Yesterday, I got together with a group of very committed yoginis in Essential Yoga Therapy teacher training. Our aim was to explore how yoga can help women during pregnancy and birthing. I’d been preparing for weeks, wanting to bring the best of my experience in teaching perinatal yoga classes to the group. Right before class, I read a post from my doula friend, Sarah. It was a reflection about her 15 Years of Mamahood. This week, Sarah became the mother of a fifteen year old son. This marks the anniversary of the many years in which Sarah has either been pregnant and birthing or helping others do it too. She organized her thoughts into encouraging messages. I think her encouragement applies to every stage of life that presents us with an opportunity to transform and grow: to birth ourselves anew, again and again. This is what my yoga teaching friends are doing now.
Sarah: Growing a baby inside oneself is humbling
We began our day exploring the incredible changes our bodies go through as we grow a baby. In yoga-speak, we used the holistic Koshic Model to explore what happens in the different “bodies” or dimensions of being we are: physical, psycho-emotional, intuitive and spiritual. Every change offers challenges and choices. Some of the first challenges we encounter is a heightened awareness of our bodies because they don’t feel the same. (We have to share them!) We often experience fatigue, nausea, sense-sensitivity and a myriad number of “growing pains” as the journey continues. Long time doula, instructor, writer and national treasure, Penny Simkin, reminds us that this is pain with a purpose. Something miraculous is happening inside us – our very being is an expression of life.
Sarah: You can have the birth you want
The process slows us down – whether we like it or not. It presents us with an opportunity: We can consciously pause, center ourselves, observe and feel what’s going on so we can respond in ways that enhance our well being. Our well being includes our baby and the wider web of relationships: family, friends, caregivers and teachers. While this change is happening to us – we are also changing what’s happening through the choices we make. What differentiates yoga from other forms of exercise is the quality of awareness we maintain in breathing, moving, living. Now we practice the yoga of awareness both on and off our mats.
What nourishes or drains energy? What stresses or relaxes? What am I eating and drinking? How am I sleeping? How am I moving? Am I breathing fresh air? Am I exposing myself to natural light? How do I experience myself as part of all creation? What kind of birth do I want? Who is in my circle of support?
Sarah: Birth is transformative
Sarah has become the mother of a 15 year old. We too are constantly becoming someone new during the course of our lives. In a sense we are always pregnant with something or someone new. Birthing challenges us to open to life outside of us. Most of us want to control our experience. Yet I think the best we can do is navigate and surf. We can ride on the waves or we can struggle with them. It can be scary to feel like you’re in the boat alone. Life is so much bigger than our small notion of self. Life includes the whole constellation of relationships, people we don’t know and the beautiful planet that’s our home.
Sarah: Becoming a mama helped me to find my true path and purpose
When we open to life, life reveals itself to us. All living becomes yoga – our yoga becomes an expression of our truth. What are we bringing to the present moment, to the people, animals, plants on our path, to the environment we share? In the Koshic model, we have a “wisdom body.” It’s that part of our being that can realize insight and wisdom. In yoga and many other wisdom traditions, we aspire to have right understanding – to perceive the world and think clearly. We aim to listen, speak and act whole-heartedly. We seek to cultivate the kind of wisdom we want to impart to our children. It’s the kind of wisdom that enables us to learn from our children.
Sarah: Mamahood is dynamic
Living is the essence of change. We are needed in so many ways by so many beings. Living fully takes a lot of heart, a lot of energy. Sarah has to find her “own ways of creating that peace and calm. I have to commit to self-care.” Learning to nurture ourselves is a wonderful way to learn how to nurture others. We are not machines to be driven or objects to be judged, sold or used. Yoga and other body mind practices are wonderful ways to restore and renew our bodies, minds and hearts.
Sarah: They are here to teach me
There is something magical that happens when we touch and are touched: when we feel each other. I think this happens when we teach and learn from each other too. Yesterday, we began our studies by sharing our personal experiences with birth – birthing our own babies and/or participating in the birthing process with others. Joyful and painful experiences surfaced. Few of us escape “the trauma of every day life.” The remnants of these traumas, large or small, live inside us. They can remain dormant or suddenly spring to life. Significant life changes – including birth – can awaken old wounds. Circles of support can offer us the safety and space we need to heal them – or perhaps understand them better. We formed this kind of circle yesterday.
In the spirit of widening the circle I welcome you to check out our learning process and access some of our resource materials at these links:
For a review of: Part I: What we bring to the shared yoga experience.
For summaries of Koshic Model of yoga practice in the prenatal experience:
In class exercise on: How to Modify a Developmental Practice
Helpful yoga practices:
The Supporting Lotus: Developing Pelvic Floor Awareness
An Outline of Class I of an 8 Week Prenatal Yoga Class Series: Yoga as an Awareness Practice that Supports Our Lives
A juicy poem about birthing by Anne Sexton: In Celebration of My Uterus