Class 3: Release

Hi, my name is Georgia and this is the third class in a six part series on c-section and traumatic birth recovery. On this class, we're going to focus on releasing. So I've got two tennis balls rolled up in a sock and we're just gonna roll out some tense spots in our bodies. So I want to start this session with a poem that's really meaningful to me and it has really helped me process a lot of the trauma that I went through in my birth. The guest house, this being human is a guest house every morning and new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they're a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep through your house, emptying it of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight, the dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Okay, so let's take a moment now and find a really integrated breath. At this point we want to start to activate the transverse abdominis and coordinate it with our pelvic floor. This breath will help us build a rebuild, a strong core.

So find a place seated comfortably where you can find your sitting bones really anchored and let your spine lift and be tall. We'll place one hand the thumb around to the back of the rib cage and your fingers just wrap around to the front of your rib cage and the other hand can go just below your belly button to the side. From here, I want you to think of a nice long, deep breath into the web of your hand. And as you exhale, start to think of a very gentle compression. Almost like you're pulling up a pair of spanx and tightening up your middle. As you breathe in, feel a three dimensional breath, expand into your hands, and as you exhale, very gentle compression of that same space.

I have one more deep, full three-dimensional breath in almost the way a balloon expands evenly in all directions, and as you exhale, gently feel the entire space compress. From here. Let's talk about our pelvic. Our pelvic floor needs to be able to release and tighten. It's not going to be effective if you can just do one and not the other. So the image I'm going to give you today is that of sliding doors.

So if you can imagine your pelvic floor, that Hammock of muscles that lives right at the base of your pelvis, just like sliding doors, I'll use my hand as an example. As you breathe in to the hammock or into the pelvic floor muscles, I want you to imagine the sliding doors gliding open. And as you exhale, feel the sliding doors come together. As you inhale, feel the sliding doors glide open, and as you exhale, those sliding doors glide together. Try that one more time. Big Breath into expand.

And as you exhale, those sliding doors glide together. Let's take a moment and try both the transverse abdominis activation with the pelvic floor. Let's get them coordinated a little bit here. So as you breathe in, two things, feel the sliding doors open and that balloon inflating three dimensionally. And as you exhale, that gentle compression as the sliding doors come together, big breath in, expand your balloon, the sliding doors open, and then exhale, sliding doors come together. As you compress the abdominal space. Gently, one more big breath in the balloon expands the doors open, and then as you exhale, the doors come together.

This space gently activates. Let's start to use this breasts in the next series of classes. All right, let's grab our tennis balls wrapped in a sock and we'll start some body rolling. Let's start at our feet. So bring yourself down to the floor, placing the balls down.

Whenever you're doing body rolling, it's a good idea to move your body over the balls rather than moving the balls over your body. This will give you more control and you'll get a deeper shearing sensation. So I'm doing small circles right along the arch of my right foot and then I'm going to step and then release pressure and stepping onto it. And then releasing and press really feel your toes as they open up. Good. And as you keep doing this, you're going to think of your Fascia, that body suit that surrounds your entire body.

And every time you press into it, the Fascia reacts by letting go a little bit more. Okay? All right, from here, let's switch feet. So starting with little circles, there's so many nerve endings on the bottom of your feet. This is a really nice place to start.

Okay, good little circles. And then let's step gently into the balls and then release. And then stop. Feel how your toes spread a little wider as you put pressure into the arch of your foot step. Then good and step. And really so personal here, you want to make sure you're hitting the spot that feels good for you and there shouldn't be any pain. Good. All right, so let's find our way down and lie down on the bed.

Bring your balls with you. Remember to when you bring yourself to lying, to lie onto your side first, and then transition onto your back. So let's take the balls right to the very base of your tailbone. So I'm balancing my hips directly on top of the balls here and I'm just going to start to Swish my tail from side to side, just going right and then left. Trying to feel the shearing feeling of my skin over the balls you go side to side. Really letting my hip tip one way and then the other breathing naturally and fully can we just want this to feel good?

You can move the balls down a little bit or up depending on what feels most comfortable for you. From here I'm gonna take the ball, I'm going to place a just underneath my right glute and I'm going to put a little bit of massage into that. Doing a bit of a hip roll as I go. Okay. Breathing in three-dimensionally. And as I exhale, I want to feel a little tension through the abdominals as well as some awareness and activation through my pelvic floor.

[inaudible] going over to the other glute, doing a little hip roll. Remember just to find your own sweet spot where it feels good. Body rolling is so personal. I'm going to give you a bunch of ideas where to roll, but important that you search your body for your own points that feel really good. Yeah.

All right. From here I'm going to move the balls up in between my shoulder blades, so to do that, remember to roll onto one side, then roll back onto your back. So I've got the balls and I'm just going to adjust again to a place that I feel most comfortable. For me that's the balls are going to be pretty high underneath my shoulder blades and I'm going to start to do a couple of arm arcs, reaching my arms up by my ears for a big breath in. As I exhale I'll feel the tightness of my abdominals and my pelvic floor like that sliding door closing and then arking my arms all the way down towards my hips.

Arms go out to the sides like inhale three dimensionally and as I exhale like a pair of Spanx, just putting pressure on the abdominal space as my pelvic floor activates and pulls together. Inhale, arms are wide and back by the ears. And then exhale. Abdominals gently activate pelvic floor closes and arms sweep down to the hips. Let's do that one. One more time. Big Breath in. Expand like a balloon. Feel your pelvic floor opening like the sliding doors.

Exhale, gently activate your abdominals as your pelvic floor closes. Good, so to come off of this, I'm going to roll gently onto my side. I'm going to take the balls up and place them just at the base of my skull. In this position, I'm going to hold them with my hands so they don't roll away and I'm going to Tuck my chin all the way down towards the top of my throat. And then in the hail as I lift my chin up towards the ceiling, exhaling getting that tightness in the abdominals, my palving floors active, my Chin tucks and deeply, I'm putting a lot of pressure into the balls or as much as it feels good.

So inhale, as you lift your chin, exhale. As you tuck the Chin back in, you're going to find a couple more holding the balls so they don't escape. Just fine. What feels good for you? You might move the balls up, rate to the back of your head, do a little side to side, feeling your neck muscles lengthen and release. With every breath. Try closing your eyes and just follow the of your body. There's no wrong way to do body rolling.

Inhaling, one way, the expansion, exhaling the other way. Feel of really gentle activity through your abdominals in pelvic floor. Okay, great. Let's come all the way back to center and remove the balls from behind your head. All right, so take a moment and explore into your own body. Think about where your tight, what tension is creeping into your body.

From here, I'm going to roll over onto one side to press myself up to seated. I'm going to take the balls to the front of my chest. All right, so I'll hold the ball stele and allow my arms to go in a big circle. I mean an inhale, feel 3d breath in as my pelvic floor expands and opens. Then as I exhale, I gently tighten and bring the pelvic floor together. Inhaling up and back. Exhaling, feel a little connection and coordination between the abdominals and the public floor. Let's switch sides, holding the ball still right at the front of my chest.

I inhale my arm arcs up and back and I exhale as I tighten my abdominals and my pelvic floor titans. Inhale up and back. Exhale, coordinating the activity of abdominals and pelvic floor. One more big breath like this. Good. And then exhale from abdominals. Pelvic floor closes. All right, from here, let's go into a scar massage.

So first scar massage will need a toothbrush and either some oil or you can use lotion. Any sort of cream is good. We'll start off using the toothbrush for desensitization. When I start this, I want to go below the incision first and do just little circles. Okay. There's so many layers that have been cut through here that are stuck together.

So now I'm going just above the incision, little gentle circles and we want to make sure that we are working to set the layer of the skin, just giving it a little bit of brush. So after going around the entire outer perimeter of the incision, I'm going to do little brushes, right? My scar is there a pretty gentle to start with and I want to make sure that the scar is completely healed. There should be no oozing or bleeding. Yeah, and it shouldn't hurt after this lovely brushes with my toothbrush when I go up and down and then I'll go across. Good.

From here, I'm going to just put my brush aside and I can, I'm working with this skin layer, so really quite gently going to start with my fingers doing little circles again, just below the incision. Slightly more pressure than I did with the brush. Still along the outside of the incision here. Yeah, little circles. Trying to unstick the skin layer from all the layers below.

Good. And then do a couple more little circles on the outside around the entire scar. Okay. Little circles. So now I've gone around the entire outside twice with my little circles. I'm going to do shearing action. So taking both my hands, I'm going to move one hand up, one hand down.

And then the other way right across the scar. And I'm going to try and do that on a bit of a diagonal one way, and then a diagonal the other way. I want to make sure that I'm breaking up all the scar tissue in every direction. So this shearing action is going to help us unstick the layers. Yeah.

Okay. And notice I'm not doing this with any oil or cream quite yet. Okay, good. So I've gone in all directions across scenes, decision, shearing up, down, and I can only good. Now I'm going to take rate on either side of the incision and I'm gonna Pinch and pull up a little bit. Pinch and pull. And here I'm going to give it a little wiggle, pinch and pull up. Just gently trying to unstick these top layers from each other.

Pinch and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. And I'm not just going to go up and down, but I'll go round, side to side in every direction. Yeah, you'll notice you'll feel it when it has rough spots that are stuck together and you'll start to feel when it loosens up a little bit. So again, I'm just working on the skin layer right now. Quite gently, working on the top layer, picking up the skin on either side of the incision, giving it a little wiggle, pinch little circles across the entire length of the incision. So this skin layer is rate stuck onto the Fascia, so you might feel some shooting up your arms down your legs. It can really travel in strange places. Good. So we've done some pinching and wiggling around.

Okay. Okay, so this is where I'm going to take my oil or cream and I'm going to put just a few drops, long main incision. Can you really use anything here? And I'm going to start to do a deeper massage underneath the incision to start with just getting into the layer below the skin. And then I'm going to go above the incision here.

Can doing these little circles with my fingers above and below the incision. But this time working a little bit more deeply, trying to get into the muscle layer. So once I have gone around the outside of the incision quite deeply, I'm going not to the point of pain. Yeah, I'm going to start to do that shearing again. Again, this time just a little bit deeper. I'm shearing, pulling skin up and down the entire length of the incision up and down, and I'm going just deeper than the skin feeling where my fingers will release and roll easily and where they catch a little bit and where the scar tissue is really built up. All right, so I've done that. Nice deep shearing.

Now I'm going to go a little bit wider when I do my pinch. Take a little bit more skin and try again. Get to that muscle layer, right pinch and give a, so I take a little bit more skin. I pinch on either side of the incision and pulling it upwards. Little circles, little wiggles around, pinch and lifts.

So just trying to get below the skin into the muscle layer. Yeah, so now we're going to go even deeper. I want you to really consider your own comfort level here and how new the scar is into the organ level of your stomach. Massage your scar massage. In this. I'm going to start my little circles very slowly and quite deep.

Again, stop. If there's pain, it should never feel painful, but I am going to go quite deep around the outside of the scar below little circles all the way around and above. The deeper you go, the more slowly you should be moving. So in the skin layer you can go a little bit faster. The muscle layer, you'll slow down a little. And for this organ layer you should be going very slowly here. Now go for a shear as deep as I feel comfortable.

One Hand Up, one hand down, sharing across the incision, and again, just as deep as you feel comfortable. Yeah, pulling the layers apart. Now instead of pinching this time, I'm just going to go a deep massage across and then back up, down and across and back up and my fingers can roll or walk deep and across the incision. Okay? Take your time.

Move mindfully, slowly, and it should feel good. Don't rush this process. Scar tissue can change for up to two years. So you should do this for up to two years after your c-section. Yeah. Good. At this point, you can start to be more gentle and come back up to us circular massage through the muscle layer.

Yeah. And then slowly lightening your touch across little circles across the scar until you get back up to that skin layer. And here, just walking your fingers across the incision feeling for any lumps or stickiness, move gently across this skin layer. Good. And then end just by gently brushing your hands across the incision. We can do this every day and you'll see a nice difference in the appearance of the scar, but also the Fascia that runs across your body will loosen and release. And I've noticed a really big change in back pain.

So I definitely recommend doing this every day and checking in with your incision often and enjoy.