Pelvic Health: Advanced Needling Techniques from Acupuncture Canada

Maximize your clinical impact and expand your scope of practice.

This intensive course is designed for dedicated professionals seeking to integrate advanced, evidence-informed techniques into their existing pelvic health practice. Participants will broaden their needling skills for integration into their pelvic health treatment protocols.

The curriculum emphasizes safety, precision, and evidence-informed practice, equipping clinicians with alternative options to support patients experiencing pelvic pain, incontinence, and other pelvic related conditions. Dry needling is a safe and effective treatment used by practitioners to treat the pelvic floor and associated regions. This technique helps to modulate the central and peripheral nervous systems, as well as local tissues, by releasing muscle tension, improving blood flow, and reducing pain signals. It is an efficient tool that is often incorporated into a comprehensive treatment approach to address pelvic pain and dysfunction.

This advanced course is designed for regulated health professionals who are rostered with their provincial regulatory college to treat pelvic health conditions and use a needling modality in their practice.

Important Note: Eligibility is contingent upon each individual professional having met their provincial regulator’s specific requirements (such as post-graduate training and a rostered or annotated status) to perform these procedures.

Building on your foundational dry needling skills, Pelvic Health: Advanced Needling Techniques will advance your practice for pelvic conditions such as:

• Urinary incontinence
• Urgency/frequency
• Fecal Incontinence
• Pelvic organ prolapse
• Constipation (evacuation difficulties)
• Perineal pain (Dyspareunia, Vulvodynia, Vaginismus, Vestibulodynia, Testicular pain, Penile pain, Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder)
• Urologically-based pelvic pain (Bladder Pain Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis and Non-bacterial Chronic Prostatitis)
• Gynecologically-based pelvic pain (ie. Endometriosis, Dysmennorhea)
• Low Back Pain and Pelvic Girdle Pain Pre- and post-partum care

The Pelvic Health: Advanced Needling Techniques course combines a hybrid of online and in-person components. The online component introduces you to the theory of pelvic needling and the application of advanced needling techniques that can assist in the treatment of common pelvic health conditions. This self-paced (~20 hours) online component will be completed over 3 weeks and includes narrated presentations, needling research and resources, videos, and concludes with a brief exam.

The in-person lab will be approximately 20 hours over 2 ½ days and will involve teaching and refining hands-on needling skills. The final day will conclude with a practical exam to provide college accreditation.

Friday 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Saturday: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm

Sunday: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm

Prerequisites include:

• Being a rostered practitioner with your provincial college to treat pelvic conditions.
• Being a rostered practitioner with your provincial college to use needles in practice.
• Successful completion of Acupuncture Canada’s Dry Needling Level 2 course, or equivalent dry needling certification.
• Proof of completion is required of the following pre-requisite muscles: multifidi, quadratus lumborum, lumbar paraspinals, glute min/med/max, piriformis, adductors, iliopsoas, tensor fascia latae, hamstrings, quads

Students will be required to supply their own pelvic models at the in-person portion of the course, including an educational model of the male and female pelvis. This is required to aid in your training while learning the needling techniques. No internal digital exam required. No internal needling. All external perineum.

Pelvic Health: Advanced Needling Techniques has been developed by senior, experienced instructors from the Acupuncture Canada faculty team, including pelvic health rostered physiotherapists, a physician and an acupuncturist. This combined background knowledge provides a well-rounded, holistic approach to treating complex pelvic health conditions.