Yoga for Birth: Yoga Postures, Meditations, Affirmations, and More for Childbirth by Jones Tess

Author:Jones, Tess [Jones, Tess]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Circle Heart Books
Published: 2020-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Everyone has all of these in their life. Encountering them at some point is part of human existence. Our yoga practice can help us learn to identify and work with them. This helps give perspective during difficult times.

Let’s explore how these relate to birth. Lisa is nervous about her upcoming labor. She has practiced her labor positions, her breathing, her Kegel exercises, and she takes prenatal yoga once a week. Yet she is still concerned. She has heard that people go through labor without drugs, but she doesn’t think she can do it. She doesn’t like pain, and she has never had a high tolerance for it. She read somewhere that ninety percent of mothers use drugs to aid their labor process, so it must be fine, right? And yet, Lisa had always wanted a natural birth, and she has read articles that unsettle her about the effects of labor drugs on the unborn child. She doesn’t feel comfortable with it, and she wants to at least give natural birth a try. Her mother gave birth naturally, so maybe she can too. But that nagging fear about pain won’t seem to go away…

Birth is full of kleshas. It gives you a monumental obstacle to overcome: labor. It requires you to look directly into the eye of the storm—your fears—and charge ahead. In the example with Lisa, she has a fear of pain. This stems from more than one root cause: raga (her attachment to a state without pain), dvesa (a dislike of discomfort), asmita (a sense of “I am” weak and “I” have a low tolerance for pain), and abhinivesah (ultimately, fear of pain comes from fear of death and a will to survive, but this is related to avidya in this situation and a misperception that pain in labor is always a negative thing. Sensation in labor can often mean there is a positive movement of contractions and the baby down the birth canal). Another example of avidya (not seeing things as they truly are) is that she has clearly practiced for her labor, and she probably has all the tools she needs already at her fingertips. She needs to remove her doubt and replace it with a strong and unwavering faith. She can do this by practicing self-study. Does she truly feel that she doesn’t have the strength to do this? Why? What sense of “I am” made her feel this way? Is she identifying with an old version of herself, attached to the past?

If her true goal of alignment is to have a drug-free labor, what can she do to make that successful for herself? Perhaps she can labor in a facility that doesn’t have drugs onsite. Perhaps she can make a list of every other difficult thing she has accomplished in her life, to give herself strength to do this too. Maybe she needs to talk to five or ten other mothers that have birthed naturally, to give her confidence that it is possible and even probable.

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