through the opening. The iliac crest. We know this from palpation and also observation. The iliac crests. on the male pelvis are going to sit a bit higher than they do on the female pelvis.

So there’s actually a little bit of a height differentiation. And then of course we have the pubic arch, which you can see here. This pubic arch is going to be much wider in the assigned female at birth pelvis versus the assigned male at birth pelvis. Finally, the bones of the female pelvis are going to be a bit lighter and thinner than the bones of the assigned male at birth pelvis.

So now we’ll go ahead and look at some graphics. Since my demo pelvis is just a female, we’ll go ahead and look at some graphics to explain these differences. So here we have the illustration of the pelvic inlet shape. On the left we see the male pelvis. We can really see that heart shaped On the right we have the female pelvis and we can really see that we’ve got a more oval and wider shaped inlet.

Next, with the sacrum and the coccyx shape. We can see on the left that male pelvis has that elongated sacrum that’s a bit straighter. Whereas the female pelvis is going to have that wider, shorter, more curved sacrum. On the contrary, we’ve got the Coccyx on the male, which curves forward a bit and the coccyx on the female, which is a little bit straighter.

Chatting about the pelvic height and pelvic angles. This is displayed a really nicely here. We can see that those iliac crests on the male pelvis on the left are a bit higher than those of the female. You can see there’s a little bit more width in the female. pelvis, right? And this makes sense when we just look at body shape, very often the male has that more triangular shape and the female has a little bit more curve shape to it.

So that makes good sense. In this picture, we can also see that pubic arch very well. illustrated. And so the pubic arch is going to be 60 to 70 degrees on the male pelvis and on the female pelvis that’s going to be more like 80 to 90 degrees. So now we want to talk about pelvic floor function.

Okay, so first off, the muscles of the pelvic floor provide that hammock like structure. As you can see, in our model, right? We’ve got that beautiful hammock like structure. What that does for organ support is it keeps the lower abdominal organs in alignment. And this is so important because the pelvic floor is actually activated in conjunction with the abdominal muscles and the muscles of the back, especially when we’re doing activities like lifting and bending and carrying and jumping, right?

What happens when we’re doing these activities is actually the pressure in the abdominal muscles. increases. Now the pelvis, the pelvic floor and the pelvic openings are obviously below when it comes to gravity, the abdomen, right? So what that means is the pelvic floor is particularly important in keeping those lower abdominal organs from being pushed outward.

or prolapsing. So you can start to see the importance of the pelvic floor, right? It keeps everything up and in and also helps to support the pressure between the abdomen, the back, the base of the pelvis, and also that respiratory diaphragm. When we talk about sexual function, and reproductive function.

It’s quite obvious that during pregnancy, the pelvic floor is going to support the pregnancy. It’s also going to relax and stretch during labor and delivery to allow that baby to come out, right? To be delivered. But sexually, what happens? The pelvic floor muscles actually play a key role both in those assigned female at birth and those assigned male at birth in labor.

providing movement of blood flow. So in females, the pelvic floor muscles help to increase blood flow to the genitals, which promotes arousal promotes lubrication, and it allows for ease of penetration and thus orgasm. In men, of course, the pelvic floor muscles help to manage the blood flow to the genitals by compressing the veins to the penis and thus trapping blood in the penis which creates an erection leading to eventual orgasm.

So those pelvic floor muscles have a big impact on our reproductive and our sexual function. Let’s talk quickly about the urinary and bowel function. Now, the pelvic floor is going to house the openings for the urethra from the bladder, the anus from the bowels, and the vagina from the uterus in females.

The pelvic floor is going to help close those openings to prevent leakage and then relax them for emptying. The pelvic floor essentially supports continence in both males and females. So here’s a quick image so that you can just orient yourself to the opening’s anatomy. So we can see on the left we have the male image, on the right we have the female image.

Left to we have the pubic bone to the tailbone. In between the pubic bone and the tailbone, guess what, we’ve got the pelvic floor. And then, in males, we have the bladder, the prostate, and the urethra. Then we have the bowel. So those are our two openings and our two spaces to consider. In females, we have the bladder opening to the urethra.

We have the uterus opening to the vagina, and then we have the bowel opening to the anus. So here’s your example. You can also see this really well from my superior to inferior view. of my pelvis here. So we can see there we go. We can see the rectal opening, we can see the vaginal opening, and then we can see where we’ve got the urethra as well.

Up next, let’s get in to chi and blood. Okay. Chi and blood are that crucial energetic aspect that are going to help us put everything together as we bring a unique lens to treating the pelvic floor as acupuncturists. The Great Void consists of qi, and qi condenses to become the myriad of things. In terms of Chinese medicine, qi is the energetic foundation of the universe, as it is the physical and spiritual substrate of human life.

Life.

So what does Qi do? Qi is going to promote, it’s going to warm, it’s going to protect, it’s going to hold, and it’s going to transform. Qi promotes the essential functions of the organs and channels in the human body. So when we think of the body as the body kingdom and the organs as officials, And the channels as communication between the officials, we can see how Qi is the director of essential function, warming.

Qi is going to be young in nature, and it’s tasked with warming the body and providing heat. Qi defends us against pathogens or the six evils, which we know in the winter we have colds, In the spring, we have wind. In the summer, we can have summer heat, which is that damp heat, or heat, which is dry heat.

We can also have damp or dry in their own right. Qi is going to hold and contain substances in their respective places and control secretions. We know this when we think about spleen qi deficiency becoming, um, spleen chi sinking, right? Transformation. Chi also metabolizes fluids and substances within the body, which includes our blood and the chi itself.

So when we’re looking at chi as a vital substance and thinking about these functions, we can already start to see how we’ve got all these fluid balances that are occurring in the pelvis. itself within the organs, but we also have that musculature that’s going to require qi and blood as well.

Let’s talk blood. Put simply, blood is going to carry oxygen and nutrients to the cells while carrying away waste. Chinese medicine believes this too and Chinese medicine believes that blood carries the human conscious or consciousness within it. So blood has this very physiological robust nature to it, and by carrying the consciousness within it, it’s got a very robust spirit as well.

Just to review, the spleen is going to make the blood. The heart will govern the blood, and the liver will store blood. When it comes to the uterus will store and release the menstrual blood. Blood functions include nourishment, moistening. Holding the mind or the spirit and determining menstruation.

The blood circulates continuously through our system, providing us with nutrients to our organs on the interior and to the muscles, the tendons, the bones, and the skin on the exterior. The blood of each specific organ ensures that the skin. and the hair and the eyes and the sinew and the tongue are properly moistened.

So the blood has a direct role in moistening. This is really important as we start to think about female cycles. Chinese medicine teaches us that the heart and specifically The blood vessels hold the shen or the spirit. Finally, blood determines menstruation. The quality of blood determines one’s bleeding cycles monthly and also throughout the lifespan.

So how are qi and blood alike and different? First off, blood, of course, is the mother of qi. And qi is the ruler of blood. Talk about that for a mouthful, right? Blood has a yin nature to it, where qi has a yang nature to it. Blood nourishes and sustains the zongfu organs that help produce qi, while qi provides the force and the energy to the zongfu to produce blood.

So we can see that they have a pretty symbiotic relationship. Qi is I’m sorry, blood is essentially a denser form of qi. Blood and qi are inseparable. Qi will move blood. And Q will also hold blood. So once we understand the energies of QI and blood, we can start to understand the source of the function or dysfunction within the pelvis.

We can start to understand how to put the layers together, and then all of a sudden, instead of treating the diagnoses of erectile dysfunction, we’re able to go to the depths of kidney young deficiency, or whatever it might be, whatever pattern we come up with, and also identify emotional patterns, spirit patterns that could be contributing, and get really deep into the source.

And treat the pelvic floor, treat the pelvis, treat the root of the body, and treat the root of the dysfunction to really help our clients to feel better and to improve their quality of life. So once again, this presentation is brought to you by the AAC, American Acupuncture Council, and I hope you loved it.

We are also going to be doing a few more presentations. We’re going to be sharing presentation on the pelvic floor and menstruation, the pelvic floor and fertility, the pelvic floor and pregnancy, The pelvic floor and postpartum, and of course the pelvic floor and menopause. I would love to have you join me for this series.

Once again, my name is Dr. Krystal Couture, and I am the pelvic acu. It has been a pleasure to be with you today, and I can’t wait to see you soon.

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