Can Bodywork Prevent Long Labors and Unnecessary C-Sections?
In September of 2025 I was apprenticing with a midwife on a client in her first pregnancy who I also did prenatal bodywork and postpartum care with. She had been laboring for 18 hours without cervical progression (also called a “stalled labor” or “asynchronous contractions”). In practical terms, the contractions weren’t resulting in bringing baby into the canal because he wasn’t putting enough central pressure with his head on the cervix, due to the way he was lying at an angle in the womb. I was reminded about how during her session with me, her linea alba had an interesting curve that reflected some torsion in the uterus. As we created a grounded container that night– initiated by cacao medicine and surrounded by a supportive birth team– the midwife watched as this first-time mom moved through her contractions, puzzled by why they hadn’t increased in intensity yet.
Noticing baby was sideways, we worked with releasing the hip to help baby shift back out of the pelvis, massaging the womb, and then moving her to hands and knees to do more work in helping baby shift more centrally. After patiently working with mom’s body and her baby, I felt a little wiggle and big shift in his shoulder from the left side of her body into the middle. Her dilation at this point was only 2 cm so we helped mom– who was feeling understandably tired, emotional, and disappointed– to bed before we headed home until it was time for the final stages.
Her water broke around 15 minutes after we left, and less than 6 hours later her partner called frantically. In the background you could hear the moans of the first waves in deep pushing. Soon after we arrive back to their home we feel the baby in the canal and help mom into the birth pool— around 40 minutes later her healthy baby was born wearing a slight hematoma on the side of his head that had been misaligned against the cervix (the contractions had created a vacuum after so many hours of labor).
The centuries-long devaluation of traditional healers and hands-on work has led us to a loss of vital skills. While midwives remain in short supply, an even shorter supply exists of birth-workers who practice the necessary attunement and manual work to support a baby’s descent. Bringing back these skills is vital to prevent unnecessarily long labors and trauma to babies and mothers.
Of course, we can never measure what would have happened if we didn’t do something. But it is likely that without helping baby reposition mom may have labored for days, entering a state of exhaustion that could have led to a swollen cervix and an inevitable C-section. I want you to imagine this work not as the forceful or painful manipulation that may have first popped into your mind, but as a gentle synchronicity between skilled bodyworkers, a mom who trusts the women supporting her, and a baby who is felt and listened to intuitively.
Birth can be this way.
There is a calling, a HUGE need, in returning to this kind of work…
and we desperately need more Birthworkers and midwives who are willing to step into the depths of it.
To change the world, we must first change the way babies are born
—Dr. Michel Odent