The Significance of the Closing of the Bones Ceremony in Postpartum Healing
- Maira D B Magalhaes
- Jun 14
- 7 min read
How I was Introduced to this Ceremony
After the birth of my fourth and last baby, one of my midwives told me she wanted to gift me something. It was some form of ceremony she had learned from this Mexican midwife, Naoli Vinaver. It was January 2013 and I was going through a very hard time, being separated from my husband and still living in the same home with him and all our children. I was feeling devastated although I was so happy to have my baby in my arms. So I said yes, without knowing what it was about.
My Personal Experience
Ritta Pinho, my beautiful midwife and mentor, had been the solo attendant on my previous (and first) home birth. She asked me to buy a red camping tent and a full body bath basin. We set the date when I was around 30 days postpartum and she came with a friend, a doula who I also knew. Ritta brought a bunch of herbs and started her brew. Our doula friend set up the tent with the basin inside. Then I laid on my bed while she gave me a full body oil massage while Ritta held my baby in her arms. Then it was time for the bath and they both filled the bath basin with the hot brew. I went in there and my doula friend bathed me while I sweated and sort o
f went into a trance. I felt enveloped in warmth and security, much like being inside my mother's womb. After that, she laid me back down on my bed, covered my whole body with covers, leaving only a split for my nose and mouth. That was for me to sweat in, which I did, and she'd offer me some sips of water through the slit in the blanket every now and then.
After that part was over, Ritta exchanged places with our doula friend and with one single Rebozo she pressed my bones together in different points of my body starting on my head and finishing on my feet. That must have taken about 4 hours. I was mesmerized and really grateful that they had given me so much and held me when I was feeling so vulnerable, but then I didn't think much of it after that.
Life went on, and my husband and I eventually separated for real, even getting divorced. Fast forward a little over a year and by that time, we were flirting again and trying to work things out, which we did. We had both done some healing work and it felt right to reunite and take the opportunity his job was giving him to live abroad with all our children. So we remarried (yes, it's true, I've married the same person twice) and left for Malaysia - still working it out and making it work, by the way. I am sharing this because it was only while living there that I felt called to start walking with women during their childbearing years. It took me a minute to understand that's what was happening.
While mothering my own littles, I had been held and nourished by Ritta's loving mentoring and the mothers' circles she held. It was very natural for me to talk to pregnant women about what they were desiring for their birth experience etc. I noticed there was something I could offer them and started offering prenatal yoga classes and circles for women to gather and have a space to talk about their journeys. That's how I started being invited to attend births. While doing doula work for moms giving birth in the system, I knew that I wanted to learn more so I could offer more, especially during their postpartum recovery time. But I didn't know where to start. And I thought I wasn't really equipped. I had already started to integrate some aspects of ritual and ceremony into my practice with Mother Blessings and circles, but I didn't have a special offering for postpartum yet.
Postpartum Care in South East Asia
I noticed that some of my clients there would hire a woman for postpartum care and support to come live with them for the first 30 days. These women would cook them special food, prepare some baths for them and sometimes even take care of the baby at night (which i honestly didn't like, being a very intuitive mom and wanting my clients to tune into their babies, especially at night). Other moms would go to "confinement centers" and stay there for about a month postpartum having those services while they'd just relax, be fed and bond with their babies. Although some of those places had "nurseries" which made me really mad because they'd offer taking their babies away as if it was no big deal!... The point is I realized that they had kept some healing traditions alive that I somehow hadn't heard of or seen in Brazil at all, despite the fact that I had had the ability to rest mostly in my postpartum time thanks to the beautiful women "fairies" that we could hire to do housework.
Then one day while offering a pregnancy retreat, a dear friend showed me The First Forty Days book by Kimberley Ann Johnson, which had just come out. By that time, I already knew some big names in the US like Kimberley herself, Tami Lynn Kent and Rachelle Garcia Seliga, and I thought to myself: I want to train with these women, learn from them. And yes, it was also very clear by that time that my calling was midwifery, although it was very much a mystery how that path would unfold for me. But I knew that postpartum healing was crucial and so as soon as we landed in California in August 2019, I did my first postpartum care training.
Nicola Goodall was going to be In Los Angeles for her Motherwarming workshop. And so I went. Sitting with women I had never met before and with Nicola, who I had learned from since having been in Bali with Robin Lim years prior to that, I felt like an important piece of the puzzle to my own life was being rediscovered. While Nicola would describe how a Ceremonial Closing of the Bones goes and how she does it, I started thinking that all of that sounded extremely familiar. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me: ah!... what I had received all those years before was a Closing of the Bones Ceremony! Bingo!
Since then, I've done and held sacred space for numerous women with this ceremony. I continue to learn from other midwives and birth attendants about it. I've trained further with Rachelle Garcia and Naoli Vinaver, as well as more bodywork and ceremony with Metztli Lopez and Tami Lynn Kent. There are some important elements to the ceremony and I'd like to explain.
Childbirth as a Rite of Passage and the Historical Context of the Closing Ceremony
When we look at childbirth as a rite of passage, we can divide it into the following progression: preparation, descent and return. Symbolically, the postpartum time is the return, after a mother has descended into the underworld to bring her child to this plane. Now she must return to this reality and be recognized by her community as her new self and that's the function of this ceremony, or "cerrada", meaning sealing or closing. In many parts of Mesoamerica, the family Temazcal (sweat lodge) is held for family members having gone through transitions and/or rites of passage, such as birth! The idea is to heat up the body, rid it of toxins, and hold the mother's body with healing massage and the bodywork with the Rebozos.
I learned from both Naoli and Metztli that when the spaniards came to America, the women brought their shawls with them. The indigenous women already had a practice of wrapping their pelvis with a long and somewhat narrow kind of a bind called a faja in Spanish. It was a symbol of status. The understanding is that the traditional healers, curanderas, and especially the traditional midwives, parteras, used their shawls in mending bones, bodywork, healing and to solve birth complications with maneuvers. And this is how the Mexican Rebozo came about: a mix between the Spanish shawl with the indigenous faja, although the faja is still its own thing too.
The ceremony takes a bit of time because we allow time for the mother to process what she needs to process, and also because the baby must be fed every now and then. Women feel really held and however their birth transpired, they get a chance to integrate their experience and get some form of closure. Since it's their "return form the underworld", we usually do it at least 30 days postpartum, and usually around day 40. Across healing traditions in the world, the first forty days are somewhat respected as the most important time for a woman to heal, so that's why we'd usually wait this time to do the ceremony. It can also be done at any time after that, sometimes months or even years postpartum!
Sometimes the pregnancy ends unexpectedly with a miscarriage or a term loss, or even a chosen termination. Or sometimes babies born at term are just not meant to stay on this plane. These mamas are also grieving the fact that their babies aren't alive or didn't make it, on top of having gone through the rite of passage of the birth as well. And so yes, they also are postpartum and may benefit from such a ceremony for them to be able to process the whole experience.
Bringing Back the Sacred to Postpartum
I am a fervent advocate for postpartum care, healing and loving support for all postpartum women, regardless of the mode or outcome of their birth. In my practice as a traditional birth attendant, I offer this ceremony within my care and teach my clients that don't come from this tradition how sacred and healing it can be. I also am available to any woman at any time who wish to receive this level of loving care. Women receiving care, loving touch and being held supports healing and reminds women that they are so important, that their bodies are sacred and that they are worthy of nourishment, love, time and space for themselves.
One of the most important lessons I have learned since becoming a mother is how much care, rest and love I actually need. This ceremony is healing because it invites us to slow down, really listen to our bodies and receive love from other women in a very sacred and intentional container just for ourselves. It's a big, big hug from the grandmothers and the Great Mother herself.
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