I am overjoyed at how with every birthing class we take, I discover it is all YOGA! They don't call it that of course, but that's what it all is. We've been taught all of the following: deep breathing, visualization, concentration, surrendering, movement, stretching, relaxation, tense and release, being in the moment, "cleansing" breath. Hmmm - it's deergha swaasam breathing, several of the 8 limbs (including dhyana, dharana, asana and of course, pranayama), naadi suddi, yoga nidra and kundalini cleansing!
How exciting, empowering and relieving, because, hey - I know this stuff! It's not all brand new or foreign. I couldn't feel more grateful for that. I knew yoga would be a part of my pregnancy, but I truly didn't realize how integral it would be to the labor and birth. It is quite astounding to me.
Gurmukh's yoga continues to be my calming retreat as I near the finish line. I'm at 34 weeks and this little girl moves vigorously, enjoying full out womb dance parties several times a day. I can feel her little feet and what feels like elbows or knees poking and rolling over. I'm constantly dreaming of her birth - it's always in water - and always involving something bizarre like boats driving around or her popping out and looking like a one-year-old, all smiley and clean.
Being this pregnant has conjured up sense memories of India. In the beginning during the first trimester when I was so brutally sick, my body memory immediately went back to the parasite I had from India and how severely ill I felt. My time there was nothing short of an electrifying hell, a multisensory assault on my body, spirit and mind, an electrocution to my system that left me spit up on the side of the pot-filled, dung-burning dirt road. I went for spiritual peace, but instead, India turned my entire world turned upside down, inside out, just like she did my insides with that nasty, raging, violent parasite that left me weak and barely breathing.
Yet, now in the third trimester, a different type of body/sense memory is awakening. India was the first time I ever felt the yearning or desire to be a mother. I was 24 and until this hadn't given much thought to kids or ever felt anything close to a maternal instinct. I was too busy chasing love, obsessing over my career and focusing on myself, like most girls in their early 20s these days. But there was something about India that flickered a spark in me, a small seed of awakening, just slightly and subtle that whispered inside of me - "create". Create despite of, or perhaps because of, all of the death and misery and suffering and unspeakable I had witnessed in those filthy, colorful, bizarre, chaotic streets. Because admist all that you can't explain or make sense of or wrap your mind around, you realize you want to do everything you can to sustain life, not take it away, but to give and create and not contribute to the suffering.
I know there will be suffering and pain in bringing this little girl into the world and there will be suffering and pain in the world she will live. But, I still can't help but feel all of this is nothing short of a miracle. As I experience something so primal that links me to women in all languages, cultures, ethnicities, religions, countries and eras, I feel unified with a greater feminine soul in this journey of creation. And inside, I feel this great soul, a Mahatma, unfolding mysteriously, hidden from view, but very present, waiting to bud and make her arrival.
Only six more weeks or so to go!
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