Closing Ceremonies
Most cultures around the world have an innate understanding of the vulnerability of a new mother and the need for her to be cared for and nurtured to recover from growing and birthing her baby. Postpartum care emphasises the following postpartum wellness areas in the 45 day period:
- Rest
- Nutrition – Which include specific postpartum cultural meals and herbs to encourage recovery.
- Massage – Belly massage, leg massages and belly binding
- Warmth – Warm baths and therapeutic steams
- Family/Community – Comes together to both help the new mother and celebrate the new baby
Closing of the bones is one such postpartum healing ceremony. Created to nurture the mother after her passage through giving birth, and her journey into motherhood, setting of a sacred space, and way to nurture the other physically and emotionally as she goes on her journey into motherhood.
The body, mind and spirit have to open and let go from a deep place to bring a new soul into the world. With the release as women a lot of prana is given to the birth process. We open ourselves to the most dramatic life experience and sometimes traumatic experience.
The closing the bones treatment involves the use of a traditional shawl called a “Rebozo”, to rock and articulate the mother’s hips, followed by a complex abdominal and pelvic girdle massage using a warming oil, and then finished by tightly wrapping the cloth around the woman’s hips.
