• Do I need a referral?
• What areas do you travel to?
• How long are the treatment sessions?
• How often will I need to be seen?
• Do you take insurance?
• How do I know if I have out-of-network benefits?
• What type of space do I need for treatment?
• What do you bring with you when you are seeing clients?

No. In the state of Minnesota, physical therapists can see patients for up to 90 days per episode of care without a referral. If you plan to use out-of-network benefits, you should check with your insurance company to determine if a referral or prior authorization is required.

The area of service includes Edina, St. Louis Park, Richfield, West Bloomington, and Southwest Minneapolis. For specific inquiries, please contact us.

Either in your home or in our office, the initial evaluation lasts 75 minutes. This time includes a thorough history and assessment, developing a treatment plan, and initial treatment. Followup visits typically last between 50-60 minutes, but can be tailored to your needs.

This depends on the invididual and condition. Typically, clients are seen 1-2x per week initially, and frequency is tapered as appropriate. Our goal is to get clients better as quickly as possible and empower them to continue their recovery program independently.

Jill Heath is a licensed physical therapist and owner of She PT, LLC. She received a Doctorate of Physical Therapy and B.S. in Exercise Science from Northern Arizona University. During years of practice helping individuals of all ages recover from a variety of conditions, she developed a passion for working with women. She opened She PT, LLC with the purpose of meeting not only the unique physical needs of women, but also empowering women to take charge of their well-being by making care accessible.

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Who are you and how can we help?

Are you:

• A busy mom having a hard time finding childcare or time around nap schedule for your own appointments?
• Missing out on running or your favorite exercise because of pain or weakness?
• Feeling like your body doesn't have the same strength as it did before children?
• Looking to find the root cause of your pain or physical issues?
• Wanting more personalized attention from a physical therapist, rather than just a list of exercises?

If you answered yes to any of the above, we may be a fit!

During pregnancy, our bodies change a lot. We hear about ligament laxity, weight fluctuations, and of course those hormones. Did you know there are also changes in how our muscles work? The structural changes of hips widening and tucking our tailbone causes our glutes to turn off. Basically, the brain-muscle message loop is disrupted because it isn’t in its ideal length or position to work. I hear from female patients all the time “I can’t fire my glutes”. These muscles are designed to be the powerhouse muscles - for squatting, running, getting up from a chair, keeping you standing for hours at a time. When they’re inhibited and your body can’t use them to the best of their ability, your brain finds a new strategy to get the task accomplished. The hip flexors, back muscles, and piriformis are a few examples of muscles that get overused as an alternative strategy. Sometimes the new strategies work for a while until something breaks down. Research shows these changes can cause issues as many as 8 years later!  

Physical therapy can help you sort out these imbalances and teach you better ways to move. My job is to find where something went wrong (muscle? Joint? Posture? All of the above??), utilize my skills as a manual therapist to start guiding the healing process, and teach you better ways of moving that will help your body, not hurt it. It’s not about giving you a set of exercises. It’s 1:1 dedicated time to teach you how to use your body better.  

We hear a lot about the benefits of proper breathing - stress relief, higher energy levels, etc. Did you know it also helps your pelvic floor, posture, and core strength? The diaphragm is a postural muscle that coordinates with the pelvic floor to aid in “core stability”. Therefore, a shift away from balanced breathing can contribute to increased pressure on the pelvic floor, overactivity of these muscles, neck pain from chest breathing, etc. Here’s how to begin balancing your breathing: 

• Sit on either a physioball or chair. Choose a height that allows your hips to be slightly higher than your knees, and your pelvis tilted forward (ie, not slouched).  
• Place one hand on your ribcage and one on your belly. 
• Inhale through your nose for a count of 3. As you inhale, feel your ribcage expand outward and your belly gently rise as your diaphragm lowers. Also, check in with your pelvic floor. Are you gripping it tight? Or can you feel it relaxing down towards the ball or chair? Avoid your chest and shoulders rising, or a large expansion of your belly. The majority of the movement should be occurring with your ribcage expanding outward.
• Exhale through pursed lips for a count of 3. As you exhale, feel your ribcage closing together and feel your pelvic floor gently lifting up and away from the chair or ball. Perform this for 1-2 minutes, daily. (Bonus: it’s a great way to start the day!)

Transverse what??? you may be asking… This important ab muscle works together with the pelvic floor muscles to provide stability and another component of our “core”. Our “six-pack” and oblique abdominal muscles get most of the attention with typical fitness, but getting the TA onboard is essential to a strong base for running, squatting, lifting as well as prevention and treatment of abdominal and pelvic floor issues (ie diastasis, incontinence, pelvic pain).

• Lie on your back with your knees bent. Your back should feel comfortable, so use pillows under your head and/or shoulders as needed.
• Place your thumbs just inside of your ASIS (pointy bones on the front of your hips) and your fingertips just above your pubic bone. Allow yourself to inhale as you practiced in exercise #1.  

• As you exhale through your mouth, draw in your transverse abdominus and pelvic floor as if you are zipping up the top of the zipper on a tight pair of jeans. You should feel a tensioning under your thumbs and fingers as the transverse abdominus engages, as well as a gentle pulling up and in of the pelvic floor. Hold for a count of 3, and coordinate with breathing for 1 minute.  

Bringing our bodies into a more balanced state where our muscles are available to do their best work is essential after pregnancy and throughout caring for babies and children. Use these techniques to help promote this balance. 

Throughout the day when you are standing, pay attention to where your weight is positioned. 

• Do you stand more on one leg than the other?
• Do you tend to shift one hip to the side when you're standing at the counter?
• What about when you’re holding a baby or a child on one side?
• Do you feel your weight more in your heels or your toes?

• Next, stand next to a counter or chair back to aid in balance on a pillow of medium thickness, balance pad, or something similar.  
• Start in your “normal” standing position.
• Shift weight from right to left, thinking about bringing pelvis and ribcage over one leg and then the other, rather than leaning. Perform this for 1 minute, then find “neutral” or in the middle of the extremes of right and left.
• Next shift weight forward and back, from heels to balls of your feet. Keep hips and knees straight. Feel your pelvis and ribcage shift forward and back for 1 minute, then find a neutral position where your ribcage feels neither behind or in front of your pelvis.

Practice this daily and you will find you are more aware of times you are operating with a posture of asymmetry.

There are so many positions and activities in life that pull us forward - looking at phones, working at the computer, feeding babies, crouching down to talk to small kids, etc. This stretch feels so good to negate these effects, open up the ribcage, and optimize our breathing.

• Stand either in a doorway or corner (depending on lengths of your arms and what space is available.)
• Start in staggered stance with ribcage pulled in over pelvis (avoid arching your back.)
• Place forearms on doorframe or wall, with elbows at comfortable angle below shoulders.
• Inhale (practice your breath from #1!) and as you exhale, lean forward into a pec stretch. Allow your shoulder blades to slide down and back as your ribcage opens up. 
• Hold for 10 seconds, 3x. Perform at least 1x/day (ideally after getting up in the morning and at the end of the day).

Pregnancy and spending much of our time moving forward causes our trunk to lose its full rotation (twisting) mobility. This rotation is essential to running, reaching, etc. Without regaining this motion, our bodies find ways to cheat around it rather than using our strongest movers to do their best work!

• Lie on your side with head on pillow.  
• Bend top leg and hook the toes behind the knee of the bottom leg. *Modify for low back pain with this alternative: bend both legs and keep knees, feet, and hips stacked.*

• Inhale (there’s that breathing again!) and as you exhale, reach the top arm up and over at a 45* angle.  
• Stretch with the exhale until your top knee begins to move away from the floor. You should feel a stretch through your chest and midback.  
• Continue with comfortable breathing for 10 seconds, then repeat 4x.  

Perform on both sides. If you find one side is more restricted than the other, perform more reps on that side.

***Disclaimer: These exercises are intended as general techniques only. Do not perform if pain occurs. For a whole-body movement assessment and individualized plan, visit www.ShePT.co to learn how to work with Jill.

That’s a lot of stuff! Unfortunately, these issues often aren’t given the attention they deserve after having a baby. Transitioning to motherhood is busy and full of emotions. Our bodies go into survival mode and figure out how to move (often in compensating ways that don’t work so well) to take care of “all the things”. Or we feel the societal pressure to get in shape and lose the weight so we challenge our bodies too much and too soon, despite all of the changes that have occurred.  

Fortunately, there is a lot we can do about this. Giving our bodies the time and attention to recover from these changes can go a long way. Retraining our breathing patterns can help the diaphragm work more efficiently (can’t we all use some calming breaths as moms?) Specific exercises for the abs and pelvic floor - working together in a gradual progression - can get rid of the “mom pooch” and keep us from leaking while we jump on the trampoline. Working on scar tissue by a therapist or learning to do it ourselves can alleviate pain and prevent further issues. Helping all the muscles to work well together can help us not feel “clunky” when we try to run again.  

In a perfect world (hopefully in the not too distant future), during the fourth trimester we would receive this kind of care in the same way an orthopedic surgery is rehabilitated - with specific instructions, education, and respect for the healing time frame. We’re not there yet, but the good news is that regardless of how long we’ve been “postpartum” we can still help these issues. Our bodies are capable of change and are always evolving. Helping them remember how they moved pre-pregnancy can help us to move and feel better as moms.