Understanding Pelvic Pain: Decoding Pelvic Pain With TCM
Decoding Pelvic Pain with TCM
This is Part 2 of 5 in the Pelvic Health Series: Understanding Pelvic Pain
What is Pelvic Health, Really?
Understanding Pelvic Pain (you are here)
Cycles, Hormones, and Pelvis
Pelvic Health Beyond Gender And Reproduction
Ways To Support Pelvic Health
Why pain isn’t always where the problem is—and how to listen differently.
Pelvic pain can be sharp or dull, stabbing or aching, constant or cyclical. It might feel like pressure, heaviness, heat, or even a kind of emptiness. Sometimes people say:
“It feels like something is stuck.”
“I don’t even know where it is—it just radiates.”
“It only shows up at certain times in my cycle.”
Or even: “I didn’t realize I was in pain until someone touched the area and I flinched.”
Pelvic pain doesn’t always follow the rules we expect. That’s because the pelvis is complex. It holds organs, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, lymphatic channels, fascia—and it carries emotional memory, too.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), pain isn’t just about injury or inflammation. It’s a messenger.
What Kind of Pain Is It? (The TCM Lens)
In TCM, we understand pain through patterns.
First, we look at the body’s foundational resources: Qi, Blood, Body Fluids, Yin, and Yang.
Is there stagnation—something not moving?
Is there deficiency—a lack of nourishment or support?
Then we consider the “internal weather”:
Is it Windy? Cold? Hot? Damp? Dry? Sometimes a mix of all.
Some classic examples:
Qi stagnation: pressure, fullness, irritability
Blood stasis: stabbing pain, sharp cramps, often premenstrual with clots
Cold: dull, heavy, contracting pain; can also cause clots
Heat: burning, inflamed, red or irritated sensations
Deficiency: dull, lingering pain that worsens with fatigue or at the end of the day
Pain may also be referred—felt in one place but rooted in another, often along the meridians. Digestive issues might manifest as pelvic tension. Emotional trauma can create chronic gripping or numbness. Scar tissue may tug on distant structures and disrupt neural communication or the body’s energetic circuits.
It’s also home to blood vessels, nerves, lymphatic flow, and an energetic reservoir that in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is known as the Lower Dantian—a centre of gravity and vitality.
When these systems are in harmony, we feel grounded and steady. When something is out of rhythm—physical pain, hormonal shifts, emotional trauma, or energetic stagnation—it can ripple out in surprising ways.
Listening Differently
One of the most compassionate things we can do is listen to pain—without trying to fix it right away. It may sound counterintuitive, but pain often shifts when met with curiosity instead of fear.
The body stores memory. (If you’ve read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, you’ll know exactly what this means.)
We ask:
When did it begin?
What was happening in your life around that time?
What makes it better—or worse?
How would you describe it, beyond just location?
When you connect with the pain, does anything else come up—emotionally or physically?
Is it holding a story? One that might have protected you from emotional overwhelm?
Sometimes, the body chooses physical pain as a buffer for emotional pain. These questions help us understand not just the where of the pain, but the why.
When to Seek Help
If pelvic pain is interfering with your cycle, your relationships, your daily rhythm—or your sense of safety in your own body—please know: you’re not overreacting.
You deserve care that honours your experience, even if you don’t have all the words to explain it.
TCM and other holistic therapies can offer supportive, trauma-informed care that works with your body, not against it. You don’t need to have all the answers to begin.