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PBL Foundations


  • An evolutionary bodywork approach helps women and their babies fit together in pain-free, enjoyable breastfeeding
  • About experimentation and workability in breastfeeding
  • The three views of a stable fit and hold (in photos)
  • Talking through the basic principles of the gestalt method using a knitted breast

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  • PBL Foundations
  • S3: Fit and hold: #1 breastfeeding superpower
  • CH 3: What is the gestalt method of fit and hold?

Talking through the basic principles of the gestalt method using a knitted breast

Dr Pamela Douglas31st of Dec 202316th of Sep 2025

The gestalt method of fit and hold helps empower you so that you can enjoy pain-free and effective breastfeeding. In this five minute video, I run through an overview of the gestalt method using a knitted breast. Below is an overview of the four steps.

steps of gestalt breastfeeding intervention

Resources

  • You can find a video and animation of how babies suck at the breast here (short) and here (longer).

  • You can find an NDC accredited practitioner who is trained in helping breastfeeding mothers with the gestalt method here.

  • You can find a research study here which shows, using ultrasound imaging, how the gestalt method changes what happens inside a baby's mouth during breastfeeding. The mothers and babies in this small case series had a long history of breastfeeding problems and multiple prior consultations with lactation consultants, which hadn't resolved the problems.

  • The evidence-base to the gestalt method is also peer-reviewed and published here and here.

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Next up in Step 1: How babies suck and swallow at the breast

How babies breastfeed: the biomechanics of infant suck (short animation)

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Possums acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands upon which The Possums Programs have been created, the Yuggera and Turrbal Peoples. We acknowledge that First Nations have breastfed, slept with, and lovingly raised their children on Australian lands for at least 65,000 years, to become the oldest continuous living culture on Earth. Possums stands with the Uluru Statement from the Heart.