What are the main differences between traditional bodywork therapy and Possums evolutionary bodywork?
Evolutionary bodywork and traditional bodywork are built from the same principles but look very different
There are vital differences between traditional bodywork therapy and evolutionary bodywork therapy, which means that these two forms of bodywork don't look at all the same when they're applied to breastfeeding babies.
When it comes to infant care, a lot is happening in traditional bodywork therapy circles these days, with many explanations given to you about why bodywork will help with breastfeeding, cry-fuss, sleep and other infant care problems. Lots of big conferences, organisations, and textbooks are devoted to it. It's being increasingly integrated into standard education of and assessment of International Board Certified Lactation Consultants. Unfortunately, this isn't evidence-based.
In contrast, people might think that applying evolutionary biology to your baby doesn't require much doing at all!
I've watched up close in my professional life-time as various approaches which lack a genuine evidence-base catch on and become the focus of international conferences and whole organisations and the education of lactation consultants and breastfeeding medicine doctors - until the wave passes. I've seen this happen for multiple breastfeeding-related diagnoses and concepts over the past four decades. All sorts of research is cited to show benefits - but unfortunately as health professionals we usually haven't been trained to make sense of clinical research in a way that is rigorous.
Instead, Possums applies the sciences of the future, which include evolutionary biology and complexity science, and harnesses these new sciences to support the dramatically developing 'global workspace' of the infant Homo sapiens brain. Evolutionary bodywork supports the unfolding of both your breastfeeding relationship and your baby's neurodevelopment in the most effective, science-based way possible.
What are the crucial differences between traditional bodywork therapy and Possums evolutionary bodywork?
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In traditional bodywork therapy, someone (either you or the practitioner) does something with their fingers or hands to your baby. The baby may be placed on a couch or surface or upon your lap for the intervention or exercises. Your baby is treated as a single and separate biological system, whole in himself, which requires fixing.
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When evolutionary bodywork therapy is applied, you and your baby are treated together as one whole biological system or ecosystem, dynamically and functionally interconnected through body-on-body contact. Evolutionary bodywork is built on the principle that to be an effective intervention, bodywork needs to be applied to the entire mother-baby or parent-baby biological ecosystem, working together intimately. Either
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Your whole body is fitted into and interacting with the whole of your baby's body, or
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An NDC Accredited practitioner helps you and your baby work out how to function in sync together, at the same time as your whole body is fitted into and interacting with your baby's whole body.
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Evolutionary bodywork harnesses the energy of baby's innate biological drivers (that is, intention or emotion) to practice movements and to develop functional neuromotor patterns
The pioneering work of child psychiatrist Dr Stanley Greenspan has shown that utilizing a child's emotional drive, that is, working with the intentions and desires which rise up in the child, shapes new patterns of interaction, laying down new neural pathways. Today, building on this, neurodevelopmental researchers propose that the best way to change a child's patterns of behaviour is to stimulate the child's inner motivation to connect emotionally with a caring adult or with something that they desire. Heart connection, or emotional connection, is vital for the best possible social and developmental outcomes, as we shape a toddler's or older child's behaviours.
Similarly, there has been a change in neuroscientists' thinking about how to best support healthy sensory motor and movement pattern development in our babies. Possums or NDC proposes that the most effective way to change movement patterns in sucking, for instance, is in the context of the baby's hardwired desire to feed: creating the best possible physical context so that the act of breastfeeding itself, over and over throughout the day and night, lays down the new neural pathways and motor patterns.
Your baby might spend around four hours breastfeeding in a 24 hour period. (The amount of time a woman spends breastfeeding is actually highly variable. It may be more, it may be less, and it's usually best not to count, since duration of breastfeeds don't tell us if baby is getting the milk he needs.) If a mother is using the gestalt method, that's four hours of baby practicing suckling and swallowing in the context of spinal alignment and symmetry of motor and oromotor function, driven by the little one's powerful bological desire to be at your breast.
You might compare this to the few minutes of exercise that traditional bodywork recommends you do with your fingers inside or outside your baby's mouth. Even when performed multiple times a day, these exercises don't occur in the baby's functional context (breastfeeding) and can't compare with four hours of active exercise in the biologically normal functional context of the breast.
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Why passively stretch or massage baby's upper lips and cheeks, which we know doesn't actually change tissues or function, when a moment's playful interaction, with smiles and chuckles, does the same?
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Why rub the back of the baby's tongue when a mouthful of nipple and breast tissue (without breast tissue drag) fills up the baby's mouth and changes the shape of the baby's tongue throughout the breastfeed?
Evolutionary bodywork therapy is bodywork in the baby's biologically normal context, as part of a life with baby which is as easy and as enjoyable for the whole family as possible.
Recommended resources
What does Possums mean by evolutionary bodywork?
Protecting your baby's sensory motor development
How to nurture the flourishing of your baby's or toddler's brain
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Isabelle Coffey RN IBCLC NDC Accredited Practitioner who coined the term 'evolutionary bodywork' during one of our NDC Live Network Hours. At the time I had written and spoken about holistic bodywork, whole-of-system bodywork, and the NDC evolutionary approach to bodywork. Isabelle suggested simply calling the Possums or NDC approach to motor development 'evolutionary bodywork'. With Isabelle's consent, I've gone on to use this term that she coined in the Possums programs.