add to your midwifery skills, your movement and bodywork practice, your self directed prenatal care kit, or your rightful knowledge as a woman
3 days of in-depth study on prenatal movement + pain resolution, birth biomechanics, & actionable ways to support baby’s pathway through the pelvis.
Join us live in Canada.
Are you a midwife, but you never learned how exercise physiology deeply impacts fetal positioning and tissue yielding in the birth process?
Are you a doula needing to deepen your education? There is SO MUCH MORE you can do for your clients than just "protecting the hormonal blueprint".
Are you a chiropractor, prenatal yoga teacher or a movement coach? Your adjustments or movements could be negatively impacting the biomechanics of birth. Do you know why?
Is there something I can do structurally to support my clients in having a more easeful pregnancy and birth?
YES.
Babies are born through movement.
Not just a hormonal process, birth is the process of moving baby through the bony and soft tissues of the pelvis.
In our birth culture, there needs to be a larger emphasis, in pregnancy, on preparing the body for the biomechanical unfolding of birth.
This focus supports the maternal tissues to balance during pregnancy and yield for the birth process, absolutely helping our babies make their way through the pelvic pathway.
The outcome is less birth trauma for mom and baby, more easeful births, faster recoveries, and a foundation of integrated pelvic health for life.
No matter your birth setting, team, or plan…
It’s your biomechanical blueprint that allows your hormonal matrix to unfold, and together they determine the progress of your birth.
during this 3 day training you will learn...
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In-depth uterine + pelvic anatomy and physiology through the pregnancy + birth continuum
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How to mobilize the pelvic inlet, mid-pelvis, and the outlet in preparation for birth
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Prenatal postural patterns + the connection to fetal positioning and birth patterns
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Whole-body, dynamic biomechanical preparation for birth during pregnancy
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Specific origins + movement practices for common pain patterns including SPD, sciatica, SI joint + back pain, heartburn, and more
This workshop includes lectures, movement practices, individual and group postural assessments and practical skills application.
our weekend together:
Day 1
Session one
Beyond the Hormonal Matrix: The Symphony of the Biomechanics + Hormonal Blueprint of Birth
This lecture will explore the relationship between maternal tissue mobility and yielding, the hormonal matrix, and fetal positioning, as they occur in the birth process. We will also discuss the reality of female bodily asymmetry, including dextrorotation (a rotation in a right or clockwise direction) and right obliquity of the uterus, and how these brilliant physiological asymmetries support babies' spiraling descent through the pelvic pathway.
Session two
The Golden Chalice: Connecting to the Pelvic Inlet, Midpelvis and the Outlet
This session will be broken into three sections: the pelvic inlet, the midpelvis, and the outlet. For each level of the pelvis, we will address both the foundational maternal anatomy (the parts) and the physiology (how they move), as well as how baby interacts with that level of the pelvis, both during pregnancy and the birth process.This will be followed by practical application, exploring movements that help us (and our clients) connect and mobilize with each level of the pelvis.This session will cycle between lecture and somatic practice, as we progress through each level of the pelvis.
Session three
What space? Compensatory postural patterns in pregnancy
Babies move into spaces available to them. In this session we will explore common prenatal compensatory postural patterns and how they can affect pregnancy symptoms, fetal positioning, and the unfolding of the birth process. We will begin developing the skill of recognizing patterns that can restrict fetal movement, and discuss how to identify them across a variety of postural presentations. This session will be part lecture and part posture lab, identifying patterns within our participant population, pregnant or otherwise.
Day 2
Session four
Biomechanical Preparation for Birth + Essential Maternal Actions: Thoracic Mobility and the Respiratory Diaphragm
This session will describe the anatomy + physiology of the female thoracic trunk and adaptations that occur during pregnancy. Learn how thoracic rotation and alignment, infrasternal angles, the relationship between the respiratory and pelvic diaphragms can affect the space available for the growing uterus and fetal positioning for birth. This session is part lecture, part somatic practice for you to experience mobility in your thoracic trunk for aligned posture and to support a more easeful birth.
Session five
Biomechanical Preparation for Birth + Essential Maternal Actions: Movement from Feet to Pelvis
This session will discuss the anatomy + physiology of pronation and supination, tibial rotation, and femur position within the pelvis. Deep dive into a dynamic understanding of ilial versus femoral internal and external rotation and how this directly influences spaciousness in the posterior pelvic bowl for fetal rotation during birth. Identify differences between anterior and posterior pelvic positions and how they can easily be mistaken for each other! This session is part lecture, part somatic practice for you to experience mobility in your feet, femurs, and pelvis for aligned posture and to support a more easeful birth.
Session six
Honing your Vision: Recognizing Common Compensatory Patterns
With an understanding of supportive posture and healthy actions for the female body, let’s geek out with our own postural assessments! Utilizing the group, we will sort ourselves based on common postural patterns to deepen our recognition skills with a variety of body types. Receive individualized adjustments and movement prescriptions for your unique form.
Day 3
Session seven
Pregnancy Pain Patterns and Functional Resolutions
This is a 2.5 hour movement flow where we practice techniques for common pains and aches in pregnancy. Move away from single-action, repetitive, boring physiotherapy-style ‘exercises’ and ‘things-to-avoid’ into whole-body supportive practices for specific pain patterns. Learn what’s actually supportive for SPD, sciatica, and SI joint pain AND your thoracic and lumbo pelvic mobility as a woman. Learn what to do for back pain, heartburn and shortness of breath and what’s supportive for foot and ankle pain and swelling. Take away movement sets you can teach your clients for a more comfortable pregnancy therefore a more comfortable baby and birth.
Session eight
Pain in Pregnancy + Fetal Positioning
Pain in pregnancy is not normal! However, it does give us clues of what’s happening posturally and how that may be affecting her internal structures. This session explores the relationship between discomforts that appear during pregnancy due to compensatory patterns and how that may affect a baby’s position during pregnancy and birth…not the other way around. Learn more about what these common pregnancy pains are physiologically, and why specific movements work towards resolution. Understand causes of pain, referred tension patterns and they affect the wombspace as a whole.
Session nine
Final Thoughts and Q+A
Bring your final questions.
We need to replace hands-off prenatal care with nourishing movement and touch.
We need to replace the obsession with fetal positioning with an emphasis on how to help your baby move.
This course contains the basic tenets of prenatal care. This course is where you prepare your body to help prepare your baby to move through the pelvic pathway. If you are pregnant, wanting to be pregnant one day, or work with pregnant women, this is truly essential information.
If you are a midwife or birthworker, this is the resource that you wish you had. Learn the information your clients need and ask for (even if they don’t know what they’re asking for).
If you’re a woman unpacking where her birth went wrong, a woman planning a VBAC, a woman whose fetal positioning was pathologized, this information is for you.
If you’re a prenatal yoga instructor, chiropractor, massage therapist, CST, or a woman who serves pregnant women in any way, this is knowledge you can apply to every client’s individual situation.
If you are desiring a pain-free pregnancy, and want to learn how to support your birth the best way you can, this is the prenatal care every woman should receive.
Add it to your self-directed prenatal care kit, your midwifery skills, or your rightful knowledge as a woman.
I'm in.
Meet your teacher:
Adelaide is a female physiology academic, movement teacher, bodyworker, and homebirth attendant. She approaches women’s health, birth, movement, and women's culture from a physiological perspective, and believes in the genius of the body and the brilliance of women. Her professional contributions are at the intersection of birth, movement, and biomechanics, and how physiological birth requires physiological womanhood. She is a sought-after teacher, leader, and speaker on women's health and women's culture. In addition to teaching, she lives with her darling dog and runs her own well-woman and midwifery care private practice ❤ ️.
Meet your hostess:
Mandy and Adelaide are dear friends, beloved midwifery colleagues, and collaborative biomechanics nerds! Mandy is our lovely host for this training. In her own work, Mandy is a Registered Midwife, women’s bodyworker, folk herbalist, and mother. She has been attending home and hospital births for 14 years and currently practices midwifery in Powell River, BC. For over 5 years Mandy has also been studying therapeutic bodywork for women, specializing in breech and labour bodywork, abdominal and uterine alignment, and intra-pelvic care, and biomechanics, alongside Adelaide.
