From a Problem to Fix, to Something to Love

I want to share about a recent postpartum closing of the bones session I had with a client.

Typically during a closing of the bones, before wrapping, I share some bodywork with the mother and we take some time to connect with an intention for the experience. In this woman’s case, she was wanting to honor the full extended chapter of pregnancy and birth from her first child through her second, most recent, and last. 

A big story she was wanting to move past was a perception that there was always something in her that’s been in need of fixing. Her first postpartum time was fraught with ptsd from a challenging and elongated physical and emotional recovery. Likewise she spent much of that postpartum period and second pregnancy “working” on herself, “working” on healing, and she had arrived at a place of wanting an entirely different relationship with herself and her body. One in which she was more focused on what she was wanting to build, nurture and grow, rather than fixing all the parts that felt “broken”.

So when during our session she shared that she’d been experiencing hip pain since birth, I was inspired to work with this alternative approach to her hip. Instead of thinking about what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it, we took the approach of seeing it as a place simply wanting her attention. I suggested that together we live in the question of how we could love and care for and appreciate and nurture and attend to that part of her body. That the touch be a messenger of care and love, rather than a remedy for a problem.

Certainly the touch was likely to also make it feel better and correct the “issues in her tissues”, but it felt important to take a different point of entry into that physical space. Instead of treating it like a problem, we aligned with her holistic intention, which was to start orienting toward what she was wanting to create and nurture.

Engaging with her body this way felt so good she was even moved to tears. I suspect there was a shedding away of prior antagonistic ways of engaging with herself, and an opening of her heart to something more gentle and kind-spirited.

This is my reminder and invitation to you too. If you’ve been orienting toward some part of your life and body, perhaps even a child or other family member, in a way that’s felt burdensome. What would it feel like to shift your orientation toward that “pain”, from ‘problem to fix’, to something or someone simply wanting your loving attention. What nurturing action might you take to express your love and care toward it? How does that approach feel different? Did something shift?