The transition into pregnancy is truly an incredible journey of every aspect of a woman's body, body, and spirit. Frequent Prenatal Massages allow that transition—growing and expanding one's whole life to hold space for this new being—to occur in the most natural, graceful, and relaxed way.

Research concludes that prenatal massage can curb anxiety and depression, relieve muscle aches and joint pains, and improve the birthing experience.

The feeling state that massage brings to our bodies is one of surrender, trust, letting go, hope, enjoyment, and more. Honestly, who needs this more than a pregnant woman?

From many of the birthing women I know, including my partner, these are many of the feelings that they have called on during their birthing experience. Prenatal Massage is incredibly helpful for this and so many other aspects of pregnancy.

I apply Swedish Massage strokes for prenatal massage sessions because it addresses the most needs of a pregnant mother, which are musculoskeletal changes as well as circulatory changes from the hormonal shifts that occur during pregnancy. Swedish massage is well known as a circulatory therapy, as all the strokes draw blood back into the heart. It is deeply relaxing and just plain wonderful.

A baby in the womb is essentially existing in the hormonal reality of the mother. And that can go in either direction: relaxed and blissful, or stressed and tense. Massage is an incredible opportunity to guide that hormonal reality to the relaxed and blissful state.

The hormones that are released during massage therapy are dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin (as well as endorphins). These are the best of the best when it comes to self-produced feel-good chemicals.

When it comes to optimal health, the state we feel during massage is the state that we all want to be feeling and especially that we want our babies to be feeling. Relaxed, at ease, surrendered, taken care of, touched in a caring and intentional way. When a mother gets to experience that regularly during pregnancy, the baby gets to experience that regularly as well!

This sets up a baby to have a healthy, attuned limbic system in particular, but in turn affects literally every developmental aspect of a child. What an incredible chance to foster your child's existence.