Category: closing the bones

Since 2014, I have been teaching the closing the bones postnatal massage ritual to perinatal professionals. What started with a small workshop in my home grew organically. Over the last 10 years, I have trained over 800 professionals to provide this amazing ritual.  Postpartum specific bodywork is something that exists (or used to exist) all over the world and I’m on a quest to make it the norm once more. 

The catalyst for evolution

Within a couple of years of teaching, a growing number of students who had trained in the closing the bones ritual reached out, asking for a version adapted for a massage table instead of the traditional floor setting. They asked for this because several of them faced challenges like bad knees or backs, making floor work difficult.

This call to action resonated deeply with me, and I consulted with my trusted friend and osteopath, Teddy Brookes, who was very familiar with the massage, having helped me understand its effects on the various joints and organs from an anatomical standpoint.

Together, we embarked on an ambitious journey to develop a massage table version of this ritual, a true labour of love that took over a year and a half of dedicated trial and error.

The creation process

Each session was a meticulous exploration, meticulously recorded and analysed. Teddy and I would alternate between giving and receiving each technique, first on the floor, then on the massage table. We encountered numerous challenges, from biomechanical limitations to the struggle of preserving the ritual’s essence while adapting it to a new form.

There were a lot of frustrations as we grappled with the intricacies of rebozo rocking and hip squeezing. Teddy’s deep knowledge of body function guided my perfectionist desire to create something true to the original ritual, whilst ensuring the technique’s safety, effectiveness, and ease on the therapist’s body.

The breakthrough

Just when we thought we had hit an impasse, the magic happened. I let go of my need for an exact replication of the original ritual, embracing Teddy’s guidance that we were aiming for the same effect, not an identical experience.

With this breakthrough, everything seemed to flow effortlessly. We modified and added elements, treating areas like the ribs and shoulders that were overlooked in the original massage. The movements felt logical, seamlessly blending into a new, inspired ritual.

The Postnatal Recovery Massage (PRM) was born, a fusion of tradition and innovation, embodying the essence of the closing the bones ritual.

The first training

After unveiling the PRM to a small group of local doulas and massage therapists, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The movements flowed beautifully, resonating with the spirit of the original ritual while offering a modern, therapist-friendly approach.

As we put the final touches on our comprehensive handout, complete with descriptions, pictures, videos, and anatomical explanations, we looked forward to introducing this transformative technique to the world.

The first workshop took place Cambridge in January 2019, and was a resounding success, with trainees expressing gratitude, excitement, and confidence in their newfound ability to support women postnatally. They spoke of the magical blend of science and spiritual knowledge we’d created and also expressed that this new massage would appeal to a wider range of women, due to it being done on a massage table instead of on the floor.

Joining the movement

The journey Teddy and I have taken has been one of passion, perseverance, and a deep commitment to nurturing the postpartum experience. With the Postnatal Recovery Massage, we have created a powerful ritual that harmonises tradition and innovation, empowering birth workers and therapists to provide profound healing and support to new mothers and support healing for women through life transitions. Since 2019 we have taught this massage to over 120 students.

Because we teach this workshop together, we offer a unique blend of healing approach together with solid anatomical knowledge, a lot of hands-on practice, personalised feedback and support during the training, and any additional resources or support provided to ensure students feel fully supported to offer the ritual after the workshop.

Here is some of the feedback we received from our students:

• What a wonderful, professional, well constructed and instructive course with plenty of time for step by step practical, complemented by Teddy’s expertise and Sophie’s organic shamanism and such a wonderful community of like minded body workers. Thank you. Thoroughly recommended. Jenni Tribe, Therapist
• Amazing workshop! Loved being in a small group to work through techniques in enough details. As an osteopath this experience has been invaluable in improving my practices of postnatal patients, in fact all of my patients! Rob Ballard, osteopath
• The course was well organised, very informative and easy to follow. The level of practical support was fantastic and I feel confident to take what I  have learnt and help local women postnatally. Thank you! Becki Scott, doula and massage therapist
• The massage is a wonderful reworking of the traditional Closing The Bones massage performed on a couch rather than the floor. Sophie and Teddy have taken all that is special about it and fused her energy-work approach with his osteopathic technique to create something extraordinary. It incorporates binding, rocking, jiggling and specific tension releases, with massage of the chest, abdomen and pelvis with warming oil. It is truly a celebration of the postpartum body!  Charlotte Filcek, doula

Since developing this massage, both Teddy and myself have had repeatedly amazing results when offering this ritual to women, both in terms of physical healing (in particular, its incredible effectiveness at closing separation of the abdominal muscles, known as diastasis recti. This proved very effective for new mothers, I had a woman with an inch gap from her birth 4 years prior.

Questions and answers about the postnatal recovery massage

What are the benefits of the postnatal recovery massage over closing the bones?

• It is much easier on the body of the therapist. Working on the table allows you to use your body weight to provide the strength needed to rock the body with the rebozo, and to do the massage movements. You can move easily around the table, staying comfortable, without needing to kneel or squat as you do on the floor. Recently, I was delighted to hear from a friend who had a knee injury that learning the ritual meant that she could offer the massage again, much to her delight, and with amazing results.
• It requires less space than a mat on the floor, making it more suited to a small therapy room.
• There are more massage techniques than in the original massage, and they are more technical (for example: one is designed to help reduce the rib flare after birth, one to close the diastasis recti and one to pump lymphatic fluid around the chest), and some of the original massage movements have been modified to make them more effective. 
• Some women may feel more appealing to be massaged on a table rather than on the floor because being massaged on a table is the norm in the Western world. In this respect this massage may appeal to a broader audience than the floor work.

Are there any disadvantages?

• This is a very personal preference, but since I do both the floor version and the table version of the massage (and blend some of the techniques together), there are aspects of both I wish I could do in both settings and this just isn’t possible. So there are aspects of the treatment I like more on the floor (for example, the rebozo rocking, because standing over the person means that you can cocoon the body in a way you cannot do from the side of a table), and there are also movements can only be done easily on the massage table due to the need to use one’s body weight to do them (for example the rib massage or collarbone massage, are much more effective on the table)
• The rocking with the rebozo is quicker on the floor as it rocks both sides of the body at once, instead of one side at a time on the table.
• Some women prefer the floor version of the ritual as they find it more “earthy”.

Are we going to offer an online version of the massage?

• Many people have contacted me to ask for this. As the massage techniques are quite technically precise, we do not feel that we could teach this effectively without being present to demonstrate and correct our students.

If you feel the call to be part of this transformative movement, to embrace the nurturing power of the Postnatal Recovery Massage, and to change the face of postnatal support, one ritual at a time, join us on this workshop. Teddy and I are teaching the ritual together on Monday the 23rd of September in Abington, near Cambridge, UK.

Closing the bones is a traditional postpartum massage ritual. It is most known for its Mexican and South American heritage, but versions of it exist on all continents.

Depending on the culture, a closing the bones ritual involves different elements. There is a massage, done using scarves or with the hands or both, and a ritual tightening of scarves around the body. In some cultures, such as the Mexican, North African, and Russian version, the ritual also includes the use of a steam bath.

The closing the bones I offer is a blend of Ecuadorian and Mexican traditions, with modifications created together with osteopath Teddy Brookes. The ritual starts with rocking the whole body with rebozos (a type of Mexican shawl), massaging of the abdomen, hips, ribs, chest, and shoulders, followed by more rocking of the pelvis, and finally wrapping the body tightly with 7 rebozos. The video below gives you a taster of what the ritual looks like.

In the Mexican version of the ritual, as shown in this video by Mexican midwife Naoli Vinaver, the ritual starts with a whole body massage, followed by a steam bath, a period of sudation under lots of blankets, and finally the sequential tightening using rebozos.

What does closing the bones do?

Closing the bones is not just a massage, but a specific kind of bodywork designed to help speed up and enhance the healing process and changes that the new mother’s body undergoes after her baby has been born. A closing the bones massage helps healing by providing healing movement in the joints, muscles, tissues and fluids. It provides much needed space to simply rest and be and be held, as well as for emotions to be honoured, witnessed and released. Finally, it provides closure, and brings the energy back to the mother.

Having massaged hundreds of women for over ten years, some as early as 24h post birth, and some as late as 47 years post birth, I know the following: This ritual provides a space for physical nurturing, but also maybe more importantly, holds a space for whatever needs to be expressed, witnessed and released. It is different for every person, depending on what has happened to them. For some it is a joyful honouring, for others it is a space to acknowledge and let go of difficult emotions. 

I have seen very significant shifts happen in people after it, either physically or emotionally or both. 

Physical aspects:

• Very early post birth, it speeds up the healing process. When the uterus is still high in the abdomen and the internal organs are still working their way down in the abdomen, I can feel under my hands how ‘open’ the new mother is, how everything is shifting.
• Many women have told me that their hips, or back, or both felt much better, more mobile, comfortable and more ‘together’ after the massage. 
• It is a very relaxing and nurturing treatment and people look more ‘glowy’ and relaxed afterwards.
• Sometimes the level of healing is so powerful it is difficult to believe. Once I massaged someone who had had a caesarean 15 years ago and whose skin had been numb between her pubic bone and belly button since then. The day after the massage, sensation returned to her skin. I have also seen years old diastasis recti (separation of the stomach muscles) disappear after the massage.

Emotional aspects

• People often have big emotional releases during the ritual. It helps whatever emotion pain was held to come out.
• Many times after the massage people tell me that something significant happened in terms of transition: They got their period back for the first time since the birth, they moved their toddler into their own room, they had a big row with their partner which cleared the air etc.

Spiritual/energetic aspects

• It can help move energy that is stuck and therefore provide very deep healing. Once a mother told me that she felt the “brain fog” she had had since her toddler was born 2 years ago being lifted after receiving the massage.
• Once I massaged a mother who was stooped forward since the birth like an old lady and couldn’t stand up straight. During the massage she had a big emotional release. Afterwards she could immediately stand up straight again.

Loss, and baby loss

• Women have repeatedly told me it was extremely helpful for them to integrate a loss, and particularly for perinatal loss. 

“I came along to the Closing the Bones Training about a year after my baby had died. Towards the end of the ceremony, as I was being rocked deep shudders started going through my body and as the rebozo was pulled tight around my pelvis I felt a huge emotion that even now I am not sure what to call it. It felt as though the protective bubble I had formed around myself moved away and with that my baby – as if I was releasing him. Sobs racked my body. All the grief, the anger, the exhaustion, all the disbelief of what had happened came pouring out. I hadn’t realised how much I was holding on to. I felt the women form a circle around me and felt what it was like to have a safe space held for me, allowing me to just be there in my wild tumult of emotion. I heard someone singing the most beautiful song and someone stroking my hair, hands touching me sending love and support”  Rosie

• Being the older sister of a stillborn baby and someone who had recurrent miscarriages I have somewhat specialised in giving this ritual after loss. I massaged my own mother, over 40 years after the loss of my baby brother, on the anniversary of his birth, and it was very healing. I wrote a blog about how closing the bones can help after baby loss.

Not just for new mothers

• I have given this massage to maidens, to new and not so new mothers, and to crones. I believe it can benefit anyone of any age or gender.

When is closing the bones done?

There are variations depending on the culture, but is it usually done within the first 4 to 6 weeks postpartum. The version I learnt is done as soon as possible after the birth, and with straightforward vaginal births, I have done it as soon as 24h post birth, and that’s when I found that it was the most beneficial. However it is never too late and I’ve seen women having very powerful healing experiences with it years after birth.

What does science says about it?

As you can imagine and as is the case with much traditional wisdom around the postpartum, there isn’t a lot of published research or written words on the subject. In the research for my book I found a couple of pieces of published evidence to back up this process:

French midwife Juliette Danis, chose to study the subject in her thesis. Juliette used a simple binding around the pelvis, applied the day after the birth for an hour. She used questionnaires to evaluate its effect on pain in the pelvic area on a group of 160 women. 64% of women described an improvement in their pelvic and perineal pain after the treatment. 79 out of 80 of the women who received the binding said they would recommend it. Juliette explains that the care given to the women after the birth using massages or wrapping has a positive effect both physically and psychically, and that it symbolically helps to redraw the contours of the body. 

Wrapping after the postpartum used to be recommended in the UK too. In the book ‘An Introduction To Midwifery’ (Donald 1915) the authors explain in detail how to bind the pelvis and abdomen and says that “The binder is used merely to give external support to the loose abdominal wall.”

To have some form of validation behind the techniques, I practised the techniques extensively with osteopath Teddy Brookes, who gave me some wonderful insight about the effect of each of the massage mouvements on the various joints and organs, how the body benefits from them, as well as reassurance about how effective and gentle they are. 

In conclusion

Closing the bones is a beautiful healing ritual, and the most powerful form of postpartum bodywork I know. I want as many people as possible to know about this. My vision is a world where postpartum bodywork becomes the norm once more, and closing the bones something every new mother expects and receives after birth.

Closing the bones is a postpartum ritual that is designed to help nurture  and heal a new mother. It usually involves a massage followed by a tightening of scarves around several points on the body. Depending on the culture it can also incorporate bathing and sweating rituals. At its heart, it is a process to bring the mother back to herself after the birth.

I first learnt Mexican and Ecuadorian versions about 10 years ago. Doing research over this time has shown me that it is not restricted to South America, and is present around the world. In this article I share the countries in which I have found versions of this ritual ,along with links illustrating this.

It makes sense to have the same practice around the world, because the changes new mothers undergo are the same regardless of culture. During pregnancy, the body undergoes tremendous modifications to accommodate the growing baby: the pelvis tilts and widens, the spine curvature increases, the abdomen stretches to accommodate the growing uterus, which in turn also pushes all the internal abdominal organs up. The ribs also flare up to make room for this. During the birth the pelvis opens. Then after the birth all of this has to happen in reverse: the uterus shrinks back to its pre-pregnancy size, and the abdominal organs descend back into place. 

Closing the bones rituals are designed to provide much needed nurturing, as well as speed up the healing process on a physical, emotional and energetic/spiritual level. New mothers are very open, as the bones and soft tissues are stretched and loose after the birth. On the physical level, the massage and the tightening helps to move the tissues around and support the process of moving from opening to closure.

New mothers are also open emotionally and spiritually, and the tightening of scarves around the body helps on this level too.  The wrapping helps us feel the contour of our bodies, provides a sense of being contained, and brings us back to ourselves. On an energetic and spiritual level, the ritual helps new mothers come back to themselves, and provide a much needed space to process the complex feelings and emotions that can accompany new motherhood.

American continent

• Mexico
  • The Mexican postpartum ritual that I learnt from Mexican midwife Naoli Vinaver includes a full body massage, followed by a steam bath (called a Temazcal), a period of sweating under blankets, and finally the tightening with rebozos around 7 points on the body.
• Ecuador
  • I learnt the closing the bones ritual from Dr Rocio Alarcon.
  • The ritual involves a rocking of the pelvis with a rebozo (or Manta as its called in Ecuador), followed by a massage of the abdomen, chest and arms, and then the tightening of scarves around the pelvis (or around several points around the body)
  • Gabi Pezo, a doula from Ecuador also shares this comment: Closing of the Bones (Encaderamiento) Fajada is something that has been practised for millenia in Ecuador. In rural parts of my country (Ecuador) Traditional Midwives have done this. 
• Colombia
  • My friend Laura Leongomez, a doula from Colombia told me the following: I learned this technique in Colombia where it is practised by different indigenous groups and traditional Afro-Colombian communities. 
  • Laura also introduced me to the Chumbe belt which is used during menstruation, pregnancy and the postpartum and was the inspiration for my womb belts.
  • I have heard accounts of various versions being practised in most countries in South America.

European continent

• UK
  • In an old midwifery book I found this reference to the use of a binder during the postpartum
  • “The binder should consist of a piece of stout calico, or other strong material, about 18 inches wide and 4 feet long. When applied, the lower border should reach a hand’s breadth below the widest part of the hips and should be drawn tightly and fastened securely with a safety pin or long straight pin, so that it may not work up above the hips. The middle part of the binder must be made sufficiently tight to give a sense of support, but the upper border should be rather lose as to not interfere with the patient’s respiration. The binder is used merely to give external support to the loose abdominal wall.”
• France
  • I found reference to postnatal binding in an old French medical dictionary, which talks about applying cotton on the belly then a bandage around the whole belly.
  • I have also talked to Doula Celia , who has done extensive research and found evidence of a European version of the traditional ancestral postpartum traditions, including closing the bones, called Le soin des matrones (Matrones being the equivalent of traditional midwives). Her instagram account is full of knowledge around these practices. (use google translate or AI for translation from French into your language). It includes a steam bath, a full body massage, and tightening of a cloth around the pelvis.
• Holland
  • Dutch friends mentioned an old fashioned binder called sluitlakens, and acquired such a wrap myself. It looks a lot like the traditional Malaysian binding, which is perhaps not surprising given the  colonisation of Malaysia by the Duch.
• Malta
  • A massage therapist friend has worked there and found reference to it being practised in the past
• Greece
  • Odile Tresch, an ancient Greece historian, mentions a traditional Greek postpartum belt. She has teamed up with a French seamstress to recreate it and she offers training in using it. 

African continent

• Morocco
  • I attended a workshop in London with Layla B who explained and demonstrated the process. The wrapping is preceded by some time in the traditional wet room/steam bath (called a Hammam), and the scarves used are called Kourziyas. I have also found reference to the Moroccan tradition in the thesis of French midwife Juliette Danis
• Somalia
  • I was the doula of a Somalian mother and her mother showed me how to do the binding after birth. I also met a Somalian midwife who told me the traditional shawl, called a Garbasar, is used in very much the same way as rebozos.
• Ghana
  • I met a new mother who told me of steam baths, vaginal steaming, and binding done with the sarong type fabric used to carry babies 
  • I have also found accounts of it in Ivory Coast, South Africa, and Uganda (from books, blog posts, and articles)
• Tunisia
  • The closing the bones massage and wrapping is done using Fouta towels (similar to Turkish towels)
• Mauritius
  • I massaged a new mother from Mauritius. Her grandmother was present and she told me the practice back home was quite similar to what I did.

Asian Continent

• Israel
  • An Israeli doula told me of finding out it was practised back home after learning the practise with me
• Afghanistan
  • This article shows closing the bones with cloths done in a very similar way to the Mexican ritual.
• Russia
  • There is a similar practice to the Mexican closing which is called seven locks. The text is in Russian but you can see the process in the video.
• India
  • I have massaged several Indian mothers who told me of similar practises.
•  Malaysia
  • The Bengkung belly binding treatment involves a massage, herbal paste applied to the belly and binding of the hips and belly with a long cloth.
  • A similar massage/binding combos called Jamu which origin from Malaysia is found in most of SouthEast Asia (Hong Kong, and Singapore in particular)
  • My husband is from Hong Kong and when I visited I found out that the Jamu massages are available in packages of 5, 10, 15 and 20 massages during the postpartum. My mother in law also showed me how she had been shown how to wrap herself with a towel in the hospital after she gave birth.
• Thailand
  • A mother who gave birth in Thailand told me how they wrapped her in the hospital the day after her caesarean.
  • I have also found evidence of uterine massage and binding in Vietnam (from midwife Juliette Danis’s thesis), and in Thailand, Cambodia and Burma wrapping (scientific papers)
• Japan
  • The binder used which is called a Sarashi. 

Here is a couple of other overview articles that cover the same overview topic as this blog post:

• Rachelle Seliga’s innate traditions article.
• Meg St Esprit Romper article.

I hope you find this as inspiring as I did, and if you know of other countries or stories, I would love you to share them so I can add them to this post.