Meet Krystal Couture

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Krystal Couture a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Krystal, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

To me, resilience is the interplay of vulnerability and strength. I owe my resilience to my mom. I grew up in a rural town in northern New Hampshire. My mom and 7 other women identified a need to serve women with community healthcare. They started a practice where healthcare was available to all women and children in an underserved area and they supported women experiencing domestic violence. These 8 women were nurse practitioners, nurses (like my mom) and visionaries. They became pillars in our community and state. They overcame challenges and barriers regarding policies, discrimination and finances to make sure that every woman who wanted healthcare in the North Country received it. The scope of resilience I witnessed was from battles at state level for women’s access to healthcare to staying late night after night with women and babies who had nothing and no-one. My mom demonstrated day after day that a commitment to one’s beliefs and one’s community was how she would not only write the story of her life, but support other women in theirs.

As an acupuncturist and PT who specializes in women’s and pelvic health, I look back and see that so much of my journey was influenced by the trying and amazing experiences I witnessed as a child. I’ve shaped my life to support women and stand for women’s health, just like my mom did. And while, this is a different era I find myself encountering the world in harmony of fortitude and flexibility.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I think I had a love of helping others from a young age that was innate. I knew I’d always be in healthcare, but the journey itself I couldn’t have predicted. I began as PT and while I love biomedicine, something was missing for me, the energy, the intuition and the interactions of the body as a whole. When I found Chinese Medicine, I felt at home. I was able to bring the science and understanding of modern medicine into the tradition, spirit and wisdom of ancient medicine. For my clients, this was important, they could relate what was happening in their body to what it meant.

It was early on when pelvic health clients started showing up in my practice. It was before pelvic health was really even thought of, except in extreme cases. It was before anyone knew what Kegels were. It was a just a seed planted that I wanted to learn more about. And, I wanted to help these vulnerable clients who didn’t have anywhere else to turn. I wanted to revolutionize their experience from hopeless to vital. So, in 2009, the quest began. And as it turns, out 32% of women and 16% of men experience pelvic pain or dysfunction in their lifetime!

Since, then, I’ve helped thousands of women (and men, too) supporting their overall health, by supporting their health from the root (the pelvis). In July of 2024, I began teaching Pelvic Care to Acupuncturists around the globe. I have a vision to create a ripple effect, sharing what I have learned about pelvic health with other practitioners so that they can serve a population in great need. Teaching has given me the amazing opportunity expand the number of people I can support through the practitioners I teach.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The reason I got into pelvic care was because my clients had the time and space to trust me and feel comfortable sharing their intimate concerns, fears and uncertainties. Rapport is key whenever we work with the pelvis as practitioners. There are three pillars to Pelvic Care that help clients achieve sustainable changes in pain or dysfunction: physical manifestation, energetic alignment and spiritual emotional harmony.

Physical Manifestation refers to the anatomical, physiological, postural and symptomatic presentation. Looking through this lens, we can work to correct muscle, fascia, tissue and organ imbalances within the pelvic floor and the concomitant structures like the back, abdomen, hips and buttocks. We can address the tangible of what is seen and felt via work with the sinews or tendinomuscular channels, muscles, tendons and fascia.

The Energetic Alignment is about the patterns of function or dysfunction. From a TCM perspective, this is the vantage point for deficiencies or excesses in the body and encompasses how the organs and organ systems are working individually and in unity as the Body Kingdom via the meridians and energetic circuitry.

Spiritual Emotional harmony supports one’s alignment with their path, their truth and their inner knowing. In Chinese Medicine, we address this through the nature or spirit of each point we choose. The points are reflective of the meridians they lie on, the elements as they are correlated with nature and their own unique vibration.

When we, as practitioners, support our clients in each of these realms, we are serving them as a whole being.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Through the traditions of Chinese medicine and delving deep into my own Italian heritage, I’ve identified one trend that seems to have a profound impact on one’s healing and also on practitioners or providers and that is community. In my family’s village in Italy, 3 siblings and their families live on a beautiful property with fruit trees, a vegetable garden, an olive grove and a vineyard. The adults have careers that they are passionate about (the siblings are physicians), but they all take turns taking care of the gardens and the children. They support each other and there’s a resonance of vitality.

I started my private practice just 3 years after finishing college and I opened my office next to one of my best friends, a holistic Occupational Therapist. I felt the immense value of creating community and from that moment on, it has been important to my practice and my teaching endeavors.

I’m always open to collaboration with healthcare providers who share a mindset of holistic health and who wish to promote positivity in pelvic health. In addition, I serve the acupuncturists in what I call The Pelvic Acu community by helping them develop their specialty and welcome pelvic care into their already established practices.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thepelvicacu.com
• Instagram: @thepelvicacu
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564080401676
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-krystal-couture-pt-lac-a8b4635b/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kcouture77

Image Credits

Lauren Bodwell