Blog / The body
Practising after birth
A body that has given birth is not a body to be restored to a previous version. It is a body to get to know again, which is a much better project.
The language around postpartum recovery tends toward repair. Bounce back, get your body back, return to normal. It is a framing that treats the last year as damage, and it sets a woman against her own body at exactly the moment she would benefit most from being on its side.
The practice described on this site does something different. It is not restoration. It is acquaintance, with a body that has changed and is worth knowing as it is now.
When to begin
This is a question for the person looking after you rather than for a website, and the answer depends on how your birth went, on healing that only someone examining you can assess, and on things no article can know.
Ask them directly. Then, when you have a yes, begin far more gently than you think necessary.
In the meantime, breathwork asks nothing of the body and is available long before internal practice is. Lying with a hand on the low belly, breathing low, is a genuine practice and not a placeholder for one.
The map has changed
Expect that, and expect it to be disorienting for the first few sessions.
Sensation is often distributed differently. Places that were clear may be vague, and occasionally the reverse. Some women describe a sense of more space, others of unfamiliar tightness in specific spots, others of a general numbness that is more like static than absence.
This is information rather than verdict. The first weeks of practice are for mapping what is there now, without comparing it to a remembered version, which is the hardest instruction on this page and the most important one.
The comparison trap
The next time you notice yourself measuring against how things used to be, try one substitution. Instead of asking whether this is as good as before, ask what is actually here.
The second question has an answer. The first only has a verdict, and verdicts do not help a body relearn anything.
Which size
A larger egg is frequently more useful postpartum, which surprises women who assume the opposite.
More surface area means more contact, more sensation and more for the pelvic floor to register and respond to. When the map is unfamiliar and sensation is patchy, unmistakable input is exactly what the practice needs. A small egg asks for a precision that has not been rebuilt yet.
Yoni egg sizes covers the reasoning in full, and it applies with extra force here.
How to structure the first month
Presence before effort, for longer than usual.
Spend the first two or three weeks doing nothing but lying still with the egg in place, ten minutes at a time, tracking what registers and what does not. No lifting. This feels like not practising and it is the practice.
Then add the gentle lift, at a smaller effort than you would have used before, with a release twice as long. Four repetitions rather than six. Finish with stillness.
Two or three sessions a week. Skip any week that asks too much, and there will be several.
The four week sequence in the exercise guide is a reasonable structure to follow, taken at half speed and with each week given two.
Feeling, and the timing of it
Emotion surfaces readily in this period, and it does not need a dramatic birth story behind it to be legitimate.
A body that has been through something enormous, in a season with very little sleep and very little unclaimed time, is a body with a great deal moving through it. Emotional release covers what to do when it arrives during practice, and the short version is: stop, breathe, let it be wordless, and look after yourself afterward.
If what surfaces is persistent rather than passing, or if it sits heavily across days rather than moving through, that is worth taking to someone rather than practising through. There is nothing to prove here and no version of this where doing it alone counts for more.
The practical obstacle
Time, and specifically uninterrupted time, which is the scarcest thing in the house during this period.
Lower the standard rather than abandoning the practice. Five minutes counts. Two minutes of low breathing while feeding counts. A session that gets interrupted after four minutes still happened. The women who keep something going through this year are the ones who let it be small rather than the ones with more discipline.
What women describe
The most common report is not about strength. It is about returning to occupancy.
After months of a body that belonged substantially to someone else, ten minutes that belong entirely to her is described by a great many women as the first thing that felt like her own in a long while. Sensation follows, usually gradually, over months rather than weeks.
Several also describe the practice becoming the place where they noticed their own exhaustion first, which is exactly the noticing that self love is built on.