LIVE Class

The Poison of a Thousand Movements

A History of the Body in Childbirth

with Dyana Gravina
Thursday, 25 June 2026 at 19h UK time

Image by Dyana Gravina -  ' Is this Ugly?',  Performative photography, 2023.

What does the history of childbirth look like when told through the body? In this class, artist, birth doula and author Dyana Gravina weaves together three threads from her book Embodied Histories: Medicalised Sexuality, Childbirth and Subversive Bodies (2025): the story of the Tarantate, the women of Puglia whose ecstatic, shaking bodies were diagnosed as hysterical; the history of how birth moved from upright to supine and why that shift was never physiological; and the nervous system consequences of immobilising a labouring body.

From the Palaeolithic sculptures and ancient images of squatting, upright birth, through the witch hunts and colonial missionaries of the 15th to 17th centuries, to the delivery tables and stirrups of modern obstetrics. The same ideological forces that gave us the missionary position shaped the modern birth room.

Drawing on somatic practice, archival research, and her years accompanying births as a doula, Dyana offers a transhistorical view of the body in labour: what it wants to do, what it has been forbidden from doing, and what reclaiming that freedom might look like.

In this class John Wilks explores the history and uses of suction, vacuum extraction and ventouse and examines the implications for postnatal treatment approaches for both mum and baby.

John has been practising the Bowen Technique and Craniosacral Therapy full time since 1995. He is the author of four books on complementary therapies and developed a specialised Craniosacral training course for midwives which was the first of its kind to be accredited by the Royal College of Midwives.

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  • Beginner/Intermediate
  • Experiential
  • Practical application
  • To support your client
  • 60 minute class
  • life time access to recording

Learning outcomes

  • Situate contemporary birth practices within a longer historical and cultural continuum, from ancient representations of the birthing body to modern obstetrics.
  • Examine how religious, colonial and patriarchal structures shaped not only birth positions but the broader governance of women and birthing bodies.
  • Identify key historical objects and instruments, from forceps to speculums, as material evidence of shifting power over intimate and reproductive experiences.
  • Build a basic vocabulary around nervous system responses, as they relate to the birthing experience.
  • Encounter Tarantism and other dance and movement traditions as historical and cultural practices that illuminate what has been suppressed in the birth room.
  • Consider how creative and somatic practices offer entry points toward more humanised experiences of intimacy and childbirth today.

who can this benefit

  • Birth workers and birth partners are seeking a deeper historical and cultural context for their practice.
  • Somatic practitioners with an interest in expanding how they can support mothers and carers.
  • Artists and creatives interested in feminist histories.
  • Anyone interested in deepening their view on historical and contemporary childbirth practices.
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Meet Our Presenter
Patrick Jones - Course author

Dyana Gravina

Interdisciplinary artist, Curator, Birth Doula and Activist
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