Did you know that Tailbone pain or Coccyx Pain is one of the most excruciatingly painful
diagnosis that we see in the clinic nowadays. 1 in every 5 back pains have some kind of
tailbone complications. If at this point you are without help, if you'd like to expedite
your recovery and learn more about self help strategies to help you come out of back pain,
pelvic pain, or any other pelvic related diagnosis, please pause this video and subscribe to our
channel, that way you are notified of any new videos that come out and you are up to
date with any information that I'm sending out.
My name is Dr. Amruta Inamdar, I am a pelvic floor rehabilitation specialist, that is a
physical therapist specializing in pelvic floor dysfunction. To date, I have seen more
than 5000 patients with pelvic floor related issues with excellent results. Have you been
struggling with relentless, severe, low back pain, at the very very lower part of your
back or your tailbone? Are you struggling to understand what's going on? And you don't
know where to start? I want you to pause this video right now and comment below and let
me know either yes or no and what exactly your problem is, that way I'm able to help
you one on one through these comments.
Vast majority of patients suffering from severe pain in the tailbone do not have any idea
of where to start with, and more importantly do not have access to a pelvic floor physical
therapist, so in this video it is my attempt to bring to you the 5 most effective strategies
I have loaned in my clinic that have helped my patients get better or at least get this
pain under control. Let's begin.
Before we begin our exercises I would like you to quickly understand what and why we
are doing so you have a clear understand of the techniques we are going to learn. Okay,
so over here I have a close to a life size model of the pelvis. Anything that is white
is the bone, and anything that is pink is a muscle, now we are going to look at the
pelvis from the back, okay? So we are looking at the sacrum, the back part of the pelvis
and if you see the end part of the sacrum is your tailbone, okay, now many people get
this injury when they fall directly on their tailbone. Sometimes, women get this injury
when they give birth or if there is any vacuum used when giving birth, or any other issues
where you have direct injury or trauma directly over the tailbone. Now, I want you to closely
look at how these muscles are situated that are attached to the tailbone, right, so these
are the bones in the center and these muscles that are attached directly to the tailbone,
alright, now obviously these muscles are very close to your rectal opening and these muscles
are an integral part of the pelvic floor, so when we learn the exercises, I'm going
to show you techniques to release these muscles, you gotta see a pelvic floor PT if you do
have access to a pelvic floor PT because they are highly specialized and trained to palpate
your tailbone rectally so we do palpate tailbones rectally and find out where exactly the tailbone
has moved, very commonly, tailbone gets flexed underneath, with birth injuries or with trauma
where you hit the tailbone directly, the tailbone gets flexed inside, or sometimes the tailbone
gets deviated to one side or the other. Pelvic Floor PT will be able to tell you exactly
what's going on, however, if you do not have access to a pelvic floor PT or if you don't
know anyone that specializes in this field, then I'm going to give you a few self help
tips over here.
The number one problem that people with tailbone pain have is they cannot sit without pain,
that is the biggest, biggest issue everyone faces, right? So the first technique I'm going
to show you is to try and figure out the method in which you don't have to spend a lot of
money, you don't have to invest in a lot of gadgets and other stuff, and you still should
be able to sit without pain. Okay, so we are going to use a thicker towel, just like this,
and you are going to roll it up like how I'm showing you, now, you are going to make like
a V shaped structure just like this, and you are going to try and sit on it so this is
like a makeshift technique for when you have no help, so I'm going to try and sit on this,
so if you try and see, you're going to basically get the towel underneath these two sit bones,
that way the tailbone keeps floating or it doesn't bear the brunt of my body weight.
Okay, this is something you can try immediately at home, make sure that you have a towel that
is not very thick it should be slightly squishy that way you are slightly elevated from the
ground or the surface that you are sitting on.
Okay, so in this technique now we are going to learn how to actually release the muscles
that are attached to the tailbone, if you don't have any help or if you don't have access
to a pelvic PT. Generally, what happens when you fall or cause injury to the tailbone,
the tailbone either flexes underneath or it shifts from one side to the other, the way
you know what side is affected is, you have to palpate the muscles that are underneath
your gluts and try to feel which side is more painful or more under tension, cause that
is the side that is going to need your treatment, alright? Okay, so for example, you are going
to put your hand underneath your sit bone, and you feel inside of that hand, okay so
if your hand is right here, you are going to feel inside part of that sit bone area,
you are going to try and see what side is more painful. If you have this injury that's
really bad you are going to experience that one side is more painful than the other. Once
you locate that, the next step is to take a ball, so I've taken like a tennis ball here
and you are going to try and place this ball between the tailbone and the sit bone, how
would you know? You are going to locate the sit bone underneath when you sit and you are
going to place the ball inside like that. So, let's practice placing that ball, so I'm
going to make believe that my right side is painful, so what I'm going to do, is the first
step, I'm going to try to palpate the sit bone, and then place the ball inside the sit
bone area, so let me show you, just to give you some clarity, I'm going to turn around
here, so you see my hand here, this is my sit bone, and I'm going to place that ball
inside of my sit bone, very close to my rectal opening, but no really on it, okay? And you
are going to lean your body weight on it, this should feel almost like someone is punching
like a fist there, but what you are going to do is breath into the ball and try to relax
the muscles, that way the tightness of the trigger points around that area let go, okay?
Let's practice, I'm going to put the ball underneath the sit bone, sit down, okay, it
feels like a severe pressure right there, and we are going to start breathing, inhale
through your belly, exhale, release your pelvic floor, up we inhale, exhale, release your
pelvic floor. We are going to take some deep breaths until we start to feel that the pain
or the pressure is slowly subsiding, alright? So, this actually feels softer than the left
side. You have to remember that although one side is more painful you are also going to
do the same technique on the other side it's always a good idea to balance up muscles on
both sides of your tailbone. Okay, this was the second technique.
After we have released the muscles that are very close to the tailbone with the ball,
the next three exercises we are going to do, are stretches of the muscles that attach really
really close to the tailbone. The first muscle we are going to release in a stretch is called
Piriformis Muscle, the muscle attaches, so it's situated closely inside your gluteal
muscle, it's situated really close to the tailbone. I'm going to show you how to do
a Piriformis stretch without causing more injury, we are going to lie down, you can
choose to place a pillow under your head, or you can do without it, right now I have
a pillow so I have chosen to take that. You are going to start with both your legs extended,
now the first step is you are going to bend both of your knees and keep your heels as
close to your hips as you can get them, and the next step is cross your leg over, I'm
going to cross my right heel over my left leg, make sure there is no pain or no tension
in the tailbone area as you do this, now we are going to gently grab the left leg and
pull the leg up towards you, now when you do this, you are going to start experiencing
a tightness or a stretch in the right buttock area, that is your Piriformis muscle, so you
are going to hold that stretch, I recommend that my patients hold their stretch for 30
seconds and slowly go up to 2 minutes, so you are going to very gently build up your
stamina, you might not be able to hold this stretch for 2 whole minutes on the first day,
but the goal is to build it up to two minutes, because this is a postural muscle, you are
going to stretch it gently for a sustained time. So we are going to try and do it on
the other side as well, we are going to cross the leg over and pull the leg up, and again,
like I said you should be able to feel a stretch in this area, not immediately, the more you
hold it the more stretch you are going to experience. This is the piriformis stretch,
we are going to slowly let the leg down, and uncross it.
In the next stretch we are going to talk about out Hamstring muscle, which is tight in most
of us, but why are we even talking about stretching the hamstring muscle when we have a tailbone
injury, that is a question everyone asks me, so, the hamstring actually attaches to the
sit bone, and two fascia connections that means connective tissue connections that can
pull on your tailbone, so you have to make sure your hamstring are not tight and pulling
or tugging on that tailbone, which would increase your pain cycle by getting into a vicious
circle, okay? We are going to learn a very basic beginners stretch, which is safe for
tailbone injuries. If you are going to try this, again, you want to make sure that you
do not do this if you have pain while doing this exercise. So you are going to lie down
on your back, you can either do this exercise with your legs bent or straight, right now,
because this video is for tailbone injury I'm going to show it to you with bent legs,
keep you left leg bend and your right leg extended, you are going to gently raise your
right leg up, you might not be able to extend it fully while doing it because you might
be in severe pain, so we are going to try and keep it bent, and we are going to gently
extend the leg only to the point when you feel a stretch but there should be no pain,
pain is bad, you guys, so you should not have pain when you are trying to correct something,
you are going to hold this stretch for 30 seconds, and build your stamina up to 2 minutes,
so when you are trying this for a longer time, you want to make sure you do this first without
pain and secondly you should do this stretch without feeling a sever stretch to your hamstrings,
so, you should gently stretch the muscle, so this is going to be extremely beneficial
for your tailbone injury. Alright, so let's do it on the other side as well, legs straight,
make sure your knee can be a little bent, or if you can pull it up straight you are
welcome to but make sure there is no pain on the tailbone when you do this, so you are
going to gently try to extend the knee, hold it still for 30 seconds, and build your stamina
up to 2 minutes. Then, you are going to gently lower your leg, and put your leg down.
So this last exercise that I'm going to show you is my personal favorite, cause it helped
me recover from my tailbone injury when I had a fall, I'll tell you that story some
other day. This is our tailbone, these are our pelvic floor muscles that are attached
to, and in this next exercise we are going to synchronize our breathing to our pelvic
floor movement, and we are going to try and relax the pelvic floor, as we breathe, let's
learn how we are going to do that. We are going to first go in the position we call
the child's pose, sit with your legs folded or your knees bent, you are going to open
up your knees, make sure your chest is upright, so don't start with your chest slouched, raise
your arms up and slowly make sure that you extend and touch the ground, make sure that
your hips are back and not lifted from the heels, so in this position we are going to
be aware of your breath, so you are going to inhale through your tummy, and exhale,
every time you inhale I want you hold it on your sit bone area, that means the area very
close to your rectal opening, and you want to make sure the area feels come kind of expansion
or relaxation, so inhale again, and exhale. Let me quickly explain what I mean when I
say expanding or relaxing your tailbone, so with every inhale, this is the pelvis, with
every inhale you should be able to feel your sit bones going out and going in, with every
inhale they go out, and with every exhale gently your sit bones come back. You are going
to try 10 to 15 breaths, and you are going to get more and more relaxed with practice,
and you'll notice a significant difference in your tailbone injury.
So if you do find these tips and exercises that we discussed here in this video helpful
and useful do not forget to subscribe to our channel and also don't forget to like and
share this video with your friends who might be in need help of getting started with pelvic
floor recovery. This is Doctor Amruta Inamdar, your Pelvic Rehab Doc, and I hope to see you
in the next video, until then, always remember that accurate knowledge is your path to recovery.