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The elements in midwifery care for puerperium: Fire

The Fire-Energy element

During puerperium the woman usually has little energy, mainly conveyed on managing the baby. That is when the midwife can intervene to activate the Fire element.

Fire is warmth, affection, energy. Fire is spirituality and sacredness of the event. Fire is sexuality and masculine.

From the emotional point of view, fire rituals include warming up the woman who has just given birth with warm foods and warm water for infusions, care, and purification.

From the environmental point of view, the activation of ecologic powers warms up through affection, massage, and sexuality.

Fire rituals are also linked with cooking or to burning the placenta.

Fire is the element required o activate processes, both evolutionary and developmental ones, the trigger unleashing the events, the energetic power of origin. Right because it is difficult to bend, Fire can also be destructive: therefore it should not be use excessively, but just as an input, a way to initiate Water and Earth elemental processes.

Furthermore, Fire is the key element in order to untie knots and loosen obstructions, both physical and mental ones.

What to do?

Moxa

A fire tools that is really efficient during puerperium is moxa. Since, as we said, fire generates, but also destroys, its use must be well-directed and intentional, stopped in case of bursts of heat or heat and used only as far as the midwife and the woman feel they can go.  

The technique uses different meridians according to the intention of the treatment. During puerperium, there are three main fields we can use moxa in:

  1. The points located in the first and second fifth of the distance between the pubis and the bellybutton are good for uterine involution, puerperium incontinence and cystitis caused by cold (the first one), and to stimulate sexuality, cure dysmenorrhoea and infertility (the second).

2. Breastmilk points:

  • one finger above the xiphoid process increases production
  • point 36 stomach (on the shin bone) loosens engorgements
  • the first phalanx of the little finger is the point for milk ejection
  • direct on nipples is functional for curing rhagades

3. The points for low back pain, cold, and tension, are located on the Michaelis lozenge.

By Silvia Garelli