Creating waves

By GAYLE WILSON

gayle.wilson@lighthousenow.ca

@wilsonLHNOW news

An adventurer at heart who met her husband when the two of them were working on the Picton Castle as it sailed around the world, Rebecca Libby isn’t one to shy away from a challenge.

Despite being a trained physiotherapist, she contemplated a career at sea.  “I love the life. It’s simple, but it’s challenging,” she told LighthouseNOW in an interview. 

However, it wasn’t one she and her husband believed would be well suited to growing a family. 

Now Libby is the owner of a thriving physiotherapy business in Oakland— Zenith Physio Pilates — just outside of Mahone Bay, and is happily helping to chart new waters in the local health care industry.

She was one of the few physiotherapists in Nova Scotia specializing in pelvic floor treatments for women, whom she says largely had their postpartum and other pelvic issues sidelined by the province’s medical establishment

A pelvic health physiotherapist is trained to assess and work with the pelvic floor muscles and help with conditions such bladder leakage, urinary incontinence or urgency and frequency, as well as pain conditions, including pain during sex or chronic pelvic pain.

According to Libby, it’s still a “highly under-serviced area. “There are many women that go with bladder issues. They accept it, simply because they’ve had a couple of kids. And the only help that seemed to being offered to those women was medication or surgery.” 

She describes pelvic healthy physiotherapy as a “very rewarding area to work in.  “Especially when incontinence can limit people socially.” 

Pelvic health is “standard care” in many countries, according to Libby. She points to France as an example, and reports that after a woman has had a baby in that country, she is automatically sent to a pelvic floor physiotherapist for an assessment, under the national health care system, and is covered for a number of any required treatment sessions.  It’s also common in England, Germany and other parts of Canada, while Quebec has offered pelvic health physio therapy courses for “30 years or more.”

It’s only now that practitioners are starting to appear in the Halifax area, says to Libby. “And they’re finally, just within the last couple of years, offering courses in Halifax because there’s enough local interest.”  Graduating from Dalhousie University with a degree in physiotherapy, she herself had to go to Montreal to specialize in pelvic health. Libby began offering her service in her home in 2012, when her first son was born and working in group physiotherapy clinics proved not conducive to the more personalized therapy she wanted to offer. Because of the sensitivity of the issues involved, it requires more privacy and one-on-one client time than many physio clinics operate with, she explains. Often there is just a curtain separating client treatment areas and the physiotherapist may be treating three or so clients in an hour.

Her first clinic was in her lounge, and, she says, clients were accepting and even supportive of the fact she was also dealing with a young child in the midst. “The biggest challenge was just raising awareness in the local area,” says Libby.   “There’s still a lot of people, including health professionals, who don’t know pelvic floor physio can be so effective.” Although she says pelvic health issues are starting to get a lot more media attention and awareness overall is expanding.

She began offering Pilates classes as an adjunct to her clinic service. Pilates is a system of exercises developed in the early 20th century by Joseph Pilates and designed to improve physical strength, flexibility, and posture, and enhance mental awareness. Libby suggests the group classes give clients “a more economical way of rehabilitating their deep core muscle, improving their spine motion, or joint flexibility, or whatever their goals are.” She charges $95 an hour for client assessments and any ongoing physiotherapy. However, for those clients who might benefit from ongoing conditioning, averaging out to $17 an hour for a package of 10 weeks the classes offer a less expensive alternative to individual physiotherapy charges.

Initially, Libby began offering her Physio Pilates sessions at a nearby studio. “I ran up between the two. And that was great. It worked for a long time, but eventually I wanted to have everything under one roof. And other practitioners involved. So this space came to be,” says Libby, sitting in the office and treatment room she now works out of at her clinic on Keddy Bridge Road.  As well, her three sons had been getting older and it was “not professional” to have their toys and activity amid her practice, she deemed. Moreover, she had begun the process of sponsoring in a pelvic health physiotherapist from England, and knew there wouldn’t be room for the two of them in her lounge. Libby says she had advertised for a pelvic health physiotherapist and failed to have “any applicants from Nova Scotia or Canada. “And that comes down to pelvic health being a growing area of physiotherapy, but one that is still in its infancy in Nova Scotia.” However, in hindsight she says she might not go through sponsoring someone in again. “It’s a lot of paperwork. It’s a lot of time, too, to sponsor that person and supervise their practice,” she says.

She obtained a mortgage on and converted a residential property immediately outside of the town, which had an open plan living room — ideal for her Physio Pilates classes — and three rooms on the main floor and two downstairs which can operate as therapy space for additional practitioners. Being outside of the Town of Mahone Bay, the commercial property tax rate was more affordable than a space in town.  Since moving her business to the property early last year, her clinic rooms have been occupied by various practitioners. Currently, in addition to Libby, the business offers the services of another physiotherapist, a massage therapist and a grief councillor. And this month a physiotherapist specializing in assistance for women who have had breast cancer will be working there.

The pelvic health physiotherapist Libby sponsored left Zenith Physio Pilates after working there for two years to start her own practice. “I’m disappointed that all that effort didn’t work out more long-term,” admits Libby, however, she says she’s glad the physiotherapist is still practising in the area, “providing a service which is much needed.” Even with the two of them,”there’s no way to meet the demand,” she adds. As for Zenith Physio Pilates, she sees expansion, and not in additional clinics, but in managing the occupancy hours of the clinic rooms she currently has available. Libby has also recently qualified as a manual osteopath, and says she appreciates the philosophy that underpins osteopathy. While physiotherapy originated “out of the wars, where people had injuries and needed to be rehabilitated,” she says the origins of osteopathy were “more as a whole body health.”

With her life sails expanding ever wider, says Libby, “It’s nice to have a job that you love going to, and that is rewarding. You get to see such a change in people’s quality of life.”