People who’ve been adjusted by lots of chiropractors sometimes tell me, “it feels sort of the same as getting adjusted by someone else, but I feel totally different after.” I’m always trying to figure out what that “special sauce” is. There are probably 30 different things, but over the past year one of them has stood out more than I ever expected: the pelvic floor.
In this episode I share why I now see the pelvic floor as the missing link in polyvagal chiropractic: how pelvic floor work came into the MacDonald Safety Corridor Protocol almost by accident, what I’ve learned from doing it in my own practice, teaching it to our associates and teaching it to chiropractors around the world, and why I now think of the perineum as the “basement” of the safety corridor.
In the second half I shift gears to the three most common challenges we’re seeing while coaching chiropractors, and why the answer usually isn’t another strategy.
This is one practitioner’s clinical experience, not medical advice. Chiropractic doesn’t treat conditions; the practice members described here were also under medical care.
In this episode
- Why I got into pelvic floor work in the first place, and the practice member story where it started
- The two point perineal release, done after the adjustment, because we’re always “chiropractic first”
- Why the perineum is the “basement of the safety corridor” and “point zero” of the pelvis
- Fascia as a tree, the kangaroo study, and why healthy fascia works like a trampoline
- How the pelvic floor relates to posture, hips, the low back, lower ribs and athletes
- The three-part protocol: anterior, posterior and saddle/center, including the two point connection
- Why people under regular care tend to respond faster
- Consent, including physiological consent, when working in delicate areas
- A chiropractor who couldn’t feel a Kegel, and what changed when the “message highway” had traffic again
- The three biggest challenges we see in coaching: too many options, not knowing your season, and not working from your Working Genius
- How we structure our masterminds so the plan actually sticks
How a single practice member brought the pelvic floor into the Safety Corridor
Since we started working with Polyvagal Theory, our goal has been to create ease through the safety corridor. The vagus nerve is about 80% sensory, and physiology follows the nervous system’s neuroceptive read of threat or safety. So I’m always asking what can amplify that ease after the adjustment. (For the bigger picture, see my hub article on pelvic floor chiropractic through a nervous system lens.)
The pelvic floor came in almost by accident. A long-time practice member who’d been under regular care came in one day and was just off. She was dealing with pelvic pressure and was under medical care for it.
At the time I was preparing our Level 2 Safety Corridor material and reviewing pelvic anatomy. The pelvis really only has a few joints (the pubic symphysis, the two SI joints and the femur heads), and they’re full of mechanoreceptors telling the brain where the body is in space. “However, the only way that that’s gonna work is if it moves.”
Then I looked at the band of fascia running across the bottom of the pelvis, the perineum or perineal body. My thought was that if it’s held in a tight tone and doesn’t move, even with breathing, it can’t absorb pressure.
With her, it was something I tried, with her consent, after her adjustment: what we now call the two point perineal release. She reported feeling a real difference. That’s one person’s experience alongside her medical care, and it isn’t a treatment for prolapse or anything else. But it’s where the whole thing started.
The basement of the safety corridor: the pelvic floor in polyvagal chiropractic
Chiropractic is about nervous system regulation, and the pelvic floor is the base of the whole visceral cavity. If the brain can’t tell where that base is in space because there’s no information coming from it, that’s a danger cue coming from the foundation. “We call it the basement of the safety corridor.” When the basement is sending threat, “there’s gonna be a limit to the amount of regulation you can get in the nervous system, because there’s always gonna be a protective response.”
That’s also why we still do the adjustment first. “We’re always chiropractic first.” But the longer fascia has been restricted, the stickier it gets. The adjustment takes away the danger cue, yet the tissue can still be stuck, “almost kind of cemented there”, and it needs something to help it move again.
Fascia: the tree, the kangaroo and the trampoline
I think in cartoons, so here’s the picture I use. The perineum is “dead center, bottom of the pelvis.” Imagine fascia as a tree: “the trunk of the tree is right on the perineum, and then all the branches of the tree come up all through the viscera”, around the hip flexors, bladder, uterus or prostate, and up into the lower abdomen. If there’s constant torque or protection at the trunk, we lose the springiness of the whole system.
I talk about the kangaroo study at every seminar: kangaroos can go from about 8 to 16 kilometres an hour without increasing their metabolic rate, because healthy fascia absorbs and returns energy. Think of fascia as an amplifier for the muscles. “It’s like jumping on a hard cement floor or jumping on a trampoline. When you’re jumping on a trampoline, it takes a lot less effort to get the same function.”
Posture, hips, low back, ribs and athletes
The obvious pelvic floor issues are things like urgency and bladder or bowel control. But in my experience the pattern also shows up in unstable low backs, chronically tight hip flexors, hip problems, tight adductors at the front of the pubic bone, the anterior thigh down to the knee, and even chronic lower rib issues.
When that internal tree is torqued, it puts tension through the rest of the system. Every person I’ve checked who has hip degeneration, is waiting for a hip replacement or already has one has shown pelvic floor findings once you know the three-part protocol.
Younger people with springy fascia, or very active people who stretch a lot, often do great with the adjustment on its own. But after watching the Rafael Nadal documentary on Netflix, which covers hip flexor tears late in his career, my thought was: “If you’re an athlete, you should totally be getting the pelvic floor check.”
We call the perineum point zero. Picture it as the bottom of an upside-down tent. “If it’s moving, it tells our brain where it is in space so that it can reposition that pelvis right underneath our spine.” Many pelvic floor books say poor posture is hard on the pelvic floor. I’d add the other direction: when the pelvic floor is moving well, it talks to the brain, and posture can follow. That doesn’t replace the ribs, the occiput and everything else we look at. It fills a gap.
The three-part protocol, consent and the Kegel story
The protocol has three parts: anterior pelvic floor, posterior pelvic floor, and the saddle/center, “like a saddle where we’re going to go right around that whole saddle area of the fascia”, so the brain knows where the body is in space. The third part includes the two point connection, a series of actions to reconnect the brain and the body and retone the pelvic floor muscles.
Because these contacts are in delicate areas, consent isn’t a formality. How we communicate matters here. “As long as we explain it right, we get consent, we get physiological consent.” They understand why we’re doing it and what they might feel afterwards, and they notice the difference. That’s also why I teach this hands-on and in person.
One story: a chiropractor who came to one of our seminars had seen a pelvic floor physiotherapist and been given Kegel exercises, but she couldn’t find the muscle. She’d try and fire her neck and shoulders, then her whole abdomen, glutes and legs. She told me she felt almost incompetent and had stopped. Over about three minutes and five or six tries, matching her pressure through the protocol, she found the right spot and could feel a Kegel for the first time, after more than a year of struggling.
“Because there’s such a lack of movement, it’s like the message highway was empty. There’s no movement, there’s no message.” This isn’t a knock on pelvic floor physiotherapy, which is an important part of care and often the right referral. It’s that some people need the brain to find the area again before exercises can land.
Why regular care seems to make a difference
Another long-time practice member under regular care for over 20 years asked me if there was anything I could do for her bladder control. She’d already had hip replacements, was waiting for a revision, and was getting up many times a night. After about six weeks of adding the pelvic floor work to her care, she told me she was getting up far less and making it every time. She also told me her blood pressure readings were lower at her pre-surgical physical.
I’m not treating blood pressure; it was just an observation, and it was her own report. In my experience, as someone’s stress response settles, it often seems to help things like blood pressure. It also made me think about how stressful constant pelvic pressure is, and how isolating. People with pelvic floor issues often don’t want to go anywhere because they always need to know where the bathroom is. In polyvagal terms, that’s social engagement taking a hit.
The big caveat: “a person who’s been under care for a really long time … responds like insanely fast compared to someone who’s never been under chiropractic care.” Many of these quick stories come from people under regular care, and some don’t need the pelvic floor work every visit, just periodically.
And the principle doesn’t change: “we’re not treating conditions, we’re just optimizing the function of the nervous system.” Fascia brings a huge amount of information to the brain. Chiropractic is about getting the tissue back into a state of ease and safety.
The three biggest challenges chiropractors face right now
We coach a lot of chiropractors one-on-one and in our 90-day program, and three challenges keep coming up.
1. Too many options. Open any social feed and there’s no shortage of strategies. AI will hand you a marketing plan for the whole year. “Strategy is no longer scarce.” There are so many strategies that it becomes paralyzing, and chiropractors end up “drowning in so many options.” The real challenge is knowing what’s effective for you right now.
2. Not knowing your season. We use four seasons of practice:
- Spring: you’re growing. New grad, lots of debt, no practice yet. You need to pound the pavement.
- Summer: you’ve hit your stride and have good patient flow, so now it’s procedures, policies and efficiency. “It’s kind of like you’re going from the minor leagues to the major leagues.”
- Harvest (fall): you’re amplifying your effect: associates, more people in the office, maybe expansion.
- Winter: legacy. “We’re no longer doing things because we have to. We’re doing because we want to.”
Your season isn’t about years in practice. Someone 20 years in may still need spring strategies, and you can’t call yourself in winter if your goals and your reality don’t match. Tony Robbins describes suffering as the gap between your blueprint of where you think you should be and your reality, and you close it by changing one or the other.
Pick your season yourself, not because social media says you should be somewhere. Like the wine glasses at a wedding, you have to fill your own glass first. Brandi’s number one skill is discernment: helping people find what they actually want, so they’re not chasing something they’ll quietly sabotage.
3. Not working from your Working Genius. I’ve been reading Patrick Lencioni’s The 6 Types of Working Genius. Usually two types give you energy, two you’re competent at but find draining over time, and two you’re just not good at. Chiropractors who hit a certain level of busyness and start burning out (or get the “Sunday night dreads”) often haven’t hired or delegated what drains them. The sweet spot is a role that uses your strengths, so you finish the day with more energy, not less.
How we run our masterminds
The worst mastermind is one where you don’t know what matters most, you collect a pile of strategies, and there’s no follow-up. So we structure ours differently:
- Two weeks of prep before we meet, to get clear on your season and the one or two things that will make the most difference, and prune away the rest.
- In-person time to work on those things and build the plan, including your 90-day plan and “the least amount we can do to get the most amount of effect.”
- Accountability afterwards: a group Voxer, then a Zoom call a month later, because there are always challenges along the way.
Our next masterminds are coming up on the Gold Coast, Australia (details soon). While we’re there, we’re also running the Communication Extravaganza on the Gold Coast, Australia, on Feb 27, 2027 (details soon).
Key takeaways
- In my experience the pelvic floor is the “basement of the safety corridor”. If the brain gets no information from it, there’s a limit to how much regulation is possible.
- Mechanoreceptors only inform the brain if the tissue moves. Adjust first, then help stuck fascia move.
- Healthy fascia acts like a trampoline. When the “tree” is torqued, tension shows up in hips, low back, ribs and posture.
- Consent, including physiological consent, is part of the work, not a step before it.
- “We’re not treating conditions, we’re just optimizing the function of the nervous system.”
- Most chiropractors don’t need more strategies. They need to know their season, focus on one or two things, and work from their Working Genius.
Frequently asked questions
What is the two point perineal release?
It’s the pelvic floor technique I started using after the adjustment, aimed at the fascia of the perineum (the perineal body) so it can move and give the brain information again. It’s now part of a three-part protocol (anterior, posterior and saddle/center). It’s done only with clear, informed consent, and it doesn’t replace medical care or pelvic floor physiotherapy.
Why might the pelvic floor matter for nervous system regulation?
The pelvic floor is the base of the visceral cavity. When its fascia doesn’t move, the brain gets little information about where that base is in space, which may act as a constant danger cue. In my experience, restoring movement there can help the rest of the system settle, and it may show up in posture, hips and the low back. See nervous system regulation for more.
How are your masterminds structured?
Two weeks of prep to find the one or two things that matter most for your season, in-person time to build the plan, then accountability through a group Voxer and a Zoom call a month later. Our next masterminds are coming up on the Gold Coast, Australia (details soon).
If you’re curious about the polyvagal side of all this, my free six-video course, Introduction to Chiropractic Through a Polyvagal Lens, is a simple place to start. Take it at your own pace. And if you want to learn the pelvic floor protocol hands-on, the next seminar is Unlocking the Pelvis and Pelvic Floor in Perth, Australia, on Feb 20, 2027.
- Why the Pelvic Floor May Be the Missing Link in Polyvagal Chiropractic - October 25, 2026
- Trend Lines: The Chiropractic Communication Skill That Keeps Practice Members in Care - October 12, 2026
- How to Teach Neuroception Simply in Practice - July 16, 2026
