What makes this course unique?

The Breech Release is a process-focused, holistic workshop blending body, mind, and soul at the intersections of conscious and unconscious understandings. We utilize a breech body balancing session for skills that can be applied in many areas of birthwork practice while maintaining an awareness of how we are in relationship to those who have sought our services. Trauma-informed care is an important thread throughout this workshop allowing us to dive into deeper conversations of pacing, care, and consent.

What modalities are used for this work?

We blend 4 ways of awareness in this workshop from 4 different perspectives. We honor Intuition, modern understandings of anatomy and birth, personal observations of our senses, and birth and bodywork knowledge. 

Prior to the course, we blend video, anatomy review, and journaling preparation. We add experiential activities and hands-on touch practices when in person and utilize learning modalities like art and storytelling to anchor these connections. 

Do you have Continuing Education for this course?

We offer 14 hours CEUs through MEAC (for midwives) and NCTMB (for massage therapists). Depending on the instructor, Board of Registered Nursing of California may be available for in person activities only. 

Who are we?

There are currently 3 instructors for this course including Jamie Mossay, Emma Moreland, and Nicole Morales.  We are midwives and /or bodyworkers. For more information, please visit our About Us page.

What are your influences?

We have been influenced by so many people!  Birthing our own babies, doing bodywork for breech and other reasons, and being at births themselves have been our biggest influences! 

Also: Gail Tully, Clarissa Estes, Pam England, Gil Headley, Adrienne Caldwell, Blandine Calais Germaine, Orthobionomy, Barral Workshops, many many midwives, Traditional Midwives, and the rebozo itself has taught us (we are not teachers for it). 

The families with whom we have worked are our primary influences. 

What is the format of this course? 

Video and coloring book preparation followed by in-person classes for 2 days with experiential learning including bodywork. 

We are also offering optional follow-up opportunities with access to materials, community, and mentorship. (extra fee)

Who might take this course?

Midwives and other birthworkers who do prenatal bodywork. You must have been involved in some type of bodywork, even if palpating babies, for over a year. 

If I’m a doula can I take this course?

We cannot speak for various people’s scopes of practices. Some aspects of this course will not be applicable for your work, but if you identify as a bodyworker and have at least one year experience, this course will be applicable for prenatal, birth, and even extend to some of your postpartum skills in discussing births and doing bodywork.

What is this course NOT?

This course is not a typical lecture course with cookie cutter protocols guaranteeing babies will turn head down. 

This course is NOT a course for learning how to do External Cephalic Versions. 

This course is NOT outcome-focused although we acknowledge that its tools and resources can assist in increasing and opening opportunities for babies to go head down.

What is this course? 

This course is about authenticity, honesty, and the power of presence for birthworkers.

This course moves beyond biomechanics into the physiology of the mother/birthgiver, the baby, the practitioner, and the outside influences of one’s community.

This course is out-of-the-box thinking using breech to inform us for all babies.  (#breechforheaddownbabies)

This course involves care and resources that stimulate both the left and right parts of the brain.

This course is about the power of touch, presence, and observation of relationship.

This course is about learning to listen.

This course cares for the pauses driven by observational patience. 

This course is about the bridges and connections of the unconscious to the conscious in both body and mind.

This course’s foundations are in understanding how birthworkers possibly perpetuate trauma with judgements embedded in our language, the dismissal of the baby’s and mother/birthgiver’s experiences, and the dismissal of even ourselves and our intuition. 

This course centers the person who is pregnant.

This course moves beyond rigid ideology making our experiences more rich and complex in a time where mass media avoids complexity and nuance.

This course assists us to help with previous trauma, grief and sadness of the moment. 

This course increases the practitioner’s fluency between caring for breech and head down babies. 

How is The Breech Release different from the Spinning Babies^® Aware Practitioner workshops?

The Spinning Babies^® Aware Practitioner workshop is presented through the lens of their service-marked Three Levels Solutions^SM and includes advanced applications of the Three Balances^SM and additional bodywork that supports that paradigm. The four-day workshop includes embodied consent practice, activities to cultivate quality of touch, and detailed prenatal anatomy review. 

The Breech Release workshop is based on the pathways described in the book, The Breech Release, which are Validation and Listening, Bodywork, Positioning, and Gravity and Movement. 

So, yes, there is some overlap of concepts with the Aware, but with the two workshop days, preparation materials, and potential ongoing support throughout community portal with the  Breech Release, there are some distinct differences:

• • • • Because our first pathway is Validation and Listening, we devote workshop time to practicing counseling and dialogue skills specific to clients of breech presenting babies.   We find this skill essential for working with breech clients as our primary intention is to amplify clients’ inner knowing rather than simply educate them about their options. 

• • • • We spend more time embodying and practicing approaches for using the Placeholder technique (described in detail in the book) and discussing intention and scope with the technique. This technique is the culmination of all four pathways. 

• • • • For those who have already taken the Aware, some of the body balancing /soft tissue releases will feel familiar, however we are approaching their implementation through a lens of inner knowing and apprenticeship rather than prioritizing the “steps of the technique.” We also emphasize anatomical continuities and constellations throughout the body. 

• • • • All of the preparation videos are updated with new drawings and anatomy and a coloring book, and all specific to breech fetal and maternal anatomy. 

• • • • The Breech Release includes additional introspective processes like art creation, storytelling, role playing, working with a belly layers model, and of course, giving and receiving touch.  The workshop is an initiation of sorts and an unlearning of some of the rigid rules put forth by modern birth culture of “what to do for breech” (and head-down babies for that matter).

• • • • We also have an option to join our “Community Portal” (opening later this year) which will include monthly virtual live calls to discuss case studies, offer Q and A, guest presenters, bodywork demonstrations, new anatomy knowledge and questions, consent practice, and other topics presented.

Why breech?

Breech is a marginalized portion of birthwork affecting 1 out of 25 pregnancies at term. 

Breech turns the practitioner upside down allowing them to see something differently than a head down baby. 

Breech in some places is where the appropriation of midwifery by medicine began and it is the place in which we return in our restorative processes.

With few resources for the breech community, the need is immediate.

Many who are breech and desiring a vaginal birth are already in trauma by feeling forced into having a cesarean birth. 

Breech birth itself is torn apart even by those in the medical field caring for and looking at the details, when this quality care, in fact, can be extended to all babies who participate in their births.

What things might I be ready to do immediately after taking this course? 

Be a better listener for those you serve, including their baby! 

Open your expectations for touch where less is more and knowing when more is more. 

Hone your ability to sense your connection to other’s experiences and nervous system

How many hours is this course?

This course has 15 in person classroom hours. If you are using CEUs, we will only have 15 available.  However, we do ask that people spend 2-3 hours reviewing preparatory materials prior to the workshop. These include videos and self-reflections. 

What other workshops do you suggest I take that are related?

There are so many workshops, books, and places to learn. You will take bits and pieces with you to build your unique combination of care practices. 

Here are some we have taken that over time have influenced us: 

Birthing from Within, Touch from Within, Spinning Babies®, Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner Course, Rebozo Courses from indigenous and traditional birthworkers, Birth Story Medicine, Breech Basics, Breech Without Borders, Breech Birth Network, Abdominal massage courses, Barral, Orthobionomy courses, storytelling courses, art for birthwork courses, prenatal massage therapy, family constellation courses, non-violent communication, nervous system awareness, death and dying, anatomy and physiology, dissection courses …

Of course, our biggest teachers are getting back to the basics of learning from observation and presence and the families we serve themselves. 

What other projects are you working on right now?

Keep a look out for announcements on our upcoming books.

We are also still instructors for Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner Courses and more!

This production cannot exist without the support of a dear community of valued birthworkers in whom we believe deeply. They prop us up to also help us believe in and take care of ourselves. Without this exchange, we wouldn’t be doing this work. 

We ask for respect as we grow this work and care for the lineages of how we came into relationship with this material. Please do the same even as you change, embody, and grow your own work. 

© ReStory Birthwork and diagrams, images, and quotes from the book itself.

© Creative Commons