Postpartum Bodywork: Calling You Back Home

Lately, the work that has been inspiring me most is postpartum bodywork. And it makes me want to shout from the rooftops just how essential nurturing touch is for the new mother or birthing person after birth.

Birth, however long or short, whether vaginal or by belly, takes you OUT there! It is a massive expansion, and on the other side, the demand for attention outside of your own body and center, on your newborn, is nearly constant.

Postpartum bodywork calls you back home. Into your body from across the universe from whence you traveled to get your baby. Hands-on postpartum body care, whether in the form of massage, foot reflexology, moxibustion (aka “mother roasting”), Closing of the Bones, or other forms of compression, offers the spirit a landing pad, a beacon for coming back into this changed body and integrating, on all the levels of body, mind, and spirit, the enormity of the experience that just transpired.

For some, the blood loss of birth and/or the energy vacuum in the womb can leave them feeling deeply unsettled, even after the most amazing birth, and especially after births in which there is a lot of disappointment and other feelings to process. In Chinese medicine, the blood houses our spirit, so when even the normal amount leaves your body with birth, the spirit can take time to come fully back. An “unhoused” spirit can leave a person feeling anxious, ungrounded, shaky, and unable to sleep, etc.

We need to not only build communities that are better at holding the new mother or birthing person with greater support, but also to consider touch as an essential piece of this support. The way it helps people reground, land, and integrate is so powerful, and everyone deserves this. Along with other postpartum support, bodywork should be a go-to gift from friends and family.

Partners should be taught simple comfort measures to help with this aim. Something as simple as laying your body weight across a new mother’s hips in a side-lying position can be such medicine. The contact and pressure can provide such a homecoming call.

And honestly, it can be scary out there. After a recent session with a mother just two weeks postpartum, I was thinking about how I feel after just a couple of days of being under the weather, and where my mind goes. The dread that comes with feeling like you’re losing touch with yourself, with the thought of “never feeling like myself again”! I know, it’s a bit dramatic for feeling out of it for just a couple of days. Imagine though, where the mind can go after weeks of not feeling like yourself.

Yes, birth is a transformative metamorphosis, but the parts of you from before need help and an abundance of compassion while they’re getting caught up. My experience tells me that touch is a bridge. Bodywork is a bridge. Compression is a bridge.

So this is me shouting from my little rooftop over here: Call in the postpartum practitioners, for yourself and for your loved ones. Don’t think it’s extra. And also, don’t think you need a ton of it. Even one postpartum bodywork session can help you taste the feeling, and the promise, that you can and will return into this new body and new self. That you are not lost to space forever.