What does Possums or NDC mean by evolutionary bodywork?

What are the principles of traditional bodywork practice?

When using the term traditional bodyworkers, I'm referring to osteopaths, chiropracters, craniosacral therapists and myofunctional therapists. I acknowledge there are significant differences between these disciplines or practices, and a range of expertise and qualifications. However, traditional bodywork practices have a number of fundamental shared principles or understandings about the human body in common. These principles have been increasingly accepted and encorporated by mainstream musculoskeletal medicine throughout my life-time.

You can find out why Complementary and Alternative Medicines and my own profession have much to learn from each other here.

Here are the basic principles that traditional bodywork practices have in common.

• There is functional interconnectedness between all parts of musculoskeletal system, faciliated in part by the continuities of fascia or connective tissue.

• Dysfunction in one part of the body may create dysfunction elsewhere in the body.

• Spinal alignment is of foundational importance to the body's healthy function.

• There is a relationship between stress, tissue tightness, dysfunctional movement, and pain.

• Healing from neuromuscular dysfunction and pain requires change in neural and movement patterns, supported by practice (exercises) and mindful movement.

What is meant by evolutionary bodywork?

Evolutionary bodywork is a term which describes the kind of bodywork which is fundamental to the Possums (or NDC) programs, and which builds on and acknowledges the vital insights of traditional bodyworkers.

Evolutionary bodywork is a translation of the latest research from evolutionary biology and evolutionary anthropology into practical strategies for helping babies who are born into busy 21st century families, so that the baby flourishes developmentally, and the parents flourish too, enjoying a life that is as easy as possible.

Rather than treating the infant as a tabla rasa, or blank slate, upon which we perform exercises in order to make baby's sensory motor system function optimally, evolutionary bodywork views the infant as a self-organising process unfolding out of millions of years of evolutionary history, which is carried in his genetic code. This self-organising process occurs in the context of the mother's or parent's body, as a single biological ecosystem.

You can find out why breastfeeding goes best if we think of the mother and baby as a single biological ecosystem here.

If sensory motor problems emerge, evolutionary bodywork proposes that our most powerful and fundamental intervention is to set up an environment which supports the infant's self-organising, self-correcting, developmental unfolding.

Evolutionary bodywork draws on the same key principles which have been taught to us (and to my own profession) by the traditional bodywork therapies. But evolutionary bodywork acknowledges that the Homo sapiens infant is most accurately conceptualised as an 'exterogestate foetus'. That is, she is still developing neurologically at a rapid rate, similar to her rate of development inside the womb, except that now she is outside the womb, with a biological expectation for abundant contact with her mother's or carer's body for at least the first nine months after birth.

Infant development occurs in the repetitive daily interaction between the baby's body and his mother's body, the baby's body and the external environment, in which musculoskeletal alignment, healthy movement patterns and neural pathways unfold or mature.

You can find the NDC or Possums steps for optimal support of infant neuromotor development here.

For a bodywork intervention to be effective and help support spinal alignment, postural symmetry, and painfree efficient neuromuscular function (including of sucking), the bodywork therapy needs to be applied to the parent and baby as a single biological system, activating the parent-baby ecosystem's self-organising principles.

You can find out why you and your breastfed baby are best considered as a single biological ecosystem here.

Evolutionary bodywork is not coming in from the outside with our fingers and hands to fix, improve, or make the infant's neuromuscular systems and fascia work and develop. Evolutionary bodywork calls forth the new human's two-million-year-old competence, calls forth the great genetic powers which have been shaping life on Earth into this strange and marvellous primate, the human. We can trust the breathtaking mystery of the small child which has been two million years in the making, trust the unfolding of evolutionary competence - as long as we have the skills to help the child's parent provide the right context in which the little one self-correct and flourish if problems arise.

What is the crucial difference between evolutionary bodywork and traditional bodywork?

There is a vital difference 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.

Here's the difference.

In traditional bodywork therapy, the practitioner either does something with their fingers or hands to your baby, or you are required to do something with your fingers and hands to your baby. The baby may be placed on a couch or surface, or may be placed upon your lap, for an intervention or for exercises. Your baby is treated as a single and separate biological system, whole in himself.

When evolutionary bodywork therapy is applied, you and your baby are treated as one whole biological system or ecosystem, dynamically and functionally interconnected. Either

• Your whole body is interacting with the whole of your baby's body, or

• If an NDC Accredited practitioner is helping you, the practitioner (who is trained as an evolutionary bodywork therapist) will be helping you both function together, at the same time as your whole body is fitted into your baby's whole body.

I've developed the concept of evolutionary bodywork because it's important that any bodywork methods you use support the unfolding of both your breastfeeding relationship and your little one's neurodevelopment are the most effective and science-based kind of bodywork possible.

Because the Homo sapiens infant and her carer or parent are, from an evolutionary perspective, a single biological ecosystem, bodywork principles will only be effective for babies when applied to this single biological system of the parent and baby, physically fitted together.

Evolutionary bodywork uses the energy of baby's biological drive (or intention or emotion) to practice movements and develop functional neuromotor patterns

The pioneering work of child psychiatrist Dr Stanley Greenspan has shown that utilizing a child's drive, working with the intentions and desires which rise up in the child, affects healing and shapes new patterns of interaction, laying down new neural pathways.

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 our toddler's or older child's behaviours.

You can find out more about shaping your small child's social behaviours in a heart-connected way here.

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: setting the baby up 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. (This amount of time spent breastfeeding is actually highly variable. It may be more, it may be less. It's best not to count, since duration of breastfeeds don't tell us if baby is getting the milk he needs.) If a woman is using the gestalt method, that's four hours of practicing suckling and swallowing in the context of spinal alignment, and symmetry of bodily and oral 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 may recommend 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.

• Why passively stretch 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?

• Why rub the back of the baby's tongue when a mouthful of 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.

Another kind of fitting together of parents' and babies' bodies occurs with carrying. The way the parent and baby fit together and interact physically is the kind of elemental bodywork therapy human babies need over and over throughout the day and night for best development. You are offering your baby bodywork in your physical interactions, minute by minute, hour by hour.

There are four kinds of evolutionary bodywork in the Possums or NDC programs

In evolutionary bodywork, the interaction between the whole of your body and the whole of your baby's body, driven by purposeful intent (e.g. to feed, to carry, to dial your baby down, to communicate to and fro) is the bodywork. Therefore, in the Possums programs you'll find four main forms of evolutionary bodywork.

1. The gestalt method of fit and hold, for painfree and effective milk transfer. Evolutionary bodywork offers whole-of-ecosystem help for a breastfeeding mother and her baby. Any breastfeeding problems play out inside this single, physically connected (mouth-on-nipple) biological system, or during attempts to support this single, physically connected (mouth-on-nipple) biological system.

2. The NDC evolutionary bodywork approach to optimal infant motor development (eight steps), including for prevention or repair of plagiocephaly and torticollis. This includes rich and diverse opportunities for motor development, including of symmetric and functional neuromotor patterns of movement and sucking. It also includes building to and fro 'reciprocity chains' of parent-baby interaction (and social communication). You can find out more here.

3. Frequent and flexible feeding from an inflamed lactating breast can be conceptualised as a form of evolutionary bodywork for breast inflammation.

4. The implications of evolutionary bodywork for infant sleep including place of sleep and safety (considered in The Possums Baby and Toddler Sleep Program).

Applying the Possums programs and evolutionary bodywork is definitely not the same as giving your baby what is sometimes referred to as 'extreme' parenting. I'd like to suggest that if someone tells you Possums is extreme parenting, they are not up-to-date with the latest neuroscience or evolutionary biology, and how this knowledge is applied in the Possums programs!

Evolutionary bodywork, drawing on the principles of traditional bodywork, understands that all parts of the body are connected. Evolutionary bodywork is concerned with functional connectivity. Evolutionary bodywork offers the kind of physical treatment which aims to help the whole of that single biological ecosystem, for instance, of the breastfeeding mother and her baby, heal, self-organise, and flourish.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge Isabelle Coffey RN IBCLC NDC Accredited Practitioner who coined the term 'evolutionary bodywork' in 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 her consent, I've gone on to use this term in the Possums programs.

Recommended resources

• You can find out about the NDC evolutionary bodywork approach to optimising your baby's motor development here.

• You can find out about why it's best to think of you and your baby as a single biological system here.

• You can find out how evolutionary bodywork helps repair breastfeeding problems here.

You can find out about the eight steps of the NDC evolutionary bodywork approach to protecting a baby's motor development here.

• You can find out about the gestalt method, an evolutionary bodywork approach to fit and hold in breastfeeding, starting here.

• You can find out about evolutionary biology and the Great Synaptic Flourishing of your infant's brain here.