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What if your tight hips weren’t just about posture?
What if that clenched jaw or sore pelvic floor was trying to say something… not just about your muscles, but about your life, your past, your fear, your fury?
In a recent episode of Hot + Brave, I sat down with Lindsay McCoy, co-creator of the Body Ready Method®, to unravel what it means to listen to the body during pregnancy and birth – not just manage it.
Birth Positions Are Not Choreography
Too often, birth positions are treated like a checklist: “use this one to open the inlet,” “this one is good for pushing,” “hands and knees if the baby’s posterior.” But Lindsay challenges us to go deeper.
She explains that movement in labor should be organic, responsive, and body-led, not something we’re told to do by a chart or an app.
And when we see someone struggling with a position, it’s not a sign they’re doing it “wrong.” It’s a clue that their body might be protecting them, holding tension, or asking for something else entirely.
“The position that works is the one that feels safe in the nervous system.” — Lindsay McCoy
Birth Doula Training
Rage in the Hips, Grief in the Core
One of the most powerful parts of this conversation was exploring where emotions live in the body. Lindsay and I talked about how birthworkers often see someone get into a position, say, a wide-legged squat, and suddenly they start crying. Or get agitated. Or freeze.
That’s not random.
That’s the body telling the truth.
The hips, pelvic floor, and psoas muscles are storied spaces. They carry sexual trauma, reproductive grief, body shame, relationship rage, and the pressure to keep everything together. In other words: the emotional labor of being a woman, a mother, or a marginalized person in a broken system.
And when we ignore those signals and force a body into position, we’re not helping. We’re reenacting the same control that so many have been subjected to throughout their reproductive journeys.
Hear and Learn incredible stories from Doulas and more!
The Floor as a Place of Reclamation
Another powerful thread we explored is the idea that birth left the floor, literally and symbolically, when it became medicalized. Upright, instinctual movement was replaced with back-lying stillness. Body sovereignty gave way to hospital protocols. Support became surveillance.
And yet, when we let the body move again… when we reclaim the floor, the sway, the squat, the lean, we invite back a kind of wildness. Not chaos, but wisdom. Not danger, but deep ancestral knowing.
Doulas: Hold the Map, Not the Manual
For doulas, Lindsay’s insights are gold. She reminds us that we’re not there to “fix” someone’s birth posture. We’re there to witness, to mirror, and to offer tools that support exploration – not control.
If a client gets into a position and then immediately winces, checks out, or shifts, that’s not failure… that’s communication. We need to stop overriding it and start listening.
Learn more about Doulas
MSP Starts September 18 – Be in the Room for our Online Doula Training
If this conversation lit you up, and you want to learn how to hold space for this kind of embodied, intuitive, trauma-informed care, come join us in the Maternal Support Practitioner (MSP) training. Our next round starts September 18, and we still have spots.
You’ll learn everything from full-spectrum reproductive support to somatic tools, nervous system awareness, advocacy in hostile systems, and — yes — the biomechanics that actually matter in labor.
This is the doula training that changes lives. Yours included.
If you want to master the topics talked about in this episode, check out the BRM Pros training, there is currently a waitlist, and we highly recommend you get on it!.
