Bodywork
Hands-on care for pregnancy, postpartum, babies, and the changing female body.
Bodies adapt. They compensate. They hold tension, protect places that have been injured, and find ways to keep moving through pregnancy, birth, feeding babies, motherhood, and everyday life.
My approach to bodywork begins with curiosity about those patterns and what the body may be asking for, rather than beginning with a predetermined idea of what needs to change.
Sessions may include massage, fascial work, positional support, rebozo work, scar work, gentle craniosacral techniques, or other hands-on approaches depending on what you're noticing and what we find together.
You don't need to be a homebirth client to receive care at MATRIA.
Training & Approach
I've been working with the body for more than a decade, and my approach has developed through years of hands-on practice, continuing education, and eventually midwifery.
I don't practice from a single modality. Instead, I draw from different approaches depending on the woman or baby in front of me and what we're noticing together.
My training includes:
Arvigo® Therapy, including professional practitioner training
Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner
Breech Release, ReStory Birthwork
CranioSacral Therapy training, Upledger Institute
Somatic Experiencing® training
My work as a Certified Professional Midwife also deeply informs how I understand women's and babies' bodies through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, feeding, and newborn transition.
My training has exposed me to practices and traditions that come from a variety of cultural and spiritual backgrounds. I value what I have learned from skilled teachers while being thoughtful about what I incorporate into my own work.
My own faith is rooted in the G-d of Scripture, and I don't incorporate spiritual practices from traditions I don't personally follow. For women who would like it, prayer is welcome and can be a natural part of our time together. For those who don't, there is no expectation that prayer or spiritual conversation be part of a session.
Care That Doesn't Have to Fit in a Box
You don't need to decide whether you're coming to see me for bodywork, midwifery knowledge, or something somewhere in between.
Women rarely arrive with only one thing going on. You may come in because your hips hurt and also want to talk about your iron levels. You may want abdominal or scar work while thinking through a future pregnancy. You may bring questions about your cycle, postpartum recovery, feeding, or something you've noticed in recent labs.
When it falls within my scope, we can make room for those things in the same visit.
That may mean adding lab work to a bodywork session, reviewing results you already have, talking through part of your health or birth history, teaching self-care you can continue at home, or simply allowing the conversation to go where it needs to while we work.
I don't separate my bodywork background from my work as a midwife when I'm sitting with the woman in front of me. Each informs the other.
You don't need to know which kind of appointment you need before you reach out. Tell me what's going on, and we can decide together what would be most useful.
Breech Release
Breech Release is a hands-on bodywork session that works primarily with the mother's soft tissues while making intentional use of gravity, movement, and three-dimensional space.
Much of the work takes place on a slant board, combining positioning and gravity with gentle fascial and soft-tissue work to create more freedom through the abdomen, pelvis, and surrounding structures.
Rather than manually pushing baby through a turn, we use the mother's position, gravity, movement, and changing angles to invite rotation. As baby begins to move, I may also use gentle hands-on assistance to support the rotation while continuing to follow baby's movement rather than forcing it.
My approach is informed by Breech Release training through ReStory Birthwork and my training as a Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner.
If baby remains breech, our conversation doesn't have to end there. As a midwife with additional training and experience in breech birth, I can also help you understand your options and considerations for what comes next.
Breech Release Session · $250
Sessions vary depending on what we find together. Please allow up to two hours.
Postpartum & Women's Bodywork
Much of mothering is physical. We carry, feed, hold, lift, soothe, bend, reach, wake through the night, and give an enormous amount of ourselves to the care of another person.
There is something meaningful about occasionally turning some of that attention back toward the body doing all of that work.
Postpartum bodywork offers a place to pay attention to what has changed after pregnancy and birth, whether that's lingering tension, areas that feel unfamiliar or restricted, nervous-system patterns that are difficult to settle, or simply the desire to feel cared for in a season spent caring for everyone else.
Tending to ourselves doesn't need to become another project of motherhood. Sometimes it can simply mean setting aside an hour to receive instead of give.
And this care doesn't have an expiration date. You are welcome back six weeks, six months, or many years after your baby is born.
For women I've cared for through pregnancy and birth, this can also be a natural way for our relationship to continue beyond the traditional six-week postpartum window. Midwifery care may have a formal ending point, but that doesn't mean our relationship has to.
60 minutes · $125 | 90 minutes · $175
Choose the amount of time that feels right for what you'd like to work with.
Cesarean Scar Care
Whether your cesarean was recent or many years ago, the scar and surrounding tissues may remain tender, numb, tight, restricted, or simply feel different from the rest of your body.
Cesarean scar work can often be approached as a focused, one-off visit rather than a series of ongoing treatments. We can look at how the scar and surrounding tissues move and feel, work gently with areas of restriction when appropriate, and talk about ways you can continue tending to the tissue yourself.
A significant part of this work is education. I can teach you simple scar massage, movement, and other ways of working with your own tissue so that you have tools to continue exploring your body long after the session ends.
If you're considering another pregnancy or planning a VBAC, we can also make room to talk about your previous cesarean and what you're considering for a future birth. That might include talking through your birth history, what may be useful to learn from your operative records, questions you have about VBAC, or areas you'd like to explore as you prepare.
Focused Cesarean Scar Session · $75 / 30 minutes
Longer sessions are available when you'd like more time for bodywork, birth-history review, or VBAC conversation.
Infant Bodywork
Babies experience pregnancy and birth in their bodies, too.
Gentle infant bodywork may be useful when your baby seems tense or uncomfortable while feeding, has difficulty settling into certain positions, strongly prefers turning the head in one direction, or holds noticeable tension through the jaw, mouth, neck, shoulders, or body.
Sessions may include gentle external bodywork as well as intraoral work to explore movement and patterns of tension through the mouth, jaw, tongue, neck, and surrounding tissues.
Infant sessions are intentionally brief and follow baby's cues. We can pause for feeding, holding, or settling, and if baby has had enough, we're done.
Bodywork can also be useful before or after an oral-tie revision, particularly when feeding has been accompanied by significant tension through the mouth, jaw, neck, shoulders, or the rest of the body. In these sessions, our attention remains on baby's patterns of tension, movement, comfort, and how those patterns are interacting with feeding.
When helpful, I'll also show you simple ways to continue supporting your baby's comfort and movement at home.
And because you're the person who spends the most time with your baby, I'm interested in what you're noticing. Sometimes a parent has been seeing a pattern long before anyone else has had enough time with baby to recognize it.
Infant Bodywork · $65
For MATRIA homebirth families, infant bodywork can be incorporated into routine postpartum visits when useful and desired, at no additional cost. Additional or stand-alone infant sessions are $65.
Pregnancy & Birth Preparation
Pregnancy asks the body to continually adapt as the uterus grows, posture changes, and the relationship between the abdomen, ribs, pelvis, and surrounding tissues shifts.
Bodywork during pregnancy may support general comfort as well as more specific patterns involving the pelvis, hips, sacrum, ribs, abdomen, jaw, shoulders, or low back. We can also pay attention to places where physical tension and nervous-system patterns seem to overlap, without assuming that every tight muscle has a deeper meaning.
During pregnancy, we can work with these patterns through hands-on bodywork, positioning, movement, and rebozo work, depending on what your body is asking for.
When baby's position is part of the picture, we can also explore areas of tension or restriction that may be influencing the space available for baby to settle. The goal isn't to force a baby into a particular position, but to create more ease and possibility for both mother and baby.
Three dedicated prenatal bodywork sessions are included with MATRIA homebirth care. This is one of the ways hands-on care is woven into the relationship we build throughout pregnancy.
Outside of my midwifery practice, I offer prenatal bodywork on a limited basis through referral.
Somatic & Nervous System Support
Our bodies respond not only to physical demands, but also to stress, relationship, safety, boundaries, and the experiences we've lived through.
For some women, bodywork is simply bodywork. It feels good to have tight shoulders worked on, more ease through the hips, or an hour to be cared for. It doesn't need to mean anything more than that.
For others, there may be a more noticeable nervous-system component to what is happening in the body. You may notice that you brace, hold your breath, have difficulty relaxing, feel uncomfortable saying when something doesn't feel good, or don't realize you've reached your limit until you're already overwhelmed.
A bodywork session can be a gentle place to notice some of those patterns.
That might be as simple as practicing yes, no, more, less, stop, or I've changed my mind and having those signals respected. We may notice what happens when you take up a little more space, move away from something uncomfortable, ask for what you want, or allow your body to settle without asking it to perform.
Sometimes those small experiences give us useful information about patterns that show up elsewhere in life. Sometimes they don't. There doesn't need to be a deeper story behind everything your body does.
This work is always invitational. We can notice what's happening and stay curious about it without needing to decide what it means or where it came from.
Sometimes having a little more awareness, a little more choice, or a different experience in your body is enough.
And sometimes a tight shoulder is just a tight shoulder.
Rebozo & Transitional Bodywork
Some seasons ask for more than simply moving on to the next thing.
Rebozo work can be incorporated into bodywork throughout pregnancy and postpartum, using rocking, movement, gentle compression, wrapping, and support to help the body soften, settle, and experience being held in a different way.
It can also become part of a more intentional session for women who want to physically acknowledge a transition in their reproductive lives.
Closing
After pregnancy and birth, so much attention moves toward the baby. A closing session creates time to turn some of that attention back toward the woman who carried and birthed.
Using bodywork, rebozo wrapping, warmth, rest, and other forms of physical care, we can create a quiet space for the body to be gathered and tended after the enormous opening and transition of pregnancy and birth.
Closing doesn't have to happen immediately postpartum. A woman may want to mark the end of breastfeeding, recovery after a difficult pregnancy or birth, the end of a pregnancy, or the realization that her childbearing years are complete.
For women who desire it, prayer can also be part of this time: giving thanks for what the body has carried, grieving what needs to be grieved, and asking G-d's blessing over the season ahead.
There is no prescribed ritual and no particular meaning you are expected to assign to the experience. We can make the session as simple, reflective, or prayerful as feels right for you.
Opening
There are also seasons in which a woman may want to intentionally turn toward something new.
An opening session may be meaningful before trying to conceive, when fertility is returning after a long postpartum season, or at another point when you want to reconnect with your body and acknowledge the beginning of a new reproductive season.
These sessions may incorporate abdominal and pelvic bodywork, Arvigo® techniques, rebozo work, movement, warmth, self-massage education, and time to talk about what you're noticing in your body and what you're moving toward.
For women who desire it, prayer can be part of this work as well.
Sometimes there is value in simply pausing long enough to acknowledge that something is beginning, tending to the body with intention, and making space for whatever this next season may hold.
Opening & Closing Sessions · beginning at $200
These sessions are created individually based on what you're wanting, the amount of time involved, and whether additional hands or elements are included. We'll talk beforehand about what you're envisioning and determine the structure and cost together.
What a Session Looks Like
There isn't a standard routine I perform on every body.
We'll start with what you're noticing and what you hope to get from our time together. From there, I'll pay attention to movement, areas of tension or restriction, and how different parts of the body seem to be relating to one another.
A session may be primarily hands-on. It may also include conversation, positional exploration, nervous-system awareness, or simple techniques you can continue at home.
The goal isn't to keep you dependent on regular appointments. It's to offer support, information, and a little more understanding of your own patterns, along with tools you can carry with you when that's useful.
Come As You Are.
You don't need to know exactly what kind of bodywork you need before reaching out.
Maybe you're uncomfortable during pregnancy, wondering whether bodywork could help create more room for a breech baby, wanting support with a cesarean scar, noticing tension in your baby, navigating something in your nervous system, or wanting to intentionally mark a transition in your reproductive life.
Or maybe you simply feel the need for someone to tend to your body for a little while.
Tell me a little about what you're noticing and what you're hoping for. We can start there.
I'd be glad to work with you.