The Essential Role of Somatic Movement for your Postpartum Mental Health By Anuta Bondarenko

By Anuta Bondarenko, Body Awareness Teacher, Prenatal Movement Specialist, Certified Body Ready Method Pro®, Birth Doula

Postpartum time is insanely intense. Your exhaustion, excitement, overwhelm, happiness, uncertainty, unconditional love, sadness, loneliness, stiffness, fatigue, confusion — you name it – they all coexist and you end up needing to hold it all. You will find that no amount of baby gadgets and things can help you feel supported, empowered, intuitive and able to expand your capacity to show up for the demands of this time. When it all gets to be too much, our mental health can take a big blow.

What can help is building your village of support (your postpartum doula, your family and friends who show up and support) and specialists like lactation consultants, pelvic floor physio, a chiropractor, and building up your emotional resilience as well as your physical strength by mastering the skill of sensing your body. That’s where somatic movement comes in – the gentle, focused way of noticing and controlling subtle movements in the body, learning to feel where your body is in space and how your body parts relate to each other. This kind of movement helps us regulate our nervous system, move with greater confidence and get stronger physically and emotionally.

Here is an example. Your shoulder and neck feel stiff and fatigued from feeding the baby. Your breath feels shallow and stuck in your chest. This kind of breath signals to your nervous system that you’re in high alert mode, your shoulders and neck tense up more and so it turns into a self-perpetuating cycle of tension. Tension shrinks us both physically and mentally decreasing our ability to show up for both challenges and pleasures of our life with the new baby.

And here is how somatic movement can help.

During a session you learn to sense and move your shoulder blades. Once you are able to move them  in various planes, you start improving the health of the surrounding tissues and releasing tension in and around your upper back. The rib cage underneath the shoulder blades is now able to move more freely and allow for deeper breaths with less effort. Your ribcage can now move in a way that allows your diaphragm to reach its full range of motion, accommodating fuller, deeper, more satisfying breaths, which in turn makes your nervous system feel safer as the layers of tension start melting away. 

Somatic exercises can be done for various parts of the body and help you feel in tune, connected and grounded in your body. Each session leaves you feeling more alive, able to show up for your life with the new baby.

Anuta offers Therapeutic Movement at Oma on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Learn more about her and her Body Awake sessions HERE.