Early bird price of $550 held until March 27, 2026 / $650 thereafter
Structural Health in the Childbearing Year with Tom Myers
Pregnancy and childbirth – however it goes – inevitably strains and stretches the mother’s structural body. While muscle can restore itself fairly quickly, the fabric of any strained or torn fascial tissue is not so easy to repair and can lead to long-term issues as well as short-term pain.
Preparing for birth and recovering from delivery has become more problematic in our ‘industrial’ medical system. Additionally, many modern mothers are not as prepared for the marathon effort of birthing as they were in earlier times.
In this workshop, we range over the whole prep and recovery landscape, including covering the following:
– The three pelvic floors: assessment and treatment of the superficial, muscular, and fascial pelvic floors.
– Making sense of pelvic ’neutral’: Understanding the muscles around the hips and pelvis as three integrated functional fans.
– Preparing the body for natural childbirth: Stretches, strengthening, and stability for spine, sacrum, and pelvic floor.
– The woman’s voice in birth – opening the ‘mother-mouth’
– Postpartum exercise for pelvic recovery, diastasis, sacroiliac, and responses to surgery (incl. C-section scars and tearing scars).
– Birth practices: Pitocin, cord-cutting, circumcision, spinal blocks, and the entire avalanche of intervention.
We celebrate your collective wisdom in the room, as well as Tom’s experience. It is time for the workers in the birth world to unite for positive change. This workshop is designed for all those who work with this population: bodyworkers of all kinds – pelvic physiotherapists, massage therapists, movement teachers, nurse midwives, doulas.
This workshop reviews some of the myths of childbearing and the pelvic floor, bringing light to what is known and what is not known in this highly individual process. Come away with a broad and inclusive point-of-view, and new bodywork and exercise approaches to pelvic health.
This workshop is facilitated by Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains. Tom first got involved in birth issues in the 1980’s in the UK, after seeing how many injuries and tension patterns were occasioned by badly-applied obstetrics. He has a deep and abiding interest in peri-natal issues for all members of the family. He has a 50-year practice in bodywork, and is the author of Spiraling Into Alignment, a program for parents (especially dads) to learn infant handling skills (and bodyworkers to learn client-moving skills). Tom’s wide-ranging scope highlights the strengths and obstacles to successful birth and recovery in our modern era.
