skip to content

Non-Internal Introductory Pelvic Health Course

Participants who register for this course have the option to attend the course live-online and/or watch the recording later. The recording will be available to all registrants for a 6-week period and access is provided on the next business day following the course. This allows participants who may not be able to attend live-online to still benefit from the course content. 

To Kegel or Not: That is the Question!!

Pelvic floor problems are prevalent in more than 2/3 of women with LBP/PGP, and 1/3 of men with LBP

Is this an important fact affecting your outcomes for chronic LBP?

Course Description

Pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) can include increased tone and decreased tone muscle problems. It is not all about Kegels! How can you tell if your patient is over-recruiting their pelvic floor if you cannot do an internal exam? Not all clinicians want to perform this type of exam, or it may not be in your scope of practice. Learn what the evidence says about linking pelvic floor dysfunction to chronic low back pain, pelvic girdle pain, and hip pain, and learn what you can do about it in your practice. Help your patients to regain control of these important muscles! Sexual function and bladder/bowel function are arguably some of the most important activities of daily living that your patients need to recover. Don’t let your discomfort be the barrier to your patient’s recovery; we will make it fun and non-threatening!

Support resources are included in the cost of this course.

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Understand the relevance of Pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) when treating orthopaedic conditions- specifically LBP, SIJ dysfunction, PGP, and hip pain
  • Learn basic anatomy of the pelvic floor musculature and physiology of the lower urinary tract system (LUTS)
  • Understand pelvic floor conditions as they relate to a weak pelvic floor and an overactive pelvic floor
  • Learn how to ask patients important questions about sexual function
  • Learn non-internal management strategies for pelvic floor retraining
  • Create an individualized exercise program and progression for clients with increased or decreased pelvic floor tone
  • Use behavioural techniques to help retrain a variety of dysfunctions of the urinary and bowel system
  • Practice externally driven techniques for assessing and treating pelvic floor dysfunction
  • Understand when to refer to a specially trained physiotherapist for incontinence, prolapse, and pelvic pain

Audience: This course is open to all healthcare and wellness professionals.

Prerequisite: None

13th Pelvic Health Solutions Symposium

Participants who register for this event have the option to attend live-online and/or watch the recording later. The recording will be available to all registrants for a 6-week period and access is provided on the next business day following the event. This allows participants who may not be able to attend live-online to still benefit from the content. To facilitate attendance tracking, please indicate on your registration form if you won’t be attending live.

The 13th Pelvic Health Solutions online symposium will enrich your theoretical and practical knowledge of pelvic health. Learn the science, critical reasoning and inter-disciplinary approaches needed to fully understand the direction that pelvic health is taking in your community, provincially, nationally, and internationally.

  • More speakers and topics to be announced!

What You May Be Missing To Treat OAB and Nocturia – Taryn Hallam

Of all the conditions pelvic health therapists treat, the evidence suggests some of the highest success rates are possible for Overactive Bladder and Nocturia. However, many clinicians often report these patients can be some of their most complex and difficult to treat! In this talk, Taryn Hallam will delve deeper into the complex and varied mechanisms often underpinning symptoms such as urgency, frequency, urge incontinence and nocturia, in order to help clinicians maximize their outcomes in this patient population.

Some of the factors to be explored will include how rate of bladder stretch rather than just bladder volume is important, the role of the urethra in lower urinary tract sensation, and a discussion on the bladder irritants that are both over and under-focused on when looking at lifestyle. Finally, exploration of factors beyond the lower urinary tract that can also be a cause of these symptoms will be discussed.

Objectives:

  1. To dispel the common misconceptions regarding the underlying pathophysiology that cause symptoms such as urgency, frequency and nocturia.
  2. To understand how these misconceptions can negatively impact our clinical reasoning and treatment plan for our patients.
  3. To gain new insights into assessment and treatment of OAB and Nocturia that will enhance success rates in these patients.

Managing Endometriosis 2026: What Every Physiotherapist Needs to Know – Dr. Sukhbir Sony Singh 

Dr. Singh is an internationally recognized leader in minimally invasive gynecology. He is the co-lead and senior author of the most recent SOGC Guidelines on the Diagnosis and Management of Endometriosis. His presentation will provide a real-world update on the current state of endometriosis care and the recommendations to improve access and diagnosis. He believes that patients with pelvic pain and endometriosis require equitable access to interdisciplinary care including pelvic physiotherapy. As per the 2026 guidelines, he is advocating for centers of excellence including teams that are funded for patients with the most complex endometriosis care needs.

Objectives:

  • Identify current diagnostic and evaluation pathways for endometriosis
  • Summarize the updated recommendations from the 2026 endometriosis guidelines
  • Identify strategies to improve physiotherapist involvement in the diagnosis and management of patients with pelvic pain and/or endometriosis

The Missing Link: Pelvic Health & Back Pain – Michelle Lyons

This evidence-informed presentation explores the links between pelvic health and female lumbopelvic pain, highlighting how urinary symptoms, bowel dysfunction, pelvic floor muscle dysfunction, breathing and pressure management, and load transfer may influence both symptoms and rehabilitation. Drawing on current research and clinical experience, participants will examine the unique challenges faced by active women and athletes, where back pain often intersects with pelvic health.

The session will also explore important differential diagnoses that can masquerade as “mechanical” back pain, including endometriosis and other pelvic pain disorders, helping clinicians recognise when symptoms warrant broader clinical reasoning or onward referral.

Participants will learn practical, sensitive screening questions and assessment strategies that can be incorporated into any musculoskeletal or sports physiotherapy assessment. The emphasis is on knowing what to ask, what to look for, and recognising when pelvic health may be a missing piece of the clinical puzzle.

By the end of the session, participants will feel more confident identifying red flags and hidden contributors to female low back pain, integrating pelvic health into everyday practice, and recognising when (and how) targeted pelvic rehabilitation may improve outcomes.

Learning objectives:

  • Describe the current evidence linking bladder, bowel and pelvic floor dysfunction with female low back pain.
  • Discuss the intersection between pelvic health, lumbopelvic pain and athletic performance in active women and female athletes.
  • Recognise pelvic health conditions and differential diagnoses, including endometriosis, that may present as or contribute to persistent low back pain.
  • Incorporate simple, evidence-informed pelvic health screening questions into routine musculoskeletal assessments.

Beyond the Leak: Causes and Clinical Solutions for Fecal Incontinence – Susan Clinton

Fecal incontinence is rarely the result of one isolated impairment. Bowel control depends on the interaction of stool consistency, rectal sensation, sphincter function, pelvic floor coordination, gastrointestinal motility, nervous system regulation, mobility, and the individual’s ability to respond to urge.

In this presentation, participants will explore the multiple contributors to fecal incontinence and learn how to move beyond a strength-only approach. The session will offer a practical clinical reasoning framework to help pelvic health clinicians identify the primary drivers of symptoms and select interventions that are individualized, meaningful, and appropriate for the person in front of them.

Learning Objectives:

  • Describe the muscular, sensory, gastrointestinal, neurological, and functional factors that contribute to fecal continence and incontinence.
  • Differentiate between common presentations of fecal incontinence, including urgency-related leakage, passive incontinence, and post-defecatory seepage.
  • Apply a clinical reasoning framework to select targeted interventions, including bowel habit and stool consistency strategies, pelvic floor and coordination training, sensory retraining, neuromodulation, and appropriate interdisciplinary referral.

Getting to the Bottom of Coccyx Pain: A Deep Dive into Assessment and Treatment – Dr. Nicole Cozean and Dr. Jessica Reale

A practical, clinically focused session designed to sharpen your decision-making when assessing and treating patients with coccyx pain.

Objectives:

  • Identify differential diagnoses for tailbone pain and recognize potential contributing anatomical factors to symptoms.
  • Recognize best practice and current evidence for medical and rehabilitation evaluation and treatment approaches.
  • Target and prioritize treatment interventions to improve outcomes for people with pelvic pain.
  • Tailor treatment approach based on patient response.
  • Have confidence and proficiency in treatment strategies in a variety of patient and examiner positions

Beyond Kegels – Functional Strength Training for the Pelvic Floor: Online (with optional In-Person)

Participants who register for this course have the option to attend the course live-online and/or watch the recording later. The recording will be available to all registrants for a 6-week period and access is provided on the next business day following the course. This allows participants who may not be able to attend live-online to still benefit from the course content. 

Course Description:

Unlock the missing piece in pelvic floor rehabilitation – functional strength training.

As a pelvic health physiotherapist, you understand the complexities of treating conditions like urinary incontinence, pelvic pain, and pelvic organ prolapse. But are you leveraging strength training effectively in your treatment plans?

Too often, rehab is limited to isolated pelvic floor strengthening or cookie cutter treatment plans, leaving patients without the strength they need for full recovery. This course challenges that norm, equipping you with the skills to confidently assess, prescribe, teach, modify, and progress essential strength movements – squats, deadlifts, presses, and their variations to improve your clients most common pelvic health concerns.

This online course blends lecture, case studies, and movement practice to ensure you walk away with skills and strategies you can implement immediately in your practice. For those who want to take their learning further, an optional in-person session the following weekend offers hands-on coaching practice, more case study applications, and more opportunity for one-on-one time with the instructors.

Move beyond Kegels – transform your approach to pelvic health with functional strength training.

Course Objectives:

  • Understand the limitations of traditional pelvic floor rehabilitation – identify the gaps in common treatment approaches and why underloading patients can hinder full symptom resolution.
  • Integrate strength training into pelvic health treatment plans – learn how functional movements like squats, deadlifts, and presses can enhance recovery and improve patient outcomes.
  • Assess and teach fundamental strength movements with confidence – develop the skills to assess, cue, demonstrate, and coach essential lifts safely and effectively.
  • Bridge the gap between pelvic health rehab and strength training – learn how to progress patients from isolated pelvic floor exercises to full-body, functional movement patterns.
  • Develop evidence-based exercise prescriptions – use current research to guide programming decisions and ensure patients are receiving appropriate load and volume.
  • Apply strength training principles to specific pelvic health conditions – tailor strength training interventions for urinary incontinence, pelvic pain, and pelvic organ prolapse
  • Enhance clinical reasoning through case studies and hands-on practice – work through real-world scenarios and refine your ability to make patient-centered exercise modifications.

Please note – having access to dumbbells for the online component will be helpful to practice movements.

Objectives for the optional in-person practical component:

  1. Refine coaching and cueing skills – gain valuable hands-on experience providing real-time feedback and expand your ability to improve your client’s form and symptoms with exercise prescription, modifications and better cueing.
  2. Perform and receive live movement assessments of both yourself and others – practice assessing your own movement quality, identifying compensations, and implementing different modifications/cues to improve your exercise prescription for both yourself and clients.
  3. Experiment with equipment and load variations – an opportunity to get comfortable using different resistance tools (e.g., barbells, kettlebells, bands) to adapt strength training for diverse client needs (including common pelvic floor symptoms and conditions)

Audience: This course is open to physiotherapists, physiotherapy students, occupational therapists, occupational therapy students, and any health and wellness practitioner working in an exercise-rehabilitation capacity.

Prerequisite: None

Rheumatology Bootcamp 101

Four days that change what you notice in a rheumatology patient, across practice settings.

Twenty-two hours of live teaching for allied health professionals, taught by two rheumatologists and three ACPAC-trained clinicians.

Here’s the four-day schedule condensed into one paragraph:

Two virtual evenings (5:30–9:00 PM EDT) on Zoom:

Day 1 (Thursday) covering an introduction to inflammatory arthritis and physiotherapy/exercise in rheumatology.

Day 2 (Friday) covering autoantibodies and labs, pharmacotherapy fundamentals, and general osteoarthritis.

Then shifting to two full in-person days at St. George Physiotherapy Clinic in Toronto:

Day 3 (Saturday, 12:00–8:15 PM) covers history taking, GALS screening and joint counts, outcome measures, pain review, imaging, and self-management strategies

Day 4 (Sunday, 8:30 AM–5:45 PM) covers spondyloarthritis and a metrology workshop, hand splinting, evidence-based RA/OA guidelines, mixed case studies, and closes with a quiz and wrap-up.

Rheumatology Bootcamp 101 | October 22 to 25, 2026 | RheumAcademy

 

Developing Support and Reach in the UE: NDT Workshop in the Management of UE Following Stroke or Brain Injury

Course Description:

Many individuals who suffer from a neurological injury post CVA or brain injury have limitations in using their affected upper extremity in function. Recovery of function in the affected upper extremity is a goal for both patients and therapists. Research demonstrates the need for practice using the affected upper extremity to drive recovery, and that practice needs to occur in and outside of therapy. As therapists we face challenges in how to activate and progress the affected upper extremity to drive these practice opportunities and improve function.​

This one-day workshop will present NDT principles related to coordinated movements of the trunk and upper extremity for active support and for developing reach. We will explore the research related to the recovery of the upper extremity post-stroke and brain injury and how we incorporate this research into clinical practice. The workshop will provide an opportunity for analysis of the role of the upper extremity in function and the assessment of movement dysfunction in the upper extremity. Various treatment strategies will be explored to facilitate active support and progress an upper extremity for reach.

Course Objectives:

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will:

  1. Understand the principles of NDTA™ Contemporary Practice Model to the treatment of adults with neurological impairments and particularly as applied to management of the upper extremity in an individual post stroke or brain injury.
  2. Identify major impairments that interfere with developing upper extremity function in an individual post stroke or brain injury.
  3. Demonstrate basic handling skills to improve shoulder mobility, reduce pain and facilitate scapula control in coordination with trunk and upper extremity movements.

Registration Form

Functional Intramuscular Stimulation (FIMS)

The Functional IMS course provides comprehensive training on conducting full body neuropathic functional assessments. It enhances clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills to identify patients who will benefit from IMS techniques. The course covers indications, contraindications, precautions, and emergency measures, ensuring safe and clean needle handling practices. Participants will learn over 150 needling points across two intensive weekends, equipping them with practical skills for effective treatment.

What will you learn upon completion of the course:

  1. How to do a full body neuropathic functional assessment
  2. Improve your clinical reasoning and critical thinking process
  3. Identify patients who will benefit from IMS techniques.
  4. Indications, contraindications, precautions and emergency measures
  5. Safe and clean needle handling practice
  6. Over 150 needling points over 2 weekends in person.

 

APTEI: Cervical & Thoracic Spine (in Scarborough)

This course will enable you to gain a practical knowledge of the possible anatomical and psychosocial factors leading to persistent neck, thoracic region and rib cage pain. Once the pain classification is identified, optimal management optins of acute and persistent cervical whiplash associated disorders (WAD) will be clearly reviewed.

So what does the evidence (as of 2026) thus far tell us regarding optimal management of WADs?

  • Patient re-assurance ++
  • Pain Education
  • Maintenance of activity levels, but not too much
  • General exercise program
  • Specific exercise programs focusing on neck and shoulders
  • Encouragement of coping strategies
  • Simple analgesics

Although the research papers make the management sound so simple, we all know it is not so easy. This course will help you become more confident in your treatment of acute and persistent neck and thoracic spine pain knowing that you’re providing the best treatments based on the best available evidence.

View my video on WAD

View my video on one reason for delayed recovery in WADs

APTEI: Shoulder Complex (in Waterloo)

Upon completion of this course, you will be confident in applying evidence-based clinical assessment skills for the diagnosis and classification of individuals presenting with various common acute, sub-acute or persistent shoulder pain syndromes.

(E.g. persistent subacromial sensitivity,  capsultis (frozen shoulder), etc.)

You will also be able to confidently identify several potential contributing factors to persistent pain and dysfunction at the shoulder complex.

Upon determining the diagnosis, classification and the potential contributing factors, you will be able to administer the most effective treatment / management options including specific exercise / movement prescription, manual therapies, neural mobilizations and taping.

Please view these 3 short videos to prepare yourself for the course.

Shoulder pain quick “fix” (1-min.)

Best shoulder exercises (2 min.)

Frozen shoulder diagnosis (1 min.)

Exercise Essentials for Physiotherapists

What really makes an exercise prescription “essential”? Join Bruce Craven for a dynamic, interactive weekend course challenging how we think about exercise.

This interactive weekend course challenges physiotherapists to move beyond default exercise selection and think more deeply about the science, reasoning, and clinical decision-making that should shape every prescription.

Led by Bruce Craven, Exercise Essentials in Physiotherapy brings together principles from physiotherapy, sport science, kinesiology, pathology, performance, and motor learning to help clinicians better understand what matters most when prescribing exercise. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own clinical reasoning, identify gaps in their knowledge, and develop a more integrated approach to exercise selection and progression.

The course begins on Friday evening by establishing a shared language around assessment, treatment planning, client goals, and the “why now” behind clinical decision-making. Saturday and Sunday then move into two days of interactive, case-based learning focused on applying exercise principles to real clinical and performance scenarios.

Course topics will include force, velocity, impulse, power, gravity, linear and rotational movement, motor learning, cueing, energy systems, breathing, core function, sympathetic response, stimulus–perception–response, and whole–part–whole learning. These concepts will then be applied to common clinical and performance areas including running, ACL rehabilitation, overhead throwing and hitting, jumping and hopping, speed, quickness, agility, and return-to-performance decision-making.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Identify the key clinical, biomechanical, physiological, and performance factors that influence exercise prescription.
  • Develop a clearer reasoning framework for selecting, modifying, and progressing exercises based on the client’s goals, presentation, and stage of recovery.
  • Apply principles of force, power, motor learning, energy systems, breathing, and core function to common rehabilitation and performance scenarios.
  • Better connect subjective history, objective assessment findings, clinical problems, treatment timelines, and exercise choices.
  • Explore exercise prescription strategies for running, ACL rehabilitation, overhead sport, jumping, agility, and return-to-performance programming.
  • Reflect on personal clinical reasoning habits and identify opportunities to strengthen the integration of science into everyday physiotherapy practice.

This course is designed for physiotherapists who want to sharpen their exercise prescription skills, challenge their assumptions, and leave with a more thoughtful, practical, and performance-informed approach to rehabilitation.

 

APTEI: Lumbo-pelvic Complex (Chronic pain)

Upon completion of this course, you will be confident in applying evidence-based clinical assessment skills for the classification of individuals presenting with CHRONIC pain in the lumbo-pelvic region.

This course will review various movement prescription techniques and the most evidence-based way of prescribing movements maximizing, hope, joy, and compliance to exercises without inducing fear.

All healthcare providers will gain greater confidence in directly addressing the psychological barriers to recovery such as fear, stress, and anger.

You may view these 3 videos prior to the course:

Bending & Twisting

STOP Core exercises

STARmat exercises

CRITERIA FOR ACCEPTANCE

  • This course is open to all healthcare providers and students awaiting licensing
  • There are NO prerequisites for this course