Meet The Vagina Whisperer and What Your Clients Need to Know About Their Pelvic Floors

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi there. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, doctor Jessica Drummond. And today I have Doctor Sarah Reardon aka The Vagina Whisperer, who you know and love from her huge Instagram platform to her digital programs and workouts. She is such a delight and I’ve been lucky enough to be a friend of hers for, gosh, at least a decade.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:32 I don’t know when we met, but since she began as a physical therapist in 2007, Doctor Sarah Reardon has been caring for people’s pelvic floors as a certified pelvic floor physical therapist. She’s the founder of The Vagina Whisperer and online pelvic floor workout platform for women of every age and stage. And you can find her on Instagram as The Vagina Whisperer, where she has, gosh, probably almost a million followers at this point. We’re going to talk about her entire career journey. So if you are a women’s health or wellness professional, women’s health coach, and you want to really grow in a very exciting and multifactorial way, if you ever thought of yourself as having a real voice, of being a real thought leader in whatever area of women’s health you’re most interested in, you are going to want to hear all about the trajectory of Sarah’s wonderful career, because she is now the author of the book that you can order or pre-order right now called flawed A Women’s Guide to Pelvic Health at Every Age and stage. It’s coming out officially in June of 2025, but as you’ll see in this episode, we talk about why book pre-orders are actually so important to that book’s long term success.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:03:01 And writing a book as we’re going to discuss, is a real challenge. It requires a lot of investment time, money, attention, collaborators. You have to have a real clear what do you want this book to accomplish? What is the mission? Because you know it may or may not be successful. You’re never going to know anything could happen at launch time. But after you hear this episode, support Sarah. Support getting information about women’s pelvic floor and pelvic health out into the world because we just simply are lacking still by a lot women’s health education. And we’ll talk about how this fits in with more in-person connection, with more collaborative health care, with meeting people where they are in the moment with doing all of these things simultaneously. And we talk a lot about our thoughts on the future of healthcare. So dive in and listen and I’ll see you on the other side. Hi. Welcome back, everyone, to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m so excited to be with my friend Doctor Sarah Reardon.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:21 Otherwise known in the internet world as the Vagina Whisperer. Welcome, welcome.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:04:29 Thanks, Jess. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:31 So you’ve had a really long and in-depth and kind of interesting career in women’s and pelvic health. In terms of your practice in New Orleans, tell me how your career journey started in terms of wanting to have your own practice, wanting to kind of have your own perspective on women’s and pelvic healing?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:04:54 So I started in pelvic health immediately after graduate school in 2007, and worked for different hospitals and private practices and thought, I never want to have my own clinic. I just want to go to work and then do my work with my patients and then go home. And then, you know, in 2017, I moved back to New Orleans, which is my hometown, with my two kids. And my husband and I actually ended up taking a year off, and we had a lot of transition that year. One of my kids had an illness which required me to be home for a while, and so after a year of not practicing, I returned to a local hospital here, and I was like, you know, this just isn’t working for this stage of my life.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:05:33 They wanted us to stay until 630 or 7 at night, a few days a week. I had two young kids at home, and then they also just the way that we were caring for patients, it was like they were in a revolving door. They were just coming in. I may not be able to get them in for several weeks or months. I wasn’t able to communicate with them seamlessly. They weren’t able to schedule seamlessly, and I just felt like this is not the way that I want their healthcare to be delivered. And I also personally needed just a different schedule and more flexibility due to my season of life as a mom. And so I rented the back of a yoga studio for a few months. I paid them per hour that I used it. And you know, after about three months, I was like, oh, I’ve got enough patience for two days, you know? And so then I rented a space that I shared with the doula group and then really started from there and again thought I, it’s just going to be me.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:06:24 And then a year later, I hired another therapist. Two years later, I hired another therapist. And it just really kind of grew organically. I think a lot of it out of the need of people wanting a different kind of health care experience.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:37 Yeah, I always think back to sometime in that time frame. I don’t remember the exact year, but it was probably 2015 ish. I went to one of the physical therapy meetings, is a more business focused meeting called like the Private practice section or session. It was separate from the Common Large Physical Therapist Conference called Combined Sections Meeting, and it was during the time that private equity began to purchase in really large numbers practices and really changed corporate medicine. And I really think that time frame was the key driver of people realizing that, you know, and now we see how terrible the system really is. And I think the important point here is that it’s not just really bad for patients, which it is. But I remember distinctly in that meeting, which I was just at one lecture that was being led by a group of people in private equity.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:38 I have no idea, like exactly which corporate house they represented. But there was this question from the audience, and it was an audience of practicing physical therapists, and they said something like, well, you know, in my practice we have this real go getter person and we want to figure out how to help develop them. And the guy on the stage said, oh, fire that person.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:08:01 Why?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:08:02 Because they wanted to be sure they didn’t want too much out of the job. They saw physical therapists and all health professionals, physicians, nurses, whatever as automated cogs in their profit producing system. Right. And so anyone like yourself who had ideas about better, more seamless care, better schedules for working moms, it was like pressure them away. And that’s why I think we now have this kind of almost two tiered system where we now have really, really good practices that care for both their clients and their patients, and then kind of like corporate medicine, which is terrible.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:08:49 Right. And it’s interesting, I think, as a practice owner.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:08:52 So in full transparency, I sold this practice about a year ago. Okay. And we’ll kind of touch on that because I did it in order to write my book. And again, as a health care professional, I was like, I have too much on my plate. I’m kind of cracking. And something has to move off the plate. And so I actually sold it to the two employees who worked for me. And one of the reasons I did that, I had offers that were more lucrative from other, bigger clinical practices or other local practices, but they really helped me build it. We had a cohesive plan as to how we wanted to treat patients, but also how we wanted to live as providers and how we wanted to work as providers. And ultimately, I work for them now. So I was like, who do I want to work for? So it’s really become this really amazing, beautiful transition for them and for me that now there’s two new female physical therapy entrepreneurs in the world.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:09:42 I work for them, but we still have this same ethos in our clinic of how do we take care of the patients, but also how do we take care of the team? Because if we’re not, well, we can’t deliver good care.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:54 I love that because I think it demonstrates there are options and some may be more or less lucrative, but at a certain point it doesn’t matter. You know, certainly more money is better to a point. And then there’s such an important conversation about quality of life, not just for the patients, for the practitioners. And that’s why we feel so strongly around educating practitioners and creating these kind of alternative life paths around coaching and telehealth and group programming and things, because it gives working women who, many of whom are moms and have a lot going on or, you know, in my stage of life, we’re now also caregivers, which can be even more challenging sometimes. So I think your business career has been so interesting. So while you were doing all that, you had two young kids.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:10:50 You started working in your own private practice. Shortly thereafter, you also created this really successful digital platform. So tell me more about that transition and then why you decided to write the book. Flawed.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:11:08 You know, I was seeing patients in the clinic. I love patient care, I really do. And I, you know, I have this lovely experience of being able to say, I’m going to see six patients a day and one hour at a time and get off at this time to go to my kid’s baseball game. And so it just was a really lovely experience. But as you just mentioned, there was one year, it was 2023 where I had three parents. My parents are divorced, so I have four parents, but three of them were in the hospital at different times and it was really taxing. And I had young kids and my husband travels for work occasionally, and I was like, I don’t see this situation getting easier with family care. I see it getting harder. My parents are only going to get older.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:11:47 The demands of motherhood are just going to get greater. And so that’s really kind of when things started shifting. And I said, in a year, if I still feel this way, then I want to make a change. So I kind of let myself sit with this kind of discomfort and not being sure of what to do. All that being said, it was really post-Covid that I already had my Instagram account rolling and there was a need for more digital access, easier access to pelvic health care. And I saw a lot of fitness professionals popping up with a pelvic floor program and a pelvic floor workout. And I’m thinking, we are the specialists in this industry. We need to be producing instead of just saying, oh, they don’t know what they’re doing. Like, we need to put something out that is by a board certified pelvic floor therapist or somebody who’s putting out good evidence backed or just good exercise in education, and it’s directly to consumer. And so that’s what I started doing. I started just recording videos and I created this platform where it was a pregnancy program, then a postpartum program with education and exercise, and that’s where it started.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:12:56 And I really again, this kind of folds into healthcare now is that I think people need options. Do I ever think that virtual health, telehealth or digital workouts are going to be as good or replace in person? No. But I think that people need options for our life stages. They need access that’s affordable. And, you know, something different works for everybody. So health care is just getting delivered differently now. And I think we need to meet that demand to meet patients where they are.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:13:24 Absolutely. I think we have to be very creative in this stage because healthcare is shifting. It’s not like we’re waiting now for the system to break. It broke during the Covid lockdown periods or, you know, whatever. But before then, during then and after then, we’ve had creative people who have those visionary perspectives really step up and I think create direct consumer content that’s higher and higher quality. And so I think your point of rather than sitting back and criticizing and saying, oh, we have to stay with this other model, we can sometimes reach people initially with a new model and then, you know, yes, if they need more hands on care.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:11 We collaborate with people who are still doing it. We do it a little bit ourselves, if that makes sense. So I think this creativity that you’ve shown throughout your career really helps move the profession forward, because it gives people more options, and you can reach people that aren’t just in New Orleans.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:14:29 That’s exactly the point. And that’s, you know, I think two things have always really driven me. Is that one, it’s like, what’s my mission? And I always kind of come back to what is that? Is it to burst the bank and make all this money? I’m like, we don’t go into physical therapy to be like, super rich. We just don’t. We do it because we love what we do. We love helping people and we are creative. I mean, there is no standard protocol for how to treat anything. So we’re really tailoring these plans for individuals, however. What is our goal in pelvic health? To me it’s access. It’s awareness that there’s this industry, this system that can help people so they don’t end up down the line suffering or suffering unnecessarily, even in the present time.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:15:09 So I think that’s one thing. It’s always like, what is the mission? The other thing is that I think we have to be really good listeners, because most of the time people are telling you either what’s going on with them or what they need. And I can’t say that I had this master plan to start this clinic or create this online platform or write a book. It was really listening to what people were saying and they were like, hey, do you have a digital exercise platform I can do for home? Do you have childbirth prep classes, like even the book? Somebody came to me and said, hey, I think that you would be a really great writer for a book. And I was like, I don’t know about that. That’s not on my five year plan. But people are telling us, and I think we can kind of lean into that intuition and listen to what feels right for us and what are the needs of people.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:15:53 I really do love that, because I think when you have a sort of expansive mindset and you’re very grounded in your own mission, so not so much like the goals of like, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:16:04 But like your goal, the thread throughout your career, your mission is like help women have healthy pelvic floor so that they’re not dealing with incontinence, postpartum prolapse and unnecessary interventions, and pregnancy and postpartum. They can continue to exercise and be healthy. That kind of grounded message then allows with a growth mindset, these opportunities really just kind of come to you.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:16:33 Yeah. And you have to take them. I mean, I think as you know, behind the scenes and I know, like, this is a lot of work. I mean, I think people are like, oh wow, she exploded. I was like, no, that was 8 or 9 years of posting on social media every day. This was weekends and nights filming. It’s a lot of work, but I think that again, it always comes back to like, I really do love what I do. I feel really lucky that I chose this career path and it is always back to like, what is this serving? You know, who is this going to help, how is it going to help? And so in the same way as you, I think that we see these needs and we work hard to meet them.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:17:10 Yeah, that’s a very important point because for every professional listening who’s like, I just want my social media platform to explode, just like Sarah, you know, just like The Vagina whisperer. That is a tremendous amount of work.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:17:27 Tremendous.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:17:27 It’s very focused work as well. And I also know from personal experience how difficult it is to write a book. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Because what’s lovely about writing a book or having creating, you know, like we’ve created this institute, creating platforms, creating things that can live on a little bit is the upfront work is tremendous, tremendous. And then two things can happen. It can be a complete flop. And sometimes it is, but it’s almost never a complete flop. Like you usually create something that’s almost there. And then you need to go back to it and start again or refine it or it succeeds, but it succeeds after these, like waves of it was almost there. It was almost there. And same with a book like you write it.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:19 Then you have the editing part, like it takes a couple of years, usually to really get a book out.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:18:26 Yes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:27 And so what made you decide that? I always say that I didn’t know what I was getting into.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:18:32 Actually, I don’t think any author knows, and I love that we can kind of share this experience because it is so much work, and I think that we had no idea the amount of work that it was going to be. And so it was around 2022, you know, when I was thinking about shifting my clinic and I said to my husband, like, I just feel like I need to the next thing, like I had done a Ted talk, I had social media, but I was like, I, I never set out to be an influencer. You know, that’s not really like my end goal is to be an influence on social media. Then around that time, an agent, a book agent reached out to me and said, hey, we are working with another health care professional.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:19:09 We think you have a book in you. I’m like, okay, what does an agent do? You know, I didn’t even know. And then simultaneously, or maybe a couple months later, somebody else reached out to me from a publishing company and said, hey, I’m an editor for a publishing company. I follow you on social media. I really think you’d write a great book. And I was like, how do you know, you know, from a like a social media caption? But she said, there’s no other books in this industry, and I want to talk about it. So I was like, okay, an agent helps you sell the book. And then a publisher and editor help you. Like they buy the rights to the book and you write it for them. So this kind of umbrella of how publishing work started to come together in my head. And then I said, I need a little bit of time because I need to figure out how I’m going to find the space for this.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:19:52 It wasn’t just like a yes. And this is when I said, okay, I need to sell the clinic. I spent six months working to do that. And then literally, like I sold the clinic on July 1st, and then I signed the book contract, like a week later. Yeah. And then I kind of started writing. I worked with somebody who helped me kind of write the chapters, and then you kind of do it all on your own. It’s very independent. You don’t have a lot of guidance. And then I sent in two chapters to my editor and she was like, these are not good. And I was like, this is three months of work, you know? But she’s like, this is reading like a medical brochure. We need something that the layperson can pick up off the shelf, and it’s engaging and it’s funny, but it’s also informative and easy to follow. And I was like, okay. So I ended up hiring what’s called a book coach. And this was somebody who I would write the chapter and I would send it back to her and she would revise it, and then she would send it back to me, and then I would edit it again.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:20:46 But in the meantime, I’m still writing the future chapters. So we spent seven months, like, literally, I woke up at 5 a.m. I didn’t go to bed till midnight, I spent weekends, I rented an office just to work on the weekends away from my family. I spent seven months with my head down, just working, working, working to write this book while still trying to run a business, while still trying to see patients and be a mom. So I think when you say it’s hard, that to me was like, I didn’t know the mental load that I was going to carry in addition to the physical writing of that experience.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:21:20 Yeah, I did my book writing. Well, I’ve written a couple of books now, and the first one was a chapter in a more academic book, and the challenge of that was getting all the science and the references optimized and writing it in a way that was like readable and but it could be a little more like what you probably did first. And I did that when I was pregnant with my first daughter.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:21:49 So that would have been like in 2003. And I thought, good thing I finished that before I had kids. And then the second one was more just compilation of a lot of blog posts I had written, because I had done so much blogging for 5 or 10 years before that, but the one that we did submit to, you know, Amazon bestseller and all of that kind of thing outsmart endometriosis. I also did with a book coach, and it was, as you said, a lot of like back and forth and trying to make it readable. And it had a really particular purpose around it, sort of like you were saying earlier, like when we reach the public directly with programs and services and book education. You’re trying to help people actually change their lives simply from reading that book as at least a step one. There may be more steps for them to go through, but you have to start at the very, very beginning and being used to teaching in a more. You know, teaching professionals for so many years, that was harder for me, which it’s just what comes naturally to us, right? It’s like you write at the highest level of science, but you really have to be writing for someone who has a completely different job, but woke up from their pregnancy with a grade 2 or 3 prolapse and they’re like, what is this?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:23:14 Write that.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:23:15 And I think that it’s also like, how do I not scare them? Right? How do I make this encouraging and hopeful? And but then also how do you explain the anterior vaginal wall is, you know, less supportive. And so all of these things and I mean, we push ourselves. You know, yourself just it’s like when I wrote this book and I was done, I was like, I’m never writing another book. And now I’m like, okay, I could see in a year or two doing it again because it’s it’s almost like having a kid. It’s like it’s so bad and then it’s so hard. I don’t want to say bad. It’s so hard. And you’re like, I just can’t imagine why people would do this a second time. And then you, you know, like, oh, that was really good. Like you romanticize and then you’re like, I think I could do it again, you know? But part of this, I think for you and for me, it’s like the experience, like I feel like I learned so much about myself, about the process that I really love that.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:24:03 Like, I love to soak in these different things. And even with building my online exercise platform, like, I love that different aspect of learning, running an app or a the digital aspect of things like, I love all of that. And so it’s just been really fun to have those different aspects of my career that when I graduated in 2007, never in a million years where I have thought like, this is what a physical therapy career could look like.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:24:26 That’s so true. And I think, number one, you’re exactly right about books like after I wrote that very first one, I was like, I’m never doing that again. And then here we are. But I do think that that idea where you have to stay curious is really important, because you’re exactly right. The first time you do any of these things, you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing. I remember I did it like a TV segment in it must have been like 2010, because my youngest was a baby and I had no idea what I was doing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:25:00 But I was really lucky because a woman in my town, a friend of mine, had another friend who she introduced me to who had been like Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer or somebody producer. So she came to my house, which we were living in this like little rental house and showed me how to, like, do food on TV. And it’s extremely different from doing food anywhere, anywhere else. And we weren’t even really doing YouTube videos yet because there was no iPhone. I didn’t have a phone. We didn’t know how to do much of this stuff. And so every time you do some of those things, you learn to film, you know, quality videos, you know. Even this year we launched this podcast. Like when you stay curious, there’s all this stuff that’s available to you, but you have to learn it. Which is why I think you do kind of circle back and do it again because you’re like, well, wait, now I know how to do this. So it’s not going to be quite as hard, right?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:25:56 Like having a kid, you’re like, oh, I get it.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:25:58 Like, okay, this is like I kind of get the whole newborn stage and then, you know, so but to your point, it’s also we are pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones, like as individuals, as professionals, like it’s kind of scary to go into a TV segment. You’re like, I’ve never done this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I could totally flop. I mean, the same thing with this book. I was like, this could fall nowhere. But what is it about? Is it about me? Like shooting to the stars and being in the New York Times bestseller list? Like, no, that was not the goal. The goal was to get something again, another delivery method of how are people accessing medical information, health care information, giving them another menu option for consuming that. And hopefully you help somebody, you help somebody, one person after have a better birth, or one person going through menopause and having more knowledge of how to advocate for themselves with the health care system.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:26:49 So those are the goals for me. And I think that that’s ultimately why we do these things. But also like we do like to push ourselves. We like to kind of say in this little bit of uncomfortable zone and carve this new path. And we learn in the process. But it doesn’t mean that it’s, again, easy. You do learn a lot along the way, and I think that we’re developing ourselves. One of the things I always come back to is they’re like, how do you talk about this stuff all day? Or, you know, how do you do this? I’m like, if we’re asking people to come to us as health care providers and share the most intimate secrets of their life, the most vulnerable things that they’re experiencing and share them with us. Like we have to be willing to be vulnerable as well. We can’t act like we have it all together or stay in this safe zone. We also have to be vulnerable and curious because we’re asking them to do the same thing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:27:39 That’s absolutely true. And so let’s talk a little bit more about the book. So I know the book is called flawed. I haven’t been lucky enough to read it yet because it’s not quite out yet, but it’s coming. And we’ll put in the show notes all the details of how to order it and pre-order it. So what is it about? I mean, pelvic floor, obviously, but to what extent?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:28:01 So I went wide. I didn’t say endometriosis or pelvic pain or better sex. It was like I wanted this to be a book that you could pick up, not know a lot about the pelvic floor, or know a little bit and really say like, what is the 101? So the first few chapters are really about like, why do we need this? And it goes into how integral pelvic floor function is to everything we do in our day. Breathing, sitting, peeing, pooping, birthing, menstruating, everything. And then there are different chapters on different functions. So there’s one on peeing, there’s one on pooping, there’s one on sexual health, there’s one on pain, there’s one on menstruation and periods.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:28:41 And then I go through another section that’s like season. So pregnancy birth postpartum menopause. So it’s really that you could pick this up in your 60s and say, I’m learning something new about my body and how to care for it for the next 20 years. Or you could pick this up when you’re 20 and you’re like, wow, I’m so glad I’m reading this now. I also want it to be for medical professionals, because I think so few have just this basic knowledge of pelvic floor function, how to even assess it, and then also how do we educate patients on what pelvic floor therapists do. And so I really my other goal is that for medical professionals or health care professionals, this can be a really great resource for them to better understand their bodies and also help their clients or patients better understand their bodies.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:27 Yeah, I really love that. And I do like that deep and wide approach because women’s health still, despite the fact that I do think in the last five years or so we have seen a lot more information, education, advocacy.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:44 There’s still a really big black box when it comes to like the standard health care system. But even just what people learn, even if you had some kind of sex education, you didn’t really have, which is less and less now, even if you had that, though, it’s not like you really understand your basic physiologic functions, which is kind of crazy if you think about it.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:30:08 There’s no education. I think I did a real on social media about how to insert a tampon, and one of my fellow mom friends who’s got a teenage daughter was like, I just sent this to my daughter and all of my mom friends because we don’t know how to even teach them. So we’re just going to let you do it, you know? But because in our day, I mean, at least for myself, I was just sitting on a toilet reading the side of a box, you know? And so I think that we want to once spark these conversations, but have the ability to follow it up with some basic education.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:30:37 And, you know, when I think about like, oh, do we need a book about the whole pelvic floor? Yes. We need dozens of books about the pelvic floor. When you go to a bookstore, there are hundreds of books about yoga or meditation or nutrition and all different aspects. So there’s space for everything. And I think that this is just like a starting point. One of the things I do mention is that somebody said, is there anything that you left out? And I did leave out transgender care. And the reason I did that is because I don’t have a lot of experience in that sector. And I mention it and I say, like, this book was a book. It’s called A Woman’s Guide to Pelvic Floor Health at every age and Stage. Do men trans anywhere in between also need pelvic health care? Yes, but I kind of had to narrow it in as to like, where do I feel most experienced and can share the most and help the most? And so I think that there are so many more books that need to be written.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:31:31 I encourage you all to do that if you’re listening. But I think that this was kind of my first stab at like, how do I just help the most people in general?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:31:40 Yeah. And I think this spurs that further curiosity, right? I mean, you can only make a book so long for people to really be willing to engage with it, and then you stop for a minute and think, okay, this is a path I’d like to go a little deeper on or this one. So for someone who’s just generally starting at inserting a tampon, thinking about pregnancy, trying to conceive, like keeping a healthy pelvic floor through pregnancy, I really think there’s so much knowledge that you’re going to be sharing with people that there’s just really nowhere else. It’s not like even your The colleges or your birth prep class is going to explain these foundational basics.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:32:27 I mean, that’s really the goal. And I smile just hearing you say that because that’s ultimately what I want, is I want people to understand their bodies and how to proactively care for it.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:32:36 I think our current health care system is always like backtracking to like, oh, let’s fix it now. And I’m like, no, why don’t we do things proactively that can either prevent issues, address them immediately instead of prolonging them, and also just arm people with education about their bodies and how to care for it. I mean, we just don’t get a lot of it. And I say, like, we have one pelvic floor. It has to last us 60, 70, 80 years. Now, how are you going to take care of it? And these big transitions in our life, like pregnancy or birth or menopause, like we have to be armed with, how do we proactively care for it and address issues as they pop up? Because the demands on our body change during those seasons, and we need to know how to take care of it instead of it being dismissed as kind of like quote unquote normal during that season.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:22 Yeah, that’s such a valid point. That idea that like, oh, this happens to everyone, you know? It’s fine.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:29 It’s not. And we have all these tools to do something about it. So let’s spread that word far and wide. So any ideas about what’s next for you, or are you taking another breather to figure it out?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:33:45 You know, I told myself I was going to take a breather, but I have yet to do that. I recently so the book comes out on June 10th and it’s available for preorder now. And I really encourage pre-orders. I think what happens is that it really lets book retailers know that this is a book they need to put on their shelves. I am, at this point an unknown author. There’s not a ton of people walking into Barnes and Noble asking for pelvic floor books, so I think that the more that people preorder, it lets retailers know, like, hey, this is important for us to put on our shelves for people.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:14 Yeah, that’s so true right now. Literally, if you can buy ten copies for your practice, you know, to even share with your patients.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:23 That makes a huge difference to how quickly and how well this book gets spread to various outlets.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:34:31 Absolutely. So thank you for everybody in your life with a vagina.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:34 Yes, everyone for the vagina. Perfect.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:34:38 And then, you know, I said, I’ll just take a little breather and figure it out. And then I just started developing an app for my program. So this was week one of this content right now that I have on my exercise platform is all computer based, and we are going to spend the first half of 2025 into, I think, August creating an app so that it’s more accessible. It’s also more scalable if there are health care systems or providers who can recommend it or integrate it into their patient care. And just a little bit of a better, you know, experience for people using it. So that’s what 2025 looks like after that I don’t know. But things are just coming to me and I’m just saying yay or nay. Most of the time I’m saying yay. So we’ll see what happens.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:21 That’s great. So to be clear, your program and your app based program are for what?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:35:28 It’s pelvic floor exercises for every age and stage again. It addresses everything from common seasons like pregnancy, postpartum childbirth, preparation. They’re all 10 to 20 minute focused pelvic floor. I call them workouts. This isn’t to like replace going to the gym and doing a cardio class for 45 minutes. It’s helping people really understand these exercises how to do them, how to integrate them into their life, how to start working out this muscle specifically and to again, proactively care for it. Pregnancy, post-partum menopause. Painful sex as well. Painful menstruation. You know, I think that the most popular program in there is pelvic floor relaxation. As people learning how to relax their pelvic floor muscles for less pain, more pleasurable sex manage menstrual discomfort, different things like that. So it’s accessible from home. It’s, you know, pretty affordable. It’s like 23 bucks a month or something, you know, and they’re short. I made this and I thought, what can I fit in as a busy mom? And I’m like, I have ten minutes.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:36:30 Everybody has ten minutes three times a week. So that’s really what it is. And then yeah, so we’ll take it from there. But I do want to mention and we haven’t even talked about this, that, you know, the work that you’re doing, Jess, has been really pivotal in this journey for me, because I specifically remember reaching out to you in 2020 when we were going through the Covid craze and you were still doing telehealth consult, and my body was not showing up for me. I mean, I was kind of falling apart with stress and hair loss and anxiety and skin issues. And I remember calling you like, help me. And, and it was really one of those times that I think it helped me reset and reprioritize, like, oh, I need to take care of myself if I’m going to be taking care of other people and just help me understand the different aspects of nutrition and wellness and exercise and sunlight and supplements and things that I need to be integrating again along the lifespan, because it’s really easy to burn out, and I tend to kind of push myself until that happens.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:37:31 But the sessions that we had were really pivotal in this journey for me. And I don’t want to end this without mentioning that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:37:37 Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I really appreciate it and I’m so glad it was helpful for you. And I think it really connects back to whether you’re a person just struggling with pelvic floor tension, which you’re exactly right. I think in the, in the the world of deep uncertainty that we live in right now and just pressure and pace, everything goes back to nervous system regulation, nourishment and pelvic floor connects to that so deeply because there are all these neuromuscular skeletal connections that align with anxiety and migraines and TMJ and neck pain and voice issues and immune issues. And so I really appreciate you saying that. And I think your book actually adds to that conversation, because this is another way in for people who maybe because of what we just talked about in the beginning, like women at every age and stage are carrying so many things that we often don’t realize how stressed or burned out we are because both the opportunities are coming, but also all the other stuff we just have to do.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:38:55 Aging parents, children, volunteering at the bake sale, whatever it is, whatever it is, often shows up in our pelvic floor where we first might notice it.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:39:08 Right? And we don’t even realize what’s going on. We kind of just think, oh, maybe it’ll go away or I don’t know what’s causing this, but there is just so much connection in our bodies. And I think that this book talks about mostly the physical piece, but also some of the effects of stress or posture and even breathing and exercise, and how that affects pelvic floor function, especially throughout all these seasons. But I think it really is such a beautiful time. As hard as it is in women’s health care, I also think it’s really amazing because I think we are really working to empower women to take care of their own bodies, instead of looking outward for answers. I think we’re giving them information and helping them make the decisions. And that, I think, is what’s going to really move the needle. It’s slow, but it’s going to move it.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:39:55 And it is moving it. I think you’re right, because there are enough practitioners now out there starting to talk, whether it’s on social media or through books or on TV or in live talks and smaller community talks. This more direct education. Person to person, woman to woman is now more common. And we don’t have to wait for a gatekeeper in gynecology to tell us what we’re allowed to do. And so I think, though, in the work that you’ve done to build a direct consumer platform in a lot of different ways really adds to that conversation. One of my friends or colleagues said once that he has a book actually called The Doctor of the future is the Patient. Love that. And I think that’s very, very true, because we’re about to step into a world where most of the recommendations or the diagnostics are going to be done by AI. And I think we’re very close to that less than a decade. Yeah. But so what you can know what to do and never do it right?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:41:11 That’s right.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:41:13 That’s right. And actually really common.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:41:15 Yeah I mean most common. So the education is really important. But then a platform to kind of motivate someone to be like, okay meet me here. Do these exercises together. And then coaches, all the people we train coaches are like, okay, let me hold your hand through this. Because even if all of us got a checklist of exactly what we’re supposed to do to feel amazing, then we have to integrate it in with all the other stuff we just talked about. Like, I have ten minutes. I can’t do all of that.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:41:46 Right? Right. And to your point, like, different people need different things. Like, I do need some hand-holding. I do need someone on one. And I also need flexibility where it’s like, okay, I have ten minutes. Let me just pop this on, you know? So I love that people have options now. I think it’s it is again the needle has moved will continue to move because of these different options that people have.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:42:06 And I am I’m really grateful and I’m really glad that fluoride can be a part of that conversation can be a part of that. Access to this information. And, you know, as we’re speaking now, it’s I’m kind of like literally putting in the last periods and comments and I’m like, I’m rereading this in entirety and sittings and I’m like, you did good, Sarah. You know, like, this is good. You did a great job. So that feels really nice as well.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:42:31 I really love that because I was just going to ask you, like, I know it’s hard to write a book. Are you glad you did it?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:42:39 I’m so glad. And I, I have an amazing publishing team and agent, and I also kind of found different people to work with. I hired a medical illustrator. I hired a research assistant. I mean, there were people, my book coach, there were so many people that really went in and helped kind of lift me as we were doing this.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:42:57 It was definitely a team approach. It was me sitting down doing the work, but I was also just able to connect with so many different people in the process. And yeah, I’m really proud of myself. And it was really funny because my son was carpooling to a soccer game with another mom, and his friend was saying, oh, Dylan, what is your mom do? And he was like, you know, I don’t really know. And my friend said, oh, she’s a pelvic floor therapist, but she’s also an author. And he goes, your mom wrote a book. He goes, just one. And then he said, oh, I bet she’s really rich. Like he goes, yeah, I think she got paid like $80, you know. So which, you know, isn’t that far off, but it was still but it’s, it’s really funny to hear. He’s like, yeah, she wrote a book, you know, but I am really, really happy I did it.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:43:43 I’m really proud of it. And I’m really excited to get it into the hands of people.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:43:48 I’m excited to for them to see it. And I really congratulate you. I’m so proud of that work that you’ve done. And I’ve seen your all your platforms and their amazing and true commitment over time. You know, I would just suggest like being your coach for two seconds, take a second, take a breath and celebrate it. Even though you’re doing all these other things at the same time, I think we can also celebrate in the midst of everything too.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:44:14 Yeah, that’s a great point. I did take some really great girls trips afterwards that were just amazing, and I was like, oh, this feels good. So yes, there is, there is definitely celebration as well.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:44:24 Excellent. Well, where can people find you if they want more support with their pelvic floors or for their clients?

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:44:32 So as you mentioned, I’m on social media mainly on Instagram as the vagina whisperer. So it’s the vagina whisperer and really good fun tips and videos on there.

Dr. Sara Reardon 00:44:41 And then my website is The Vag Whisperer, where you can check out my online platform. There’s a free trial for anybody who wants to try it out. There’s an affiliate program for people who recommend it, and then you’ll also see the pre-order information for my book on there. So thank you for having me so much. This was such a wonderful conversation.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:44:58 Thank you so much for being here. I hope you loved that as much as I did. Doctor Sarah Reardon has been a good friend of mine for so long and I just adore her. I adore her curiosity. I adore her commitment to her mission. I adore how vulnerable she is on her social media platform and how she shows how look, life is a parent and a midlife woman is a real challenge, but we can also have fun through it. I mean, she lives in New Orleans, right? She understands the embracing of celebration, which is so important. We talk about that in this episode. So here’s your takeaways. Here’s what I want you to do after this episode.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:45:44 Number one, go out and order or pre-order flawed right now. And if you have a practice or you’re working with women with pelvic floor issues. Order multiple copies. It’s for every person in your life. Give it to your sister, your mom, your daughter, your friends. It’s a really wide reaching an important book. And two, I want you to stop for a moment and just celebrate yourself. Where are you in this journey? Are you in a stage of curiosity? Are you in a stage of just trying something? Being open minded. You know, as Sarah and I talked about, we had no idea when we graduated from our graduate programs, like what we were going to do with our careers. We had no idea. We just stayed in growth mindset and curiosity, and a lot of things came to us. And then you make decisions. Is this something you want to do? You don’t want to do what you want. What you’re searching for is literally out there searching for you.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:46:49 Not only do you have to look for these opportunities, but you then have to receive them. You, as Sarah was saying, you have to say yes to them. So celebrate where you are in that journey right now. And then do a little journaling this week. Like, what is the next opportunity you would like to see? Or are you open to new curious opportunities? Could you be better at saying yes to those opportunities this year? Thanks so much for being with us. I’ll see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.