Spring has sprung! We have officially entered the season of spring this week, and are turning the clocks forward to “summer time.” With this, thoughts of renewed energy and rejuvenation abound…it is a time for birth and new life and in our tradition, transition from bondage to freedom. And yet…it isn’t really quite that simple is it?
The word transition is key here. Though I’m ready to bare my toes in my sandals at noon, we still need boots and coats in the mornings and at night…though there are suddenly (literally overnight) more daylight hours, my body and mind need to integrate this change in my schedule and perception of my day. My point is that accepting and embracing these transitional periods as a bit off balance and uncomfortable is precisely what fuels the pleasure and relief in the birth of the next stage.
As so many of you know and have been supporting me throughout, I have my Iyengar Yoga certification assessment coming up in less than two weeks. It has been a long journey, and I have found myself aggrandizing this milestone with each passing month. Please note, it has been a lot of months!! I first became aware of the “a-stressment” in detail in late 2014 and it is known in the Iyengar yoga community to be rather stress inducing. Since that time, hearing different stories and experiences, as well as my own witnessing of one, has influenced my perception of what lies ahead. Recently, however, I have found that this lingering worry, tinted with a bit of fear is very reminiscent of my pregnancy, labor and birth journeys. Making this comparison for myself has begun to open up a level of insight and security for the upcoming unknown. I think that perhaps it can apply to other large, stressful events in our lives that we are able to anticipate and subsequently, worry and over-worry about. (Obviously, there are many stressful, unexpected events in our lives to which the following stages do not apply) For that purpose, and for my own selfish, cathartic benefit, I include the analogy here.
When becoming pregnant, I felt that I had hung an announcement sign around my neck saying, “please tell me your birth horror stories.” From the woodwork, people began bestowing advice and sharing (over-sharing) details of painful, scary births, difficulties and essentially, reinforcing the general media/cultural depiction that birth happens very fast, very dramatically, and very painfully with lots of people rushing around, racing to hospitals, and screaming at their husbands. However, thanks to my mother’s happy birth story (of my birth!), an informative if a bit premature parenting course taken in university, the more positive birth stories of my crunchy dancer friends, and my faith in my body as strong and capable, I had a divergent path sneaking into my periphery, and I began to challenge my assumption of a medical model birth.
Now, I don’t mean for this be a soap box sermon on home birth, natural birth or anything of the sort. I do, however, wish to convey that once I realized that there were multiple paths to this outcome, and made up my mind to go with the path that was less accepted, I had to map out a journey for “success,” and this map I had to follow through each pregnancy, labor and birth. It begins with the information stage. I didn’t really understand the mechanics of birthing a baby and I needed to learn it in detail. I also needed to understand for myself the different potential interventions, dangers, cautions, concerns, and care involved with labor and birth. Once equipped with information on the what, I moved to the positive opposite stage. I read hundreds of positive birth stories, listened to positive labor and birth experiences from friends, and watched numerous videos on positive births (every single one wrought a visceral reaction of spontaneous tears from me-amazing what is out there on video). I replaced all of the scary stories with visions and stories of happiness, success and peace. Please note that not every “positive” story ended up “perfectly.” This is key to stage four, which we’ll get to in a bit. Stage three was the practice stage. This involved taking care of my pregnant body nutritionally, with exercise (go pregnant lady yoga!!), and with hypnobirthing classes. Now, for the purpose of clarity in writing, these stages are written sequentially, but in fact, there is overlap of all of them throughout and each one reinforces the prior and subsequent stage. This stage is where you equip yourself with concrete techniques and actions that help strengthen you in your journey and will be directly applicable come judgment day. Stage four I like to call my acceptance stage. This is a tough one, and is where I believe that many of us fall short in our journey, whether it is with birth or other milestones. For me, I think this was the most vital stage and it taught me how to face my deepest fears about the most important event upcoming in my life. This is where I am at right now with the assessment, and just acknowledging this stage helps to usher it in. I happened to use meditation and visualization through the hypnobirthing program, but the positive birth stories from Ina May Gaskin’s books* were essential to me. Confronting my worst fears about what might happen in birth, facing it, and then having faith in our human ability to cope and recover gave me the security I needed to go forward. This was a huge life lesson that I had not achieved prior to this milestone, and I wish I had approached other important events in my life with this knowledge.
Stage five is all about the attitude. Having a positive attitude, particularly about something that so many people are sympathetic to and ready to give you an “out” for being bitchy, does go a bit against the grain. But it works!! DON’T feel sorry for yourself. DON’T complain. DON’T go all prima donna because you are the one “going through it.” Give love out. This really came into focus for me with my fourth and final birth. I was never a complainer (well, maybe a little), but in the previous births, I was so internalized and self-focused that I missed out on how much fun I and everyone else could be having. In hindsight, however, maybe screaming at my husband with no consequences would have been rather fun…
Stage six isn’t really a stage. It’s luck. Yup…no matter what you do in advance, during and after, so much still seems to be left to luck. I was very, very lucky in my births. That doesn’t mean that everything was easy, painless and “perfect,” before, during and after, but they were all positive, affirming experiences and for that I am always and eternally grateful for that luck, Thank God.
I am writing this before the exam. I don’t know yet whether I will pass or fail, but the beauty of this process is the acceptance of the outcome, before you receive it. As much as I want to pass, there is a part of me that thinks the greatest lesson would be in a failure. We cannot know in advance how our decisions in life, our successes and our failures truly impact the next stage and phase until we are in retrospect.
My wish for us all is to experience and enjoy our individual and collective transitions. I have had the pleasure to witness so many transitions lately, with amazing new life experiences, from dark and difficult spots, to new places of space and light. May we draw from each others emerging from hibernation, whether it occurs with the change of the seasons, or in its own time, and support one another through all the stages and ages of life.
*Ina May Gaskin, Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth
Updated to add: I passed the assessment in April 2017!