Erica Boland 00:00:00 There are so many tools that we have that we can give our patients to take power and advocacy back into their own hands. So to give them that radical responsibility and that choice so that they aren't reliant on providers, and they realize that there isn't this power struggle that needs to happen with providers, you can feel fully supported in your entire fertility journey all the way through postpartum. And you should.

Erica Boland 00:00:57 Hey, loves, I'm Erica.

Brittany Estrada 00:00:59 And I'm Britt. She's a chiropractor and midwife.

Erica Boland 00:01:02 And she's a nurse practitioner and womb healer. Together, we are bridging the sacred and the scientific to help you step into deeper alignment with the incredible wisdom of your body.

Brittany Estrada 00:01:13 We are mothers, soul sisters, and women who are deeply devoted to serving the feminine collective. There is no topic we aren't open to exploring, and we are so looking forward to navigating this journey with you and our amazing guests.

Erica Boland 00:01:26 So settle in, preferably with a great cup of coffee. Put one hand on your heart and breathe as we dive in.

Brittany Estrada 00:01:34 Welcome to our community.

Erica Boland 00:01:38 Hey everyone! Thank you so much for joining us today. Let's go ahead and do what we do. Settle in. If you're driving. Let some of that tension go. Now I'm going to cue you into your pelvic floor. Your root chakra. Your powerhouse. Today. Close your eyes if you can. And I want you to think about taking such a good breath into your sacrum, your low back, that you feel the movement in your pelvic floor. When you inhale, you feel it lengthen. And when you exhale, you feel it relax. Relax your glutes.

Erica Boland 00:02:34 Sit up nice and tall to give your diaphragm space to communicate with your pelvic floor. Relax your jaw and just know that there is so much power here. So when you're working on something, when you're creating, when you need to drop into the flow. Drop into your pelvis first.

Erica Boland 00:03:04 Let go of anything in your neck and your shoulders. Take a few more breaths. Deep into your hips. And decide how you want to move forward with the day. And when you're ready, go ahead and open your eyes. Come back to us.

Brittany Estrada 00:03:41 Thank you. Erica. That was so good and so needed and so appropriate for today's conversation. So Erica is fresh off of hosting the DNS Perinatal Summit, and she got to do it at her new birth center, which is I mean, it's just freshly open. So like the first big event that she hosted. And today we're going to talk all about the weekend and what was discussed. And we're going to talk more about DNS, which we have done a couple episodes specifically on DNS and pelvic floor that we will link in the show notes for you guys if you want to follow that thread. But, Erica, do you want to take us through just a refresher of what DNS is so that our listeners have a clue about what we're talking about before we dive into everything that happened this weekend?

Erica Boland 00:04:38 Yeah, absolutely.

Erica Boland 00:04:39 So DNS is dynamic. Neuromuscular stabilization is a method of both assessment and treatment. And it's based on the physiology, the biomechanics, the way that the body was designed to move and how the different systems coordinate and cooperate with one another. So it just makes so much sense to me as a chiropractor and as a midwife and is getting more and more known around the globe. But it really, I would say that this is one thing that unites us all, whether male or female, and we can just help other people so much with the understanding of the intricacies of the musculoskeletal system, especially with the core and pelvic floor and what that really, truly means in comparison to what most people think of as the core with the rectus abdominis like sixpack muscles. So DNS is the first place that I learned that your core is your front body, your side body, your back body, and really, truly from diaphragm to pelvic floor, including both. Most of the instructors are from the Czech Republic in the Prague area And they now travel all over the globe.

Erica Boland 00:06:02 And there's some US instructors. So it was honestly a dream and kind of full circle moment to host, especially Martina Yoshikawa, in our new space with other attendees from also all around the globe.

Brittany Estrada 00:06:18 So I just want to I mean, DNS has been such an incredible addition to my practice and also to my own healing journey. You know, I first met Erica. I think I was freshly pregnant with gray. So baby number two and I had had a pretty significant injury around six months postpartum after a C-section with my first. And I needed more support with healing, and I had already had a pretty strong fitness foundation. I was a CrossFit coach. I was trained in pre and postnatal fitness, so I thought I knew all the things. So when Erica started introducing the principles of DNS. To me, I was really blown away, and what I love so much about it is one of the first things she educated me about was watching how my then oh gosh, she was probably like, not even a year.

Brittany Estrada 00:07:11 My oldest son at that time, like watching how he moved because humans are born with this incredible innate wisdom in their movements and are stimulated by the environment around us because we're naturally curious. And so being able to see these movement patterns in him, that I could then turn around and mimic to help my body remember how it is designed to move like that was such a critical piece of my healing. And then once my second son was born, he actually had some movement issues. He started army crawling when he was like four months old and wouldn't use the entire lower half of his body. So we had him in OT, and because I had this foundation in DNS, I was able to do a lot of the rehab myself. And so we were on the floor crawling and doing tripod and all of these different positions that, you know, babies should normally go through. In that first year of life. I was down there doing it with him, so I got to kind of do my rehab along with him, and it was just a really powerful experience that then translated to the rest of my motherhood journey and certainly through, you know, watching my last son and his movements and his progressions.

Brittany Estrada 00:08:22 So it's been a really important part, like I said, of my clinical journey as well as my own journey in healing through the motherhood transition. So I'm super grateful for it, and I am really excited to hear more about what you all covered at the summit.

Erica Boland 00:08:37 I think honestly, one of the most powerful parts for my me personally and professionally this week was thinking back into all of that information and realizing how compartmentalized I am in my practice is still with being new and midwifery and being experienced in chiropractic and trying to blend all of that together. And it's like such a beautiful unraveling of, okay, I need to rewrite my practice completely, which sounds like a lot, but it's going to be good. So the other thing too, is talking so much about how the sensation meaning like the full support of baby inside of the womb during pregnancy helps with so many symptoms. And then what that means for labor and also what that means postpartum. And there's different courses and classes and whatever that you can take that focus on mom or they focus on baby.

Erica Boland 00:09:43 And I love how this week we put everything together of like, this is how mom and baby can work together and how you as a clinician can teach her how to work with baby and how to, you know, even hold herself and relax your pelvic floor and activate her pelvic floor without doing a Kegel. And just. We started the week with fertility and visceral work. So we talked about women that are trying to conceive in the soft tissue functional work. Brit, that's your wheelhouse that can place such an impact on fertility. And we got one of the, I would say, best compliments because one of the participants said, this is the most woo DMs course I have ever been to.

Brittany Estrada 00:10:32 That was like, yes.

Erica Boland 00:10:34 Success. So whenever we're talking about health, we have to talk about the emotional or the spiritual and it's so overlooked. And I I'm done ignoring that piece and pretending like it doesn't exist. And as you know, people that also want to recognize that are ready to step into it consciously or subconsciously will come into my practice and I'll be able to help them better.

Erica Boland 00:11:01 But just talking about the different components of fertility and visceral work and the emotion that we store in our bodies and in our organs and in our scar tissue, and then moving into preparations during pregnancy, specific positioning with activation and relaxation of the pelvic floor during labor healing postpartum. And so it was seven really full days and I still came out feeling really good.

Brittany Estrada 00:11:30 That just sounds like such a dream. And there are so many things I want to pick apart. And of course, you talk about visceral work for fertility. It just gets me so excited. And also, I love that you brought in so much of the emotional piece. The more that I do hands on work with women, the more I recognize that that part of it is so essential. And I honestly feel like if you are a clinician putting your hands on people you can't not recognize that there is this spiritual component, like something is shut off in you. If you are not starting to feel that energetic exchange because it just naturally wants to come through.

Brittany Estrada 00:12:09 And I actually was on the phone this morning with Jeannie, the God based medium. So we have an episode where we talk to Jeannie that we will also link in the show notes, but we were just really talking about how when we are doing this physical work with our patients, we become channels, we become these energetic channels. And how do we really allow ourselves to stay open so that what needs to come through can come through? And then, of course, I had a really powerful session right after that with a client who is seeing me for visceral work because she had an ectopic pregnancy a few months ago and ended up losing the tube and the ovary. So of course there is a lot of trauma, but also a lot of hope. And she is really wanting to prepare for her next pregnancy, but just being able to, of course, do the physical work. There's definitely scar tissue. There's all of the, you know, physical things that we have to work through while also holding the energetic space for her to do the work of grieving, because she's got that grief so that she can call in, you know, her next baby.

Brittany Estrada 00:13:17 So I love that you guys got into that, because I think sometimes in these types of rehab courses, there is not really space for that. And there really needs to be.

Erica Boland 00:13:28 Yes. Especially with when we're talking about the womb. It's just undeniable.

Brittany Estrada 00:13:36 Yeah, absolutely. So tell me, since this was geared more towards clinicians. Yeah. What are some of the things that you came away with that you're going to incorporate into your education for your clients as far as like what they can do and maybe like dive a little bit more into like, what do you actually mean by centralization is that that's just the position of the baby, right?

Erica Boland 00:13:58 Right. So centralization, if you think about like one of the examples that Martina used, for those of you that are familiar with anatomy is the ilio psoas is like the hands of the womb. And when you look at pictures, it's like, oh my gosh, that's so true, I love that. Yeah. So I think that if we think about like, how is the baby centered? In order for the baby to really, truly be centered and based on typical postures, to be able to have full activation and full relaxation, so the anterior abdominal wall needs to be appropriately active, and oftentimes it's either too little or too much.

Erica Boland 00:14:41 And the posterior abdominal wall, like the back and side bodies, really need to be mobile, elongated and relaxed, but also active when appropriate. So all of that Coordination of the core muscles and just how much latissimus dorsi. Has to do with absolutely everything you look at those attachment points. So this was the first course that Martino taught the moisture Silva movement, flow and moisture. Silva is a woman who passed it. She came up with a specific fertility sequence, like a specific set of movements that women can do on their own. And the flow itself is amazing because one of the things I said to the attendees, the participants was, even if you're not looking to create a baby like myself, literally awakening your pelvic energy like that is your power. So even just going through this sequence for your own power and creativity and whatever that looks like in your life right now, like for me, like I said, it's completely rewriting my practice layout. And so that sequence for sure. And then the reminder that there are so many tools that we have that we can give our patients to take power and advocacy back into their own hands.

Erica Boland 00:16:14 So to give them that radical responsibility and that choice so that they aren't reliant on providers and they realize that there isn't this like power struggle that needs to happen with providers. You can feel fully supported in your entire fertility journey all the way through postpartum, and you should. So I think that those were like the two biggest takeaways for me that are a little more general. I would say.

Brittany Estrada 00:16:41 Okay, so the moisture of a sequence, is that something that women can access is available anywhere? Does it have to be taught by a practitioner like tell me more about.

Erica Boland 00:16:52 That so you could learn it as of right now or next perinatal summit would be 2026. But when you learn it in the class and you could take it and you can teach it to your patients, we can link in the show notes her name, and so you can do your own diving a little bit more. It really, truly is working on flexion extension, especially in the lumbar spine, and using gravity and pelvic floor activation and relaxation and breath to mobilize the internal organs in the supine.

Erica Boland 00:17:25 So laying on your back and laying on your belly and movement into even like a little bit of pelvic lifts to use gravity to take some of that pressure off of your pelvic floor. And a lot of the movements are very similar to so many yoga moves or so many dance moves. And I honestly think that a really big benefit of them is just changing the dynamic breath in those positions and knowing more about when you're activating your pelvic floor. It should never be all on and then all off like quick contractions, repetitively like a Kegels and seeking someone out that's going to help you train full relaxation and removing the trigger points first, because only from relaxation. Full relaxation can we create healthy activation. And then activation of the pelvic floor needs to look a little bit more like an elevator, and then like back down the elevator and practice and bringing people into then weight bearing positions and helping them feel that the intention behind things is so important. So when you mobilize and breathe into different areas of the body that are often overlooked just because of our crappy postures, we create so much more stability and function.

Brittany Estrada 00:18:48 So how does it differ from something like spinning babies. Since you are well versed and well trained in the spinning babies methodology, I've taken like the basic level cause like, yeah, you see the two comparing.

Erica Boland 00:19:01 I think the difference in my mind is the really deep understanding of what the body is actually doing, like what the different muscles are doing and what the different pieces of labor are, especially during the labor sequence, what's happening with baby. And then even down to the last part that we covered was baby handling and developmental milestones, even understanding the reflexes that are developing in baby in utero and the feedback that they get from that environment. So I think when you get that full picture, then you better understand how you can really combine with mom's necessity and baby's necessity in the moment. Instead of just focusing on, let's do this to try to baby. It's like, how does this body and this baby need to really work together?

Brittany Estrada 00:19:57 Why do you think there is? I mean, from what I feel in most of my clients, there is such an inability to find relaxation.

Brittany Estrada 00:20:06 Do you feel like that's mostly due to our posture? Do you feel like that's just our nervous system? Like it's just all stress based? Like, what are you really seeing in your practice?

Erica Boland 00:20:17 I do think at this point that so much of it is our nervous system. And from such a small age, I mean, we could like totally get into the weeds on that. But the way that babies interact with the world affects so much. And then we store that within our bodies, they store that within their bodies. And there's so much upregulation right now and disconnection right now and so little stillness, like our kids are not being taught to be still in a healthy way, right? So they're taught to be still and like sit and do the thing, but not come into stillness out of a place of curiosity and that sort of stillness. So I really do think that it is layers and layers of nervous system upregulation that manifests itself physically.

Brittany Estrada 00:21:17 I just feel like I have the hardest time getting anyone to be able to establish relaxation.

Brittany Estrada 00:21:23 So what are some of your favorite cues or exercises that you're taking people through in order to be able to feel that full relaxation?

Erica Boland 00:21:32 Honestly, internal work and self internal work. And even in the course we talked about this and most participants agreed. It's rare that people even know what their perineum looks like, let alone know what it feels like. So how do we even know what's normal? And how do we even know why the pain is happening? And there's so much shame for men and women. There's so much shame around that area of our body is like private and etc. etc. and the shame can be happening for different reasons. And so I think like stepping into that and just looking and then feeling internally to feel is there a different tightness? Can you just feel different tension in the muscles or differences in the muscles in your own pelvic floor? And if so, when you press a little more firmly on them, does it hurt? And if it does, breathe into your bottom, like breathing into your sacrum and expanding through your side bodies.

Erica Boland 00:22:34 And we've come a long ways and teaching people to belly breathe, but we've come so far that a lot of them are just breathing out the front. So now we kind of have to back off from saying belly breath a little bit and talking about that full core breath and that lateral expansion of the breath, because that is what helps to lengthen the pelvic floor in relaxation and also in eccentric activation if you're going to get super nerdy. But when we're talking relaxation, I think sideline is an excellent position for pelvic floor relaxation. Anything more in like child's pose with closed knees, you could go into child's pose more with a closed knees if you're not pregnant, because the opening of the ischial tuberosity is your sit bones, that helps to relax the pelvic floor. And then if you're in a little bit of a gravitational advantage with your pelvis higher than your diaphragm, your diaphragm is loaded and steady your pelvic floor so you can start to feel that in different positions. But my favorite cue is either in the shower or in the bath.

Erica Boland 00:23:36 Doing your own internal work with your thumb, like inserting vaginally and working towards the opposite side, and then change thumbs in. Insert vaginally and work towards the other side and getting to know your pelvic floor.

Brittany Estrada 00:23:51 Yeah, I find so much resistance that I have lots of women that are totally fine when I work on their pelvic floor, but getting them to do it themselves seems to be such a challenge, which is really interesting. And I find you're right, like, there's so much shame, which is so fascinating. And it's also really fascinating to kind of dig into that a little bit further and identify like, where is that coming from? Is that even yours? Is that passed down from your mom or your grandma, like what happened in your lineage? Like, we just hold so much in that space. And I think that really manifests as to your point, pain and dysfunction. Yeah.

Erica Boland 00:24:29 And when you think about that, if I am not comfortable exploring my own pelvic floor, but I'm comfortable with you, doing that means that I trust you with my body more than I trust myself.

Erica Boland 00:24:42 It means that I give you more authority over my body than I give Of myself, and that isn't really that surprising when we look at our medical system, but it is heartbreaking.

Brittany Estrada 00:24:55 that's so true because we have really been conditioned to look outside of ourselves.

Erica Boland 00:25:00 Yes.

Brittany Estrada 00:25:01 And to be really honest, sometimes as the provider, like it is easier when your client just wants you to kind of tell them what to do, right? Because then you're not having to explain things and answer for things. And I can even find myself falling into that trap sometimes because I do feel like, well, thank goodness my patients really trust me. Especially kinda internal work for them. But I always want to be so careful as to not allowing them to just give up their power and just kind of hand it over to me. Right. And I think that is kind of the dance that we have to do, especially when we are working in such a delicate space.

Erica Boland 00:25:43 Yeah. And furthermore, because I think this is even more rare in the US.

Erica Boland 00:25:49 The most powerful release, both physically and emotionally, that we saw in the course was coccyx release. And that is internal rectal work, not internal vaginal work. And I do give patients internal rectal take home work if they're having coccyx pain. I mean, if you're having coccyx pain, you need to have internal rectal work done. And there's again, I want to encourage my patients to try that first before they would trust me or anybody else with it, so that they can really figure out and describe. There's certain situations, you know, where it's like it's really hard for me to physically do that, but emotionally, if it's an emotional block, I really want to help them walk through that, because I don't think that there is the capacity to have full restoration of function. If you're not comfortable with that yourself.

Brittany Estrada 00:26:47 Well, what I find is that women will leave their body. So a lot of times when I'm working in the pelvic floor, the first thing we do, and this comes from my work in holistic pelvic care, I'm actually getting my certification this week.

Brittany Estrada 00:27:00 So tomorrow, heading to Portland to finish all that up with Tammy Lynn Kent who is awesome. Super excited about that. But one of the things that we do is we really establish this like safe, energetic field where women are really grounded in their body before we start the internal work, because I find this all the time that especially my patients that have had any kind of trauma they like start to float outside their body instead of like actually being in it to really feel the sensations. It's like they leave their body and are almost like floating above watching it happen to them, which, you know, I think is a pretty common thing when you've experienced trauma. But how do we stay in the body so that we can really feel those things and make the changes?

Erica Boland 00:27:47 And then you think about everything we just talked about. And then a woman going through labor. Yeah I think that's kind of enough said honestly because that's a lot to navigate when you're disconnected. Yeah.

Brittany Estrada 00:28:02 And I'm sure you've seen this, I've seen it come up so many times in labor where you can just see like a woman starts to feel the sensation on her perineum, and she just gets the deer in the headlights look and kind of leaves.

Brittany Estrada 00:28:15 And it's really disconnected because all that trauma is coming up. And I find so many providers are just not attuned to that and can't really hold space for what's actually happening.

Erica Boland 00:28:30 Yeah. And when I went to Prague the first time and came back and put the functional progression together for one patient that showed up with symptoms, you know, this Brit, but I was so much in the physical mindset of like healing core and pelvic floor and never anticipated the emotional processing that would start to happen on my table. And so that has taught me so much. And that was over a decade ago. Additionally, from the physical standpoint, when we have a pelvic floor that is restricted in one area, then it is going to be more intense because then there is one part of the pelvic floor or one part of the core, or one part of the back that's taking more of the brunt, instead of it being more equally dispersed. And so that's why pain during pregnancy is not normal. It's super, super common and frequent for people to experience pain during pregnancy in their low back and in their pelvic floor and in their hips.

Erica Boland 00:29:29 But it's not normal. So if you're listening and you're experiencing that, I encourage you to seek out someone that's doing that full body work and beyond the adjustment.

Brittany Estrada 00:29:40 And I think it's so important to remember that pain is your body's way of communicating a need. So ignoring it, trying to medicate it or put ice on it or whatever is not actually addressing what your body is trying to communicate to you. And as someone who experienced pretty challenging labors the first few times, like I can vividly remember the pain that I experienced where my babies kind of got stuck in the same spot, left side, kind of digging into my hip. And I can still feel that when I think about it. And I did not experience that at all the third time around. But I did so much work to help balance the pelvic floor. I did all the spinning baby stuff. I did all the DNS stuff, all of it, and it made such a huge difference. And go figure, he was the only baby who was successfully born at home and I didn't have all that pain.

Brittany Estrada 00:30:35 So yeah. So for the professionals that are listening, can you just tell us a little more information about next year's summit and how they can learn more and possibly come to your birth center.

Erica Boland 00:30:48 Yeah. So I think the next one will be 2026. So it's actually two years. Well, for sure, due on the first week of August 2026. I anticipate it'll sell out. We were almost sold out this time, and like I said, I was shocked of the number of people from around the globe that came so far. It was humbling and amazing. So her and I are kind of in the works about what next year can look like if she's got, but she's got some exciting family things happening next year, so her schedule is a little less full, but we can certainly link some other notes in the show notes to and access to myself, to Britt. Britt. Honestly, I think we should host a retreat at your space next year.

Brittany Estrada 00:31:34 I'm totally down for that. I would love it.

Brittany Estrada 00:31:36 And in the meantime, I think if you're not familiar yet with DNS, like actually just taking even like a DNA.

Erica Boland 00:31:45 Course or.

Brittany Estrada 00:31:46 Taking a DNS course, or at the very least, going through the functional progression that Erika created. I think these can be such incredible additions to your own movement practice. And then of course, it will translate into what you're able to do clinically because everything is everything. But I definitely want to stick that on my calendar because I have had the pleasure of learning from both Erika and Martina a few different times, and I just am always so blown away with how I come away with something new, even when a lot of the information I've heard before. But each time I'm able to pull more from it, and because I have more clinical experience each time, it just changes your lens.

Erica Boland 00:32:31 Thanks for saying that, because one of the requirements and we went over this in already made like updates to improve things. You will have to have DNS, a or exercise one in order to attend the summit.

Erica Boland 00:32:47 So certainly take one of those guests. All education in Saint Louis. Host DNS courses all the time there. Excellent resource. Myself and Lindsay Mumma teach at Gestalt in April, so that's the time to come in person and learn a little bit more. But yeah, you'll need a DNS, A or exercise one at a minimum because we dive so deep into the principles and it's really important for you to have that little bit of background. And you can keep your eyes peeled on my social media accounts and Brits because like I said, I'm rewriting my practice. So looking forward to doing a little bit more one on one work with professionals and seeing what evolves.

Brittany Estrada 00:33:30 Well, I can't wait. We will be sure to keep you guys updated on all that information, and we will link the info about DNS and guest all in the show notes. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and.

Brittany Estrada 00:33:43 We will see you next time.

Brittany Estrada 00:33:47 Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Womb Women Podcast. We are thrilled you joined us today and hope you found the conversation as iInspiring as we did. To connect with us further, follow me, Britt on Instagram at @thebrittestrada, and Erica at @themovementmidwife. For more information on how to work with us, check out our websites linked in the show notes. We can't wait to have you join us for the next episode, but until then, we invite you to step into your power and embrace the wisdom of your body. Bye for now.