Healing

I offer various alternative healing modalities and comfort measures. A combination of these can be used quite successfully to improve pregnancy, labour and birth complications. Some modalities are for the postpartum period. Please visit my prices page for costs on the various sessions.

Reiki – hands on healing

Reiki is a hands on touch healing modality that uses the universal energy flow that is available to everyone.

The Reiki practitioner is merely a channel for this energy and does not direct or cause the healing that may follow. The Reiki practitioner is attuned to be an open channel so that the universal flow may pass through with ease. Basically when you want to receive the energy it is by your own inner knowledge and guidance that the flow is directed.

Reiki is beneficial for babies to the elderly. There is no limitation to who may make use of this non-invasive treatment. Pregnant women/people and newborn babies respond particularly well to Reiki.

Benefits include:

• Alleviates stress, fatigue and worry
• Helps to revitalise a burnt out system that is already working hard to produce and maintain new life within
• Produces calmning hormones
• Promotes overall wellbeing

Emotional Freedom Technique

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is an emotional, needle free version of acupuncture that is based on new discoveries regarding the connection between your body’s subtle energies, your emotions, and your health. EFT has been reported successful in thousands of cases covering a huge range of emotional, health and performance issues.It often works where nothing else will.

Tapping with the fingertips on specific meridians on the head and chest, along with voicing positive affirmations, helps to clear out emotional blockages from your system, thus restoring your mind and body’s balance. I’m sure you realize that emotional health is absolutely essential to your physical health and healing — the two are inseparably linked.

Using EFT during pregnancy is just a wonderful non-invasive way of helping the body work through various fears, phobias, worries and concerns.

Benefits include:

• Helping to position babies into a better lie so that labour and delivery is facilitated
• Helping to clear any unwanted negative feelings, emotions or thoughts
• Assisting mothers/people in coming to terms with an unwanted birth outcome
• Creating new pathways for healing to take place on many levels

Polarity

Polarity Therapy was developed by Dr. Randolph Stone (1890-1981), an osteopath, chiropractor, and naturopath who sought to integrate Eastern and Western approaches to healing modalities such as reflexology, acupressure, craniosacral balancing, yoga, and Ayurveda.
At the heart of polarity is a set of principles about the balance and flow of life energy which Dr. Stone believed to be the underlying essence of all healing arts. This is attested to by the growing number of health care professionals, such as nurses, chiropractors, physical therapists, creative arts therapists and massage practitioners, who are successfully incorporating Polarity Therapy into their work. When we are truly well, our bodies vibrate vitality and our thoughts and emotions are in alignment. Polarity serves as a key to unlock the door to the source, thereby allowing for genuinely new choices. Utilizing hands-on contacts, toning, breathing and gentle counseling techniques, this work embodies a full holistic health care system, and can be used to empower other modalities as well. Using polarity in pregnancy is another non-invasive, gentle technique that helps work through blockages.

Benefits include:

• Helping to bring the mother’s/parent’s and the unborn baby’s energy into alignment.
• Creating a synergetic flow between the two bodies.
• Unblocking stuck energy between the negative and positive energy centres.
• Assisting in the relaxation and release of beneficial hormones.

Optimal Foetal charting and positioning using Spinning Babies® approach

Based on teachings learnt attending a Spinning Babies® workshop with Jennifer Walker, I assist couples to understand the importance of optimal foetal positioning by discovering and mapping where their baby is within the pelvis and encouraging positions that may help open the level of the pelvis where the baby is at.

Common labour difficulties such as posterior position, asynclitism, and deep transverse arrest can be addressed and may be relieved using various physiologic techniques.

By using some of the Spinning Babies® techniques the following  benefits may be observed:

• Pain may decrease and comfort may increase
• Baby may turn into a more optimal position for birth or to where there is more space in the pelvis
• Baby’s position may change allowing the head to tuck in and create a smaller head circumference
• Pelvic bones may open wider allowing baby to engage further or find a better position for birth
• Medical interventions may decrease or be more effective

Part of assisting with positioning of baby and comfort for mothers/parents, I also illustrate how to do various other Spinning Babies daily exercises and movements including using the Rebozo for sifting the pelvis, forward-leaning inversion, followed by side-lying release and finally abdominal or standing myofascial release.

Rebozo

This is an ancient Mexican tradition of using a large piece of cloth to assist with many different things in an around the home. It is traditionally worn as an over-garment to keep women/people warm but can also be wound into a coil and placed on the head to carry heavy loads. A mother/parent may also tie the two ends together and position this over their shoulder and place their sleeping baby within so they can continue their chores with the baby close to them.

In pregnancy, labour, birth and postpartum this cloth is used to bring comforting massage and relief through various exercises done with the rebozo.

Benefits include:

• It can help ease discomfort, backaches and heavy belly aches.
• Helps  reposition a baby that is not in a favourable position during pregnancy as well as during labour and birth.
• Assists in turning breech or posterior babies.
• Massages new mothers/parents bodies to feel better and to close of the bones opened during childbirth.
• To move or support the woman/person into different positions that may assist her birthing.

Forward leaning inversion

This technique targets the ligaments that support and cradle the uterus in the correct position. In our daily lives, various movements may cause these ligaments to tighten, twist or loosen and when pregnant this may happen more frequently, due to the change in the centre of gravity of the body. This can impact on the position of the baby and their ability to move downward into the pelvis.

The inversion is done to assist the ligaments in softening, stretching and lengthening therefore making space for the baby to descend and engage well into the pelvis. It assists with a baby in a confirmed breech, unstable, transverse, or posterior position.

Do not do this if medical contraindications exist for going upside down, such as high blood pressure or other risk of stroke. Don’t do this if you suffer from heartburn, glaucoma, hypertension, or are at risk of a stroke. Avoid also in cases of unusually large quantities of amniotic fluid levels.

Benefits inlcude:

• Reduction in back pain
• Reduction in hip pain
• Reduction in tailbone pain
• Improvement in fetal positioning

Side lying release

This release is used to loosen and soften the pelvis. It helps to lengthen the muscles and to realign the pelvis when it has been pulled out of balance. The reason we want to correct any asymmetrical tension is so that we can have the baby rotate into a favourable position for birth therefore helping to reduce the length of labour

Benefits include:

• Increasing pelvic mobility
• Releasing muscle spasms
• Helping labour to progress
• Reduction in pain
• Improvement in position of the baby when there is a posterior, brow or asynclitic fetal presentation.

Abdominal or standing myofascial release

The abdominal release, also called the diaphragmatic release, assists the broad ligament to relax, allowing more room for baby to get into position for labour. The release is a subtle physical technique using the lightest pressure possible. It is an incredibly soothing and calming experience and when this is done well, with the lightest of touch, on the abdomen and lower back, an electrical circuit is formed from the contact. The fascia responds by “untwisting” or “untightening” the muscle fibers of the broad ligament.
A variant of the abdominal release would be the standing release for those pregnant women that cannot tolerate lying down. It may also be done together with the lying abdominal release.

Benefits include:

• Improving fetal positioning
• Improving pelvic alignment
• Increasing woman’s comfort in late pregnancy and labour
• Creating a calm state of mind and body
• Possible reduction in heartburn and snoring

Foot massage

Every pregnant women/person knows the benefits of having a foot massage! When our feet are feeling good, we are feeling good.

During pregnancy a mother/perosn may not pay special attention to their feet. Having a regular foot massage can help to alleviate some of their discomfort as well as to freshen up their step.

Using foot massage in pregnancy is different from a reflexology treatment. Whilst reflexology can be very relaxing and feel nice it is also a specialized treatment modality that ‘works’ on a specific points on the entire foot.  For more specific results reflexology is a great alternative way of helping the body to heal.
A Foot massage on the other hand is meant to be used as a tool for relaxation only, and by gently rubbing the entire foot a pregnant woman/person can receive some tender care in a place that really needs it, their feet.

Benefits include:

• Help with sleeping more soundly
• Assisting in unblocking anger as well as fears, worries and concerns
• Relaxing mothers/parents as they cannot get to their feet comfortably
• Harmonising the internal with the external
• Relieving swollen, tired and achy feet

Acupressure

Acupressure is a complementary treatment that stems from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TMC) and involves applying firm and steady pressure to certain points in the body that correspond to specific organs. Firm pressure can be applied by hands, thumbs, elbows or appropriate pressure point devices to provoke a change in the status of the person receiving the pressure.

Caution must be used when applying pressure to any points during pregnancy as they can cause early uterine contractions. However the use of acupressure at term or for overdue dates is highly encouraged as it helps to prepare the body, as well as creating contractions, for labour and birth

The benefits of acupressure in labour and birth are many. It is reported that acupressure is most effective when used in the early stages of labour.

Benefits include:

• Shorter duration of labour
• Reduction in pain experience during contractions
• Reduction the need for pharmacological analgesia
• Helping to regulate irregular contractions
• Assisting baby to descend down into the pelvis
• Possibility of naturally inducing labour contractions and cervical ripening for post dates pregnancies
• Increased maternal satisfaction with her birthing experience

Moxa

Moxibustion or moxa is another Traditional Chinese Medicine that uses a herb called mugwort to create heat in certain points in the body. It is usually accompanied by acupressure or acupuncture to the same point where the heat is applied. Best results occur when used between 33-36 weeks.

Benefits include:

• Encouraging baby to turn into a better position for birth especially if baby is breech or posterior positioned.
• Creating a sense of wellbeing and relaxation

Belly binding

During the postpartum many women/people find it comforting to bind their bellies to assist the uterus as it shrinks down and to provide additional support for the back and weakened abdominal muscles.

The Bengkung binding also offers an unexpected emotional comfort as it creates a sense of being “held” together and of “closing” after having opened the pelvis and hips to allow baby to emerge. Binding the belly helps to feel more grounded and centred as the muscles in the core slowly come back together.

Binding can be done from 5 days after a natural birth and 6 weeks after a caesarean birth. It should be worn 10-12 hours a day for 6-8 weeks to receive the maximum benefit from wrapping the belly with a bind.

Benefits of belly binding:

• Assists the involution (shrinking) of the uterus
• Provides back support during breastfeeding and baby wearing
• Speeds up postpartum recovery by retracting and strengthening the core muscles and healing diastasis recti
• Improves overall spine and posture alignment
• Assists in eliminating accumulated fluids postpartum

Closing ceremony

It is believed that a mother/person travels very far away from themselves when they births their baby. They have had to open wide, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. So once their baby is earth-side they are open and raw. After the birth the new mother/parent needs to ‘seal’ or close their bones and gather themselves again.

The closing ceremony is a way to honour the mother’s/parent’s incredible journey by celebrating what the body has done and continues to do. A simple and beautiful ceremony is created specifically for each individual mother/parent. Using rebozo cloths to gently massage and hold the new mother/parent, heat pads or hot stones to warm them, herbs. oils and other nurturing practices, a woman/parent is helped to close off from their vulnerable pregnancy and birth energy. They are left with a sense of being ready to fully embark on their journey into mother/parenthood now that they have begun to restore their energy.

Benefits of a closing ceremony:

• Assisting in ‘closing’ the bones postpartum and giving a sense of completion
• Emotionally healing and calming
• Helps restore energy after birth
• Provides release for accumulate fears or processing of birth trauma
• Being held and nurtured always feels good so that is why we do this

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