Prenatal bodywork
Your best preparation for birth is to practice getting in sync with the physiologic activities that you and your baby are naturally designed to do. Relieve discomforts of pregnancy as your baby grows inside and prepare for an easier birth. Tend yourself and your baby well now with essential bodywork and movements for pregnancy and birth. Here you can find support for the emotional journey of your pregnancy and becoming a mother.
Make the session your own
Sessions can take many forms, based on your needs and desires. You can learn movements for pregnancy comfort and active labor. You can connect deeply within yourself, with your baby, and with your partner as you choose. You can focus on emotional release or mindfulness of movement for birth. A comprehensive array of prenatal bodywork therapies support you along the way.
What are your intentions? Goals? Concerns?
- More comfortable pregnancy
- Better position of baby
- Easier, shorter birth
Alignment sessions
- Help your changing body adapt as you go about everyday life
- Learn Body Ready Method® activities for core strength and suppleness
- Make space for baby to line up well with your pelvis for birth
- Develop alignment awareness practices that uphold you for life
Somatic release sessions
- Release emotional holding patterns before your birth
- Connect with yourself & your baby
- Develop awareness practices for well-being
Relieve tension for more comfortable pregnancy
Prenatal discomfort is an important signal that your body is out of alignment. If you are in pain during your pregnancy, get help early for comfort now and prepare for an easier birth. Myofascial therapy relieves muscle and joint discomforts. If you have had chronic back, hips, torso or pelvic pain, even before pregnancy, combine myofascial bodywork with prenatal alignment work. If you have chronic headaches, combine myofascial sessions with craniosacral therapy.
Take an active role in your alignment
Your alignment shifts throughout pregnancy as your baby grows and is shaped in daily use of your body. With a Body Ready Method® assessment, you can learn how you are moving and holding your body. A personalized home program guides you in the activities that bring balance for yourself and your baby for increased comfort and strength now, and during labor. Combine hands-on myofascial bodywork with your movement program to help your body adapt with suppleness to the requirements of carrying and birthing your baby.
Better alignment for better position of baby
Relax space in your body so your baby can move easily – for both of you – as she grows throughout your pregnancy. Body Ready Method® activities open space around your belly and pelvis. When your baby is not restricted by imbalanced bones & muscles, she will be able to move more easily into a good position for birth to begin. You’ll be more comfortable, too! For best outcomes, bundle with myofascial therapy.
Better alignment for easier birth
Labor is shorter when your body is aligned, your uterus is balanced, and your baby is lined up well to enter your pelvis. During pregnancy is the best time to create room for your baby to move through the birth canal. Combine alignment activities with myofascial bodywork so that during birth your baby can most easily navigate through the close fit of your pelvis.
Begin Body Ready Method® alignment activities and bodywork early in your pregnancy for release of your pelvic muscles and fascia. Continue moving while laboring as a prime strategy for an easier, uncomplicated birth for you and your baby.
Balancing for breech or sideways positions
Starting at 32 weeks babies arrive at the position that they will take for the beginning of birth. If your baby is breech or lying sideways, arrange sessions for the breech balancing program to make space to encourage your baby to rotate to an optimal head down position. Myofascial hands-on support with your home program activities can make all the difference in how your baby takes part in birth.
Connect with yourself
Pregnancy can be an emotional time, with concerns as you look towards your birth. You can connect deeply within yourself to find calm. In a somatic myofascial bodywork session you can unwind old patterns of emotions that may be stored in your body; such as anxiety or fear instilled by cultural, family, or personal experience.
You may be on an emotional roller coaster. If you have experienced a prior difficult birth, birth trauma, other trauma, or abuse; you may find that these affect your pregnancy, or could potentially stall out labor. Family pressures may also take their toll. Troubling events in the world may impact you. Old habits of thought and emotion may not be working well for you anymore. Awaken your own inner resources with somatic meditations in body awareness to cultivate mindfulness and inner peace for a practical home program.
Connect with your baby
Your baby is here now, inside. You can get to know your baby as you foster deep connections in body awareness practices. You can experience internal pathways and flow states between yourself and your baby. Coming into physiologic sync with your body and your baby is good practice in listening well internally to carry out the natural design of labor.
Understanding the movements and journey of your baby during birth can give you a direct experience of connection with them as an active partner for the birth. Somatic myofascial sessions help you experience your baby in new ways while in utero.
Belly mapping
Learn to identify the sensations you’re feeling with the placement of your baby in late pregnancy and develop your own awareness with a Spinning Babies® Belly Mapping session.
Heart to Heart to Heart Session
Together, you and your partner can take an inner journey through physiologic pathways to deepen your connection with each other and with your baby in utero. In a guided somatic session, together you can explore your shared world and relax in quietude with your baby.
More prenatal offerings
Combine myofascial bodywork with Spinning Babies® Parent Class
Breastfeeding classes prepare you for your newborn’s arrival
What to expect in a prenatal bodywork session
What Catherine brings
Catherine brings a warm, empathetic presence to families with broad experience in somatic therapy and education for over 25 years to women and young children. She specializes in support for childbearing women and babies, with extensive experience as a perinatal bodyworker, doula and breastfeeding counselor.
Catherine offers somatic myofascial therapy as a Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner, provides guidance alignment and movements for birth as a Certified Body Ready Method Pro® and serves families as a Spinning Babies parent educator. 
Catherine is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist ( ISMETA ) with decades of mindfulness and movement awareness practice. Her somatic support of compassionate witnessing with hands-on bodywork upholds women throughout the arc of their life stages.