Treat Your Postpartum Body the Way You Treat Your Newborn

I received a question recently that really gets to the heart of how I think about postpartum recovery:

You talk about the pelvic floor guarding under stress, about hypopressive breathing reaching the involuntary nervous system directly. Can you walk us through the link between the state a mother is living in day to day and the physical integrity of her core, and why you can't white-knuckle your way to a regulated body or a healed core?

Treat your postpartum body the way you treat your newborn baby.

That was honestly my first thought when I read this question.

When your newborn is overwhelmed, dysregulated, crying, or struggling to settle, you don't look at her and think, “She needs more discipline. She needs to try harder. She needs to get herself together.” 

You bring her closer. You support her. You soften your voice. You slow your breathing. You rock her. You feed her. You change her environment. You give her nervous system the sensory input it needs until, little by little, she feels safe enough to settle. You don't demand regulation from her. You create the conditions that allow regulation to emerge.

And then we turn around and treat the postpartum mother in almost exactly the opposite way. “Push through. Get back in shape. Try harder. Strengthen your core. Control your belly. Do your Kegels. Get your body back in 6 weeks.”

Meanwhile, this woman may be sleep deprived, healing from birth and possibly surgery too, feeding another human around the clock, carrying a baby all day, experiencing enormous hormonal shifts, and learning an entirely new identity. And we're surprised that her body is guarding?

Now imagine how different the postpartum experience would be if a mother treated her own body the way she treats her baby. 

Instead of demanding that her body hurry up, perform, tighten, shrink, and “get back,” she became curious about what it was asking for. 

Instead of responding to pain, tension, leaking, heaviness, exhaustion, or a belly that won’t flatten with frustration or more force, she asked: What are you trying to tell me? What do you need from me right now?

She would create space before adding pressure. She would nourish before depleting. She would support before demanding strength. She would recognize guarding not as something her body is doing wrong, but as communication.

She would stop treating her symptoms as problems to overpower and begin recognizing them as signals guiding her back toward the way her body was designed to function.

And perhaps most importantly, she would understand that healing, just like regulating a newborn, isn't something you can force on a timeline.

You don't make a baby regulate. You provide the right environment, the right input, over and over again, and trust her nervous system to respond.

I believe the postpartum body deserves that same trust. Because the intelligence required for healing isn't something I give a woman. It already exists within her.

My work is to help mothers remember that innate intelligence- to teach them how to give their bodies the input they need to return to the reflexes, rhythms, and relationships they were designed to use automatically. I’m not trying to overpower the postpartum body into functioning differently. I’m helping a woman create the conditions that allow her body to remember what it already knows.

And this is where your breath becomes so profound. Breath is not something we have to teach the body to do. It has been there all along- moving through us automatically, connecting our conscious intention to systems that operate far beneath conscious control. 

And because every breath changes pressure, movement, and neurological input within the core, it gives us a way to communicate with that innate intelligence again and again, roughly 20,000 times every day.

Your body holds the intelligence. Your breath gives you a pathway back to it.

And that is ultimately what I want every mother to understand: You are the healer. Your breath is the medicine.

And this isn't just a philosophy. We can see it physiologically. Your body isn't separate from your nervous system. 

The state you live in becomes the state your body begins to organize around. 

Stress has a physical shape. You can see it in the body. The breath gets shallow. The rib cage becomes more rigid. The shoulders rise. The jaw clenches. The abdomen braces. The pelvic floor grips. The internal state begins to become a physical strategy.

And motherhood gives us plenty of reasons to develop that strategy: You're feeding a baby around the clock. You're waking repeatedly through the night. Someone is crying while someone else needs breakfast. You're carrying children, car seats, laundry baskets, groceries. You're working. You're managing a household. You're thinking three steps ahead all day long, while your own needs often sit somewhere at the bottom of the list.

A mother's nervous system can spend enormous portions of the day receiving the message: “There is no time to soften or relax. We have to keep going.” 

And the body listens. This is where I think our conversation around pelvic floor “tightness” needs to become much more sophisticated.

A tight pelvic floor is not necessarily a strong pelvic floor. 

Very often, it is a guarding pelvic floor. And guarding isn't a failure. Guarding is an intelligent response to the environment the body perceives.

If a woman is chronically bracing, holding her breath, gripping through her abdomen, collapsing through her posture, or living in a persistent state of sympathetic activation, her pelvic floor doesn't exist outside of that experience. It's part of the same nervous system. The same pressure system. The same protective strategy.

So when I find a pelvic floor that won't let go, my first question isn't necessarily:

How do we make this muscle relax? 

I want to know: What is this muscle responding to? 

Is she managing excessive pressure from above? Is her abdominal wall bracing? Is her diaphragm moving well? Is her nervous system living in a state of protection? Is she borrowing stability from her pelvic floor because she isn't receiving it elsewhere?

If the pelvic floor is gripping in response to pressure, instability, or a nervous system that perceives the need for protection, simply commanding it to “relax” misses the intelligence behind the contraction.

The body doesn't guard for no reason. Guarding is a strategy.

And if guarding is a strategy the nervous system has chosen because it perceives a need for protection, you can't simply command the body to abandon it. You have to change the input that made the strategy necessary in the first place.

This is precisely why you cannot white-knuckle your way into a regulated nervous system—or a healed core. Think about the contradiction of telling yourself: “RELAX. Calm down. Stop gripping. Breathe normally.” The harder you consciously try to force relaxation, the more effort you're introducing into a system you're asking to soften.

You cannot bully the body out of protection. But you can give the nervous system enough of the right input that it no longer believes it needs to protect you in the same way.

Just like your baby. When your baby is crying and dysregulated, you don't yell, “RELAX!” You change the input. You hold her. You rock her. You soften your voice. You change her position. You regulate your own breath. You create an environment that tells her nervous system, You are supported. You are safe. You can soften here.

News flash: your body responds to the same principle. You don't force your body into regulation. You give her different input, and you allow her physiology to respond.

And this is where hypopressive breathing becomes so powerful in my work.

I'm not using breathing simply because slow breathing is “relaxing.” I'm using it because breathing is one of the extraordinary places where the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems meet.

You don't have to consciously tell your diaphragm to contract roughly 20,000 times a day. Your involuntary nervous system handles that for you. But you can consciously influence the way you breathe. That intersection gives us a doorway into physiology we cannot simply command through willpower. And that's fundamentally different from saying, Take a deep breath and calm down.

When we change a woman's breathing mechanics, we’re changing the mechanical and neurological input her body is receiving. We’re changing the movement of her diaphragm. The shape and mobility of her rib cage. The pressure relationships between her thorax, abdomen, and pelvis. The input into her Core Myofascial Reflex. And ultimately, we’re changing what her abdominal wall and pelvic floor are being asked to respond to. 

And with hypopressive breathing specifically, we're creating a low-pressure environment within the core that gives the myofascial system, pelvic floor, and organs a unique opportunity to respond differently.

In Hypopressive Training, we are not telling the pelvic floor to let go. We are changing the environment that made it feel like it needed to hold on in the first place.

That distinction is enormous. Because so much of conventional rehabilitation is built around conscious commands: “Contract this. Relax that. Brace here. Squeeze there. Hold for ten seconds.” 

But the systems responsible for nervous-system regulation, posture, breathing, pressure management, and reflexive core support are not waiting around for our conscious instructions. Their work happens automatically.

So if we want to change an automatic response, we need to speak to the body in a language the involuntary nervous system understands. Breath is one of those languages.

And there's another layer to this that I think is incredibly important for mothers:

Regulation does not mean creating a life in which you are never stressed. 

That's not motherhood. Your baby is still going to cry. You're still going to have terrible nights of sleep. Someone will spill something as you're already late for an appointment. You're still going to carry children, groceries, work responsibilities, and emotional loads that don't fit neatly into a wellness routine.

The goal isn't to become some perfectly regulated woman floating through motherhood in a permanent parasympathetic state.

The goal is adaptability. Can your nervous system mobilize when life requires it, and then come back? Can your pelvic floor contract when you need support, and then let go? Can your abdomen create tension when you lift, and then soften again? Can your core create pressure when pressure is useful, and decompress when it isn't?

Pelvic Floor Health isn't the absence of tension. It's the ability to move fluidly and automatically between tension and release.

Your pelvic floor should be able to create tension when tension serves you and release it when it doesn't. Your nervous system should be able to mobilize when you need energy and return when the threat has passed. Your core should be able to create pressure when you need force and redistribute that pressure when you don't.

The goal isn't relaxation. The goal is responsiveness. And this is where nervous-system regulation and core rehabilitation become the same conversation. Both are ultimately about flexibility of response. A healthy system doesn't get stuck in one strategy. It adapts to the demand in front of it, and then changes when the demand changes. That's what we're restoring.

And I come back again to the relationship between a mother and her baby.

A newborn doesn't learn regulation because you explain regulation to her. She experiences it. Again and again and again. She receives the input of your touch, your voice, your breath, your warmth, your rhythm, your presence—and gradually her nervous system learns the pattern.

I think the postpartum body deserves the same grace. 

We give her repeated experiences of better breathing mechanics, lower pressure, improved alignment, decompression, movement, and release. We're not demanding a different response. We're giving her enough experiences of a healthier pattern that eventually, her nervous system begins choosing that pattern for herself.

And motherhood itself gives us thousands of opportunities to practice it. You don't necessarily need another hour added to your day for nervous-system regulation or core rehabilitation. You're already breathing while you nurse your baby. You're breathing while you're driving to school. You're breathing while you're making dinner. You're breathing while you're carrying your toddler upstairs. You're breathing in the middle of the moments that actually challenge your nervous system and your core. Those moments are not interruptions to the work. They are the work.

So rather than asking mothers to white-knuckle their way toward healing (to try harder, brace harder, exercise harder, while somehow becoming calmer) we need to give her body repeated experiences of a different state.

A little more space. A little less pressure. A fuller breath. A pelvic floor that discovers she doesn't have to grip every second of the day. A nervous system that learns she can mobilize without living permanently in protection. And with enough repetition, what initially requires intention begins to become automatic.

That's the destination for me. Not a mother who becomes exceptionally good at controlling her body. A mother whose body no longer needs so much conscious control.

Because ultimately, a regulated nervous system and a functional core have something profound in common: Neither is rigid. Neither is passive. Both are responsive.

So, treat your postpartum body the way you treat your newborn. 

Don't punish her for struggling. Don't demand that she perform better. Don't try to force her into submission. Give her a healthy environment. Give her loving input. Give her the opportunity to adapt.

And then trust the extraordinary intelligence of a body that already knew how to transform once to create life. You don't have to teach her how to be intelligent. You have to help her remember. 

The body that transformed so brilliantly for pregnancy and birth is entirely capable of transforming again for motherhood.