Womb Massage Through the Cycles of a Woman's Life
For much of a woman's life, the womb receives attention because something is happening to it.
We begin menstruating.
We have pelvic exams.
We may try to prevent pregnancy and later try to achieve it.
There may be ultrasounds, fertility treatments, pregnancy, birth, loss, surgery or medical procedures.
Eventually there is perimenopause. Menstruation ends. And for many women, the conversation about the womb seems to end with it.
There is remarkably little space in between for simply tending to this part of the body.
That is part of what draws me to Womb Massage.
Not because I believe every woman needs her womb worked on. Not because massage can correct every pelvic complaint. And certainly not because the womb needs to be continually improved.
But because the lower abdomen and pelvis are part of a woman's body.
And they are worthy of touch.
The belly has not always been left out
Abdominal massage isn't a new wellness invention.
Across generations and cultures, hands-on traditions have included the abdomen in women's bodywork. My own work has been influenced particularly by studies in Mayan abdominal massage, sobada and traditional approaches to tending the belly and womb.
These traditions carry their own histories and cultural contexts, and I don't believe they should be blended together into a vague idea of “ancient wisdom.”
But studying them has given me another way of looking at the body.
Modern massage often concentrates heavily on the places people expect to have massaged: the back, shoulders, neck, hips and legs.
The abdomen can become almost forgotten territory.
Traditional bodywork reminded me to look there.
To notice.
To include the belly in the conversation.
What is Womb Massage?
At Moonseed, Womb Massage is entirely external hands-on bodywork through the abdomen and pelvis. There is no internal pelvic work.
The work is informed by massage therapy as well as my training in Mayan abdominal massage, sobada and traditional women's bodywork.
Depending on the woman and the reason she has come in, a session may include the abdomen as well as the hips, sacrum, low back and surrounding areas.
There isn't one sequence that every body receives.
We have a conversation and make a plan.
Then I pay attention to what I find beneath my hands and what makes sense for the body on the table that day.
The menstrual years
For some women, the lower abdomen is simply a place they become aware of when menstruation arrives.
There may be cramping, fullness, heaviness, tension through the abdomen, aching through the back or sacrum, or the familiar feeling that the entire pelvic area is asking for attention.
Massage is not a treatment for conditions such as endometriosis, adenomyosis or fibroids. Pelvic pain, unusual bleeding and other concerning symptoms belong in conversation with an appropriate medical provider.
But receiving medical treatment for a condition doesn't mean a woman cannot also want massage.
Those things can exist alongside one another.
Sometimes Womb Massage is less about treating a diagnosis and more about allowing an area associated with discomfort to experience something else:
Warmth.
Movement.
Touch.
Attention.
Fertility without promises
Womb and abdominal massage have long been associated with fertility, and women trying to conceive are understandably drawn to this work.
But fertility deserves honesty.
Massage cannot promise pregnancy.
It cannot determine the outcome of an IUI or IVF cycle.
And I don't believe a woman going through fertility treatment needs another person implying that if she does exactly the right thing with her body, she can control the outcome.
Trying to conceive can already turn the body into a project.
Cycles are tracked. Hormones are measured. Tests are taken. Appointments are scheduled. Procedures happen.
Womb Massage can offer a very different experience of the same body.
For a little while, there is nothing to measure.
The abdomen isn't being examined.
The womb isn't being asked to produce an outcome.
The woman gets to receive.
Sometimes that is valuable enough.
Pregnancy changes the landscape
Pregnancy changes the abdomen in an extraordinary way.
Tissues stretch and shift. Posture changes. The growing uterus changes the physical landscape of the body.
And after birth, everything doesn't simply return to where it began.
The postpartum abdomen has its own story.
There may be stretched tissues, scars, changes through the abdominal wall, pelvic-floor concerns, a Cesarean birth, months of feeding and carrying a baby, interrupted sleep and an entirely different relationship with the body.
Traditional postpartum practices have long recognized that birth is not the end of the event.
There is an afterward.
A period of recovery.
A body that has done something enormous.
Postpartum bodywork doesn't need to be about “getting your body back.”
Your body never went anywhere.
It may simply deserve some attention after spending so much time attending to someone else.
The body remembers surgery too
A woman's abdominal history may include more than pregnancy.
Cesarean births.
Hysterectomy.
Laparoscopic procedures.
Gallbladder or appendix surgery.
Fibroid procedures.
Other abdominal or pelvic surgeries.
Scars become part of the body's landscape.
Once tissues are appropriately healed and medical restrictions have passed, massage may include work around scars and the surrounding tissues when appropriate.
Again, the goal isn't to erase the body's history.
A scar is evidence that something happened and that the body healed.
Bodywork can simply acknowledge that this territory exists too.
And then comes menopause
This may be the part of Womb Massage that interests me most.
Because once fertility ends, women can become almost invisible in conversations about the womb.
No more periods.
No more pregnancy.
No reproductive goal.
So what would be the point?
The point is that the womb is still part of the body.
The lower abdomen is still part of the body.
The pelvis is still part of the body.
A woman doesn't stop deserving attention there because she is no longer fertile.
Perimenopause and menopause can also change the way a woman experiences her body. Hormonal shifts can affect tissues, sleep, temperature, energy, recovery and physical comfort.
The body may feel unfamiliar for a while.
I don't think the answer is always to try to make it feel twenty-five again.
Sometimes the work is learning the body that exists now.
Womb Massage can be part of that exploration without needing to make a claim about fixing menopause or “balancing hormones.”
It is simply another way of tending to the female body as it changes.
There can be emotion here too
The abdomen and pelvis can carry complicated associations.
Pregnancy.
Birth.
Infertility.
Pregnancy loss.
Surgery.
Sexuality.
Menopause.
Aging.
For some women, this part of the body has been examined many times but rarely touched in a way that feels comforting or restorative.
For others, it has largely been ignored.
I don't assume that touching the abdomen will release stored emotions or uncover trauma. Bodies and human experiences are far more complex than that.
But I do understand that this can be personal territory.
Womb Massage should never require a woman to surrender ownership of it.
Touch is discussed.
Boundaries matter.
And there is always room to decide that something doesn't belong in the session that day.
Traditional knowledge beside modern understanding
One of the things I value most about this work is that I don't have to choose between traditional knowledge and modern anatomy.
I want both.
I want to understand muscles, fascia, scars, the abdominal wall and the structures of the pelvis.
I also want to remain curious about the ways women have tended one another's bodies for generations.
I don't need traditional practices to compete with medicine in order to value them.
And I don't need massage to become medicine in order for it to matter.
There is room between those worlds.
Much of my work lives there.
The womb does not need a reason
Perhaps this is ultimately what Womb Massage has come to mean to me.
We don't need to wait for pregnancy to touch the belly.
We don't need to be trying to conceive.
We don't need to have a diagnosis.
We don't need to be young.
We don't even need to have a particular complaint.
The womb and belly can receive massage simply because they belong to the body.
That feels both very old and strangely radical.
Women spend so much of their lives being taught to monitor, manage, hide, flatten, strengthen, diagnose or improve their abdomens.
Womb Massage asks something different.
What if, for a little while, we simply paid attention?
Moonseed Massage & Bodywork | Inverness, Illinois
Womb Massage and bodywork for women in Barrington, Palatine, Arlington Heights, Hoffman Estates, Schaumburg and the surrounding northwest suburbs.
