Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Broken dream or two?

 I struggle with my writing for two hours this morning before finally doing what I learned in childbirth, and have been preaching about ever since.  That is, if you get stuck, do something different!

I'm writing about how it felt for me to be curled up in a fetal position on a cold, tile cement floor behind the big, blonde institutional door labeled with big, bold, red letters, "GIRLS".  It is where I found myself after being cut from the Junior Varsity Cheering squad, the day that I fell, like an invisible angel whose last act of faith was from my reflexes that like fluttering wings had taken me to where I needed to go.
AND SO IS CHILDBIRTH!

I move from my desk at home, head for the bathroom, and curl up in a fetal position on the floor. The tile is smaller and redder, and the odor is more familiar than the powerful, too clean smell of a high school lavatory.  But the cold, hard earth still feels the same, I remember, it was a bedrock of comfort for a body burning in the heat of despair. I close my eyes, breathe, listen and wait.  I return to my  desk, and within minutes, the words gush out of me like a newly broken, bulging bag of amniotic fluid. 
If you get stuck, what will you do differently?  Most of us have a history of a broken dream or two!  Consider that birth is a powerful force to help you reinvest in the strength you need to believe again.  Let this 10 minute, interactive guided imagery allow fragments of your
broken dreams to float into your awareness.  Let them be there for the threads of desire to string your life story whole again.
  Interactive guided imagery
Take 10 minutes of  time and get into a comfortable position in a safe place. Close your eyes. Take several deep, slow, complete breaths. Identify the single most important experience in your life that  had a major impact on manifesting your dream.  Where were you? What was your desire? What occupied the space?  The colors?  The fragrances?  The sights? Let yourself feel desire and how it lives in the body.  When you are ready, open your eyes, and your journal and begin to record. You may wish to write, draw or even speak out loud your experience. Is there an action related to your experience that you can take in labor that will help stimulate the power of believe?  When you feel complete, close your journal and conclude your session with  how you started by closing your eyes and taking several deep, full breaths.

Thanks for tuning in, and if you are so moved, I'd love to hear your personal experiences.

Together, forever, in our hearts,

Maurene

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

A girl's gotta sparkle!

 I did not give birth the way that I had imagined, in a full, wide open squat like the 21st century contemporary hybrid creature that I was, half hippie and the other, a high-heeled, disheartened   business woman. I tried, with one of my arms wrapped around Candyce's father, and my other one around Maura, my doula. But the force moving my baby out of my body was so strong that my spine arched back like a running, overextended fishing rod! So instead I squatted by baby out with a fully extended spine behind me, like the unintentional leaning tower of Pisa! I didn't know it at the time, and wouldn't find out for at least another decade, but I had just performed one of the ultimate class of poses in yoga called, "backbends". It makes perfect sense now, of course, that my body would take the form of something so vital and beautiful and outrageously untamed with such rare, cosmic force moving through my body.

When we give birth to our babies, I believe that the release is so powerful that the spine has no choice but to move into extension followed by a springing action back into forward flexion.

It is here, if we wait and allow our attention to be expansive coiled in our origins,  that we are privy to experience all of the energy accumulated in our bodies from giving birth before it dissipates into space. 

It's why backbends are highly sought on a yoga mat, because they provide for the same energy release except in a much less exaggerated form; there is not approximately 8.5 pounds of substance moving out of the body!  However, if one chooses to remember their experience by journaling, contemplating and articulating, they'll deepen and enliven the newly opened pathway created in their nervous system. Then, more and more, opportunity will exist to strengthen and intensify the energy, clarity and happiness that backbending provides for.

It is with this in mind that I have created  "The Star Gazer", a sequence of poses that simulates the actual birth experience and the subsequent release of energy.




We will soon be celebrating my daughter's 25th birthday. It feels like yesterday, that I had her in my arms and all to myself. And although she has left my arms, she will forever remain in my heart, along with my longing to recapture and live those rare precious moments, over and over again.

Together, forever, in our hearts,


Maurene