Click here to I’ve started working on my fascia. It’s making me quite mindful of birth support.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the fascia is the thin, stringy membrane on the surface of all our muscles and organs. It supports them, as well as our tendons and ligaments. When someone talks about “connective tissue,” they’re talking about the fascia.

Basically, it’s a Ziplock bag holding all our bits in place.

And it gets tight. A lot of what we call “muscle pain” is actually stiff, inflexible fascia. It needs stretching. And massage. One way of accomplishing this is using a foam roller and your body weight to work that fascia.

I’m focusing on my sides, my glutes, and my calves. Sides and glutes are tender. But my calves?

Oh, my calves. You wouldn’t think that laying your Achilles tendon over a stiff foam roller and just relaxing into it could hurt this much. I certainly wouldn’t think so.

Yet there I was, lying in the yoga room at the YMCA, trying to convince myself to relax into this roller. A minute in, I realized: my face was contorted in pain. My shoulders were up by my ears. And my lizard brain was screaming, “We are in danger! Run away!”

In my head, my doula brain whispered, “Relax your forehead.”

I did.

It helped.

Then my doula brain whispered, “Drop your shoulders.”

I did.

It helped.

Did it make the pain go away? Not exactly. What it did was help the rest of me recognize that I was not in danger. I felt the “fight or flight” instinct release. I was still uncomfortable, but I knew I could stick with it. Slowly, I relaxed and let gravity do its job.

Then I moved the roller half an inch. And it started all over again. The renewed agony. The scrunched-up face. Telling myself to relax my forehead, drop my shoulders.

Helping my lizard brain believe I was safe.

Now, I admit I only had to do this for 20 minutes. But if I needed to keep going, I could have. And when I go back tomorrow, it will hurt just as much (fascia repair takes a while, and you have to stick with it). But I know I can cope. Because I have the tools. The same tools that help during labor. At the last birth I attended, the mother came into labor apprehensive and skittish, her lizard brain on edge, wanting to run away.

Lizard brain is counterproductive to labor. Lizard brain thinks this is a dangerous place to give birth. That you need to flee to somewhere safe. It creates tension, and tension decreases the efficiency of labor. Those movies where someone is in labor and the good guys need to escape and our heroes get to someplace safe just in the nick of time? It’s not really “the nick of time.” It’s her lizard brain feeling safe enough to let her baby be born.

I feel confident saying that most births don’t occur while we are escaping from zombies or aliens. But our bodies don’t know that. Pain signals the lizard brain, and we need to calm it. That’s what my frightened mother needed to do—believe in her safety enough so that the work of labor felt hard but not dangerous.

Letting go of tension helps that. So, I spent hours saying two sentences, over and over. “Relax your forehead. Drop your shoulders.” She walked, she changed positions, she got in and then out of the tub, she sat on the birth ball, and then walked some more. And through it all, when contractions hit, we came back to the same mantra. “Relax your forehead. Drop your shoulders.”

Like most labors, there were times when she struggled. But focusing on relaxing controlled her adrenaline response. It helped her trust that she was safe, even when it was hard. After a 14-hour labor, she delivered without pain meds and without tearing.

I contemplated all of that as I lay with my calves over the foam roller, my shoulders down and my face relaxed. And then I moved half an inch had to start all over as my lizard brain yelled, “What’s happening?! That hurts! RUN!”

“Relax your forehead.”

“Drop your shoulders.”

It works.