Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1315831
48 m a s s a g e & b o d y wo r k j a n u a r y/ fe b r u a r y 2 0 2 1 punishment for eating the apple. In reality, it seems to be part of the "punishment" for walking upright. So, as a species, we have a harder time than most mammals giving birth. Added to that ancient genetic disadvantage, we can add the modern elements of industrial urbanization and the medicalization of birth, both of which lead to many of the difficulties that now show up at our door. THE MEDICALIZATION OF BIRTH Childbirth is a natural physiological process, done without medical assistance for most of our animal and human history. Women help women, of course, so midwifery and the use of doulas have ancient roots, despite being currently marginalized. The concept that "birth is a disease, delivery is the cure" is a very recent one. It couples with the idea of death, which again is a natural physiological process that has been turned into a "failure" by modern hospitals. Check the records: How many death certificates read "natural causes?" Not many these days; it is nearly always "renal failure," "hepatic failure," "pulmonary failure." I have every intention that my death will be a complete success, so I am not going somewhere that presupposes it will be a failure. There is simply no doubt that the female pelvis is subject to more "insult," as it is called, than the male counterpart. Between pelvic exams, menstrual cycles, birth control, terminations, miscarriages, molestation, shaming, and male-centered obstetrics, women decidedly bear the greater burden in pelvic issues. Much of bodywork applies equally to both male and female pelves—opening the adductors, easing the deep lateral rotators, and extending the hip flexors, essentially balancing an upright tentpole over a couple of stilts. 1 But no man (so far) grows a baby in his abdomen, and no man will ever (I'm on safer ground on this one) push a baby through his pelvic floor. Part of my surety on this has to do with sexual dimorphism of the human pelvis. Although there are overlaps, men tend toward an "android" type of pelvis with a heart-shaped birth canal that is ill-suited to childbirth. Leaving aside whatever advantages the android shape provides to men, the gynecoid shape is seen as the most propitious for childbearing, with the anthropoid and platypelloid as viable though occasionally problematic variants (Image 1). The entire process of bearing a child can leave lasting changes that do not resolve with those two great healers—time and movement. It is to those mothers with persistent problems that the following thoughts and practices are dedicated. We hands-on practitioners are neither surgeons nor physicians, but we can add two additional elements—tissue release and restorational awareness—that are also powerful stimulants to healing. The rounder birth canal and wider hips that (taken as a whole) characterize the female gender in every race, worldwide, does not mean childbirth is easy for any of them. The human ape has more trouble giving birth than any other primate because of the changes in the hips required by our upright stance and bipedal gait, which diverged from the bonobo and chimpanzee some 6 million years ago. The Bible gets to it early: in Genesis 3:16, God curses Eve—"in pain shalt thou bring forth children"—as part of the 1. Four pelvic types delineate different shapes in the bir th canal. A human baby spirals down through the deep pelvic bowl, usually emerging with the back of the head and then one shoulder coming around the lower arch of the pubic bone. Illustration by Emily Morgan. Gynecoid Android Anthropoid Platypelloid