What is the Webster Technique?
Many of you know that I travel about once a month to teach a seminar, and do you know that it’s a 13-hour seminar, all about taking care of pregnant women? I teach other chiropractors how to do the Webster Technique, and about many topics regarding pregnancy. The goal is to empower women, helping them realize their body was made to give birth, that natural birth is possible, and how chiropractic care, decreasing fears and decreasing hospital interventions can assist that process.
By the end of day one my throat is usually a bit sore and my legs are tired from talking & standing for 9-hours. Add in a flight across country, and now you know why I often take off the Monday following these trips. However, I enjoy the teaching and inspiring other chiropractors to talk about chiropractic and help women in their community.
The Webster Technique was created by Dr. Larry Webster back in the mid 1980’s. His own daughter had a difficult labor and birth, and he wanted to figure out why. He came up with this specific technique and over the years, it has evolved and has had great success in working with pregnant women.
Webster Technique is done to create balance in the bones, muscles and ligaments of the pelvis, which helps remove tension and torsion in the uterus. Your brain is constantly sending signals down your spinal cord and back up to your brain in order to make your body function, anything from muscle movement, to your heart beating, to the uterus contracting during labor. If there is interference in the process (via a spinal subluxation), then that system may slow down & interferes with how well your body is functioning.
If there is that nerve interference, perhaps contractions don’t happen evenly, or strong enough. Perhaps the cervix doesn’t fully dilate. As chiropractors, if we can remove or reduce that interference, most often that helps the overall pregnancy and labor.
As you adjust the person and remove that spinal subluxation (to the sacrum and/or spine), it results in less nerve interference. When that happens, the brain and uterus can “talk” to each other better, the communication is improved and the body has a better ability to function. The specific chiropractic adjustment to the sacrum help reduce that torsion in the uterus, often resulting in less low back pain, but also allowing the baby to move to an ideal position for that baby. Less torsion means more room. Imagine being inside a balloon that is squished vs. inside a balloon that is fully inflated? How much more space would there be inside? We want less torsion and optimal space. The adjustment may assist that process.
What about the state of fear going into labor? The fear of the pain, of not knowing what to expect, of not knowing when the baby will come, of not knowing what to do after the baby comes? All of these fears are real and we discuss these fears in the seminar, and how as chiropractors we may be able to help someone during this process.
And then there are all the hospital interventions that often happen, anything from the many tests that are done, the focus on the “due date”, inductions, epidurals, electronic fetal monitoring and more. In the seminar, we review many of these situations.
Yes, the seminar is long and full of information. The human body is amazing, and we strive to let people realize how amazing it is.
At the same time, it’s not only for pregnancy, the Webster Technique can be done on anyone who is weight bearing, meaning male, female, young or old, as long as they can walk.
Both Dr. Haifa & Dr. Pam are certified in the Webster Technique. Let us know if we can help you.
Dr. Pam