Thai Yoga Body Work & Postpartu

Today we are spotlighting one of my favorite skills to incorporate to support my clients postpartum: Thai Yoga Bodywork. Thai Yoga Bodywork is a folk healing tradition originating in Thailand, and it was only lumped in with yoga by westerners, to illustrate the difference between this practice and western notions of massage.

As it was taught to me, there are two primary traditions relating to Thai body work: a village version, where individuals, mostly family members, take turns giving and receiving this healing body work to one another. This version is non-transactional and a relationship of peers, human to human, like a general tune up for our bodies as they work, play and accumulate wear and tear. There is a corresponding tradition born more in urban centers, where there’s more commerce and merchants and massage professionals set up shop and clients come in for their healing work. This city model is similar to our western conception of massage, like Swedish or deep tissue. 

Thai body work is done fully clothed, on a mat on the floor, and it incorporates energy work alongside the physical components. The energy part is largely twofold: the process follows the body’s meridians, or sen lines, which relate to the yogic concepts of nadhis or chakras. The other energy component is that the person giving body work is really focusing on loving kindness throughout the practice. 

Another unique component of this tradition is the way that the person giving bodywork uses their own body: incorporated lunges, forward folds, (another reason it was linked to yoga pretty naturally) to support and boost their own body even while giving support to another. Where western concepts of massage are pretty tiring and extractive for the person giving the massage, who is usually being paid, the Thai body work model is promoting circulation, mobility and health for the person giving as well as the person receiving. It makes a lot of sense in the context of family members or other close relationships supporting their shared well-being and longevity. 

I first learned this practice in 2017 in my yoga teacher training, and it just really resonated with me. I practiced it a lot on everyone who was willing: my partner, a friend who had just gone through something awful. I even bartered a session with someone in exchange for them helping me clean out my closet. 

As I started to incorporate this practice with my postpartum clients, I saw how beautiful of a fit it is for this tender time of healing. First, it gives my clients a really good challenge: for the first 20 minutes of our postpartum session, arrange to have everything handled. 20 minutes to yourself. It sounds so simple on paper but it can be really challenging to step into claiming that space. When you feel like you are the only one keeping everything afloat, it feels impossible to step away even for 20 minutes. But that shit is exhausting. So the first challenge is claiming 20 minutes.

When we start the session, it usually feels really good to just lie down in a quiet room with gentle music playing. Usually between interrupted sleep, pediatric appointments, other kids especially toddlers, my clients’ nervous system’s can feel a little fried in the weeks following having a baby. Taking this 20 minutes at the beginning of our session centers the client: instead of looking after everyone else they are being looked after on a physical and emotional level. It’s primarily compression- which I tend to call ‘smushing the muscles’- combined with some super gentle movement: back and forth with the foot, cradling the head and turning it to the side. It’s twenty minutes of gentle physical bodywork while someone really focuses on sending you loving kindness.

Sometimes for my clients this turns into a nap, which I applaud. I think what’s more common is Non-Sleep Deep Rest, a concept popularized by Andrew Huberman which is shown to support learning, creativity, mood, and physical health: all huge boosters for parenting! It’s a reset for the nervous system, and feels so so good.

I am so grateful for this practice. The Thai are really experts in postpartum care and have so many beautiful healing traditions and I am honored to be able to incorporate a small part of that knowledge and tradition. 

Warmth & Postpartum

For three trimesters, nine months, forty-some-odd weeks, you incubated life. You fed a little furnace inside you, building ears, toes, a heart, lungs out of proteins and love. Now, you incubate you: rebuilding your own life force, your own will and sense of self, in a new way. 

Every culture that I have come across emphasizes warmth as part of the postpartum healing process. It’s all about a warm, quiet, healing environment: an external womb for the mother baby couplet,  supporting rebuilding blood, energy, and life force. My Guatamalan patients sometimes ask me for cotton to place in their ears: keeping in warmth and quiet, and keeping out the chill of the mountain air. The Traditional Chinese postpartum practice is called mother roasting, and the Thai call it Yu Fai, or ‘lying near fire’. Many of these holistic models of postpartum practice involve taboos against anything that could cause you to catch a chill, like washing hair, or eating cold foods or drinking cold drinks. And they incorporate soothing and warming things like soups, massage with warm oil, steam treatments, 

If you are having your baby here in Richmond, Virginia, where I am, and it’s summer, you’re in luck, as the hot, muggy world has got your back! Think of the sticky summer as here to help, warming your sore muscles and rebuilding your internal fire.

And either way, what might it look like to experiment with warmth as part of your healing practice? I’m not talking about anything extreme, like turning off your AC if it’s hot (I really want you sleeping well when you can!) or denying yourself things that make you feel good and comfortable like washing your hair or a cold drink. I’m thinking more like microdosing this concept: maybe one of your glasses of water a day you experiment with skipping the ice, or you make yourself a ginger tea, or incorporate warming spices into your meals like cinnamon, ginger, cumin, black pepper, coriander, and chiles. If your partner really likes to keep the AC cooler, (or the heat lower, if it’s winter) than is comfortable for you, maybe add an extra layer. A light scarf can feel especially like a warm hug. If you love hot sauce, yes! Boom! This condiment has graduated to part of your healing practice. I love soup for postpartum, especially pho. If your friends are asking you what they can send you via Grubhub, keep it in mind! I also love the Trader Joe’s ginger turmeric tea- it’s so sweet and good especially if you let it steep for a long time. Oatmeal is a super nice warm breakfast for postpartum: if you are an Instant Pot person like me, even the steel cut oats are beyond easy. My mother-in-law does hers in a rice cooker. You can even throw some berries in there or prunes, for sweeten and to keep things moving easily digestion-wise. Last summer I got really into steel cut oats with butter, blackberries, peaches and ginger. YUM. You can switch it up with different warming spices depending on your mood, cardamom and blueberry, peach and ginger, strawberry tahini. I will even go for a savory oatmeal sometimes, with ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil, a little green onion and a fried egg. It’s nice!

So tell me, what might pleasant, comfortable warmth and heat look like for you in your postpartum healing period?

Prenatal Yoga & Movement: Not a Punishment, Not a Slog

Movement nourishes. Our bodies desire and deserve a steady and consistent diet of different types of nourishing movement: walking, swimming, dancing, laying down, reaching, curling up. Just like we try to eat a variety of foods and vegetables of different colors, we feel best when we get different varieties of movement: the slow, stretchy, and sensuous that quiet and soothe us, alongside the more upbeat movements like dancing or walking that help move out energy and move through emotions like nervousness, anger, excitement or joy. 

movement is not

punishment, and it’s not barter for food.

Both food and movement nourish us. Sometimes if you are moving a lot in exhausting ways you will need a lot more food to maintain your energy. But in general, I think we need to be very wary of thinking of movement as being punishment or penance for cookies. It’s a societal hangover from diet culture that’s just really, really not cool. Cookies can nourish our joy and our spirit, movement can too. Likewise, either one can be done in a way that feels bad. Just depends on how you’re thinking about it.

Movement is also not a chore. Sometimes there’s inertia that makes continuing on in the same way (on the couch, at the desk working, or go-go-going) seem better than switching up the energy by going for a walk or popping on a little prenatal yoga video. But usually if we create a little quiet, we can tune into what the body needs and is actually asking for. Maybe the dread about going for a walk is because it’s super hot and sunny outside, and maybe a stretch in the AC, or under a tree in the shade is what the body is really craving right here, right now. Or maybe the interpersonal component of a group class feels draining, and a more aligned option would be a little walk, watching the birds, hearing the sounds of life in your neighborhood. Sometimes its as simple as lying down, resting, and moving the head and neck to look around the room: a big impactful reset in a busy or stressful day.

In the third trimester, as things get heavy, slow, suspended, it can really start to feel like a chore. You are lifting weights in your sleep! So a lot more rest than you’re used to might be completely appropriate. For some people, lots of resting is really uncomfortable, so it’s ok to just be with that discomfort and be gentle with yourself. And a little nourishing, slow, stretchy movement can be a form of rest too, or it can be a big chore, depending on how you’re thinking about it. 

If movement was a gift, just for you, just for what you need today, what would it be?

Uncertainty

It’s normal to feel uncertainty in late pregnancy leading into labor. Whether you’ve done this process before or not, there is so much that is unknowable. Birth is nonlinear. As much as we want to be able to say, when this happens, this other thing will happen in X hours, or if this, then that…that’s just not how it works. 

This hurts. Our brains really dislike it. Sometimes our brains will opt for the perceived certainty of doom, giving up, or defeat. A couple examples could be, not applying for a job because you think you won’t get it, or not acting on a crush. We’ve all been there. 

But this grey area of uncertainty is actually where the magic happens. We live in a dynamic world of flux, where the only constant is change. Birth embodies this so deeply. It’s a clear, present reminder that all of life is a mystery. There are no neat little boxes for our brains to place things in, no timelines, no itinerary. At best, you feel like you have a crumpled map in your backpack and you pretty much know you’ll laugh, you cry, there will be bodily fluids, and you’ll experience things you never thought possible.

In uncertainty, I find solace in Octavia Butler’s Earthseed prayer, from her novel, Parable of the Sower: “all that you touch, you change, all that you change, changes you. God is change.” With this, she calls us back to agency. Reminding us that we have hands to touch things, our actions reverberate, she reminds us that we’re not just pieces of glitter swirling around in a chaotic snowglobe. She calls us to shape god: to dance with the chaos, create, and move. To both ride the waves of change and to act. I love the balance here: between being present with uncertainty, and the remembering of our power to shape reality. 

So if you’re feeling uncertain, let's start here: nothing’s gone wrong. 

There is some certainty we can create: You can be certain that have your own back. That you love and accept yourself through the process, no matter what. That you are supported. That you know how to create support for yourself. That anything that arises can bet met, withstood, processed, held. All feelings pass. All intensity subsides. When we are held, when we are met, we can do the unthinkable, the brave, the heroic, the miraculous. You are powerful. Strong. Gentle. Dynamic. Still, like a mountain, or roaring. You meet the moment, this moment here. The next right thing shows itself to you, because you find yourself doing it.

I’ll leave you with another verse from The Book Of the Living, the text of Butler’s fictional Earthseed religion. 

39. Positive Obsession

God is Change,
And in the end,
God prevails.
But meanwhile…
Kindness eases Change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.

∞ = Δ