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 upon which traditional bodywork practices build.

• 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 new term which describes the kind of bodywork fundamental to the Possums (or NDC) programs. Evolutionary bodywork is a translation of the latest research emerging from the fields of evolutionary biology and evolutionary anthropology into practical strategies for helping babies born into busy 21st century families, so that the baby flourishes developmentally and so that parents flourish too, enjoying a life with their baby that is as easy as possible. Evolutionary bodywork draws on the same key principles which have been taught to us (and to my own profession) by the traditional bodywork therapies, listed above.

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. This self-organising is also shaped by cultural heredity, that is, systems of cultural knowledge about how the parent body best interacts with the infant body.

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. 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.

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 develop and function effectively. 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 her evolutionary competence. As health professionals, our task is to help parents provide the physical context in which a baby's sensory motor systems can self-correct and flourish if problems arise.

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.

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

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

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.

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, and requiring fixing.

When evolutionary bodywork therapy is applied, you and your baby are treated as one whole biological system or ecosystem, dynamically and functionally interconnected. Evolutionary bodywork is built on the principle that to be an effective intervention, bodywork needs to be applied to the whole mother-baby or parent-baby biological ecosystem, closely working together. 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 I believe it's important that any bodywork methods you use support the unfolding of both your breastfeeding relationship and your baby's neurodevelopment arethe most effective and science-based kind of bodywork possible.

Evolutionary bodywork uses the energy of baby's biological drive (or 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 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: 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. (This amount of time spent 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 woman 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 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 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.

How evolutionary bodywork is offered 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, is driven by purposeful intent by both your baby and yourself (e.g. to feed, to carry, to dial your baby down, to communicate to and fro). You are offering your baby bodywork in your physical interactions, minute by minute, hour by hour. Here are elements of the Possums programs which I frame as 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) includes strategies which are hypothesised to prevent or repair of plagiocephaly and torticollis. You can find out more about the eight steps of the NDC approach to infant motor development here. Rich and diverse opportunities for motor development include

   • Symmetric and functional neuromotor patterns of movement and sucking

   • Building to and fro 'reciprocity chains' of parent-baby interaction (and social communication)

   • The fitting together of parents' and babies' bodies with carrying.

3. Frequent and flexible feeding from an inflamed lactating breast can be conceptualised as a form of evolutionary bodywork for breast inflammation - at a time when women are regularly advised to perform therapeutic massage of lactation, which is unhelpful.

4. Possums adopts the latest findings of evolutionary anthropologists when discussing infant sleep place of sleep and safety (considered in The Possums Baby and Toddler Sleep Program).

Applying the Possums programs and evolutionary bodywork is not the same as what is sometimes referred to as 'extreme' parenting. If someone tells you Possums is extreme parenting, they're not up-to-date with the latest neuroscience or evolutionary biology, and how this knowledge is applied in the Possums programs to make life as easy as possible for families.

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 helps 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.