by anna getty
bonding with your unborn baby through yoga
I will never forget, years ago, when I first starting working behind the desk at a popular yoga studio, the sounds and sights of the pregnant women leaving the prenatal yoga classes. Their round bellies and glowing faces moved through the doors as they chatted and laughed away, oblivious to everyone else in the room. I could tell that something special was going on, something more than just having a baby.
At that time, they were not the “in” crowd I ever wanted to be a part of. But life intervened and my sentiments eventually changed. Now I am part of that “in” crowd and I have come to understand what is behind that special glow I saw in the faces of those women all those years ago.
They were courageous women stepping into their own great potential, deepening their relationships to the divine, to themselves and to the unborn children growing in their wombs. They were achieving this through yoga. It is becoming common knowledge in our urban vernacular that yoga is synonymous with union. There is perhaps no more profound time for a woman to explore her potential for union than when her body, mind and soul are devoted to the union between herself and the unborn child inside her.
My own journey toward that union began nine years ago when I began practicing Kundalini yoga. When I became pregnant two years ago, I embraced the practice of prenatal yoga and became a teacher. As part of my yogic exploration, I decided to have a home birth, and I knew that by setting a commitment to my prenatal yoga practice I would empower and prepare myself to accomplish this.
I did my practice almost every day during my pregnancy, except during my first trimester, when I spent what seemed like whole weeks on my couch meditating through waves of nausea – or maybe I should say just surviving. Yet the more I practiced and truly allowed myself to immerse my being and that of my baby into the yoga, the more connected I felt to something vitally powerful within me, something other than my growing baby. I discovered a connection to myself as a divine creator.
Through the breath, the postures, the mantras and the mudras I practiced, I found that I was finally able to “get real” with myself. The practice allowed me to work and confront fears and insecurities about birth and motherhood. The benefits of my practice were put to the test on the day I went into labor and gave birth to my daughter, India.
The pain was excruciating; the pain was unreal; the pain was a joke. I remember thinking that there was no way that any God would choose to put any being through pain like this. But the moment my water broke, with the help of my beautiful midwife Davi, I moved instinctively into my yoga breath, and it guided me through the sensations. With each breath I drew closer to myself, and with each contraction my baby drew closer to my arms. The yoga that I had practiced for so many months and so many years was my guide and friend. I was indeed in “union” with every cell of my being, with Spirit and with my daughter who I knew felt guided by me.
I had the strength, the courage, and the vision to guide her and birth her. I am no hero. Women have given birth every day for eons and will continue to give birth for centuries to come. But when a woman commits to a yoga practice during her pregnancy, whatever that practice may entail, she allows herself to move into a deeper experience of herself as a creative being, and a more profound awareness of the birth of her child, no matter how or where she chooses to give birth.
I recently encountered one of my students who had just given birth. She had withstood forty-two hours of labor, yet she was able to give birth naturally. She had expected an “easy” labor as a result of all the yoga that she had done during her pregnancy. But she came to understand that, in fact, her yoga practice was her guide despite the fact that her expectation had proved to be incorrect. The yoga and her breath had seen her through the birth, and she was so grateful for it.
It never ceases to amaze me how each woman I know who makes a commitment to practice yoga throughout her pregnancy walks away with a deep and profound insight into herself and a deepened connection to her baby. The moment I looked into my daughter’s eyes for the first time, it was like I had known her throughout eternity.
I believe that part of that knowing was established because every time I practiced yoga, she breathed with me, she moved with me, she mantra-ed and mudra-ed with me, and her sparkling consciousness let me know I had done something right. And the next time I get pregnant, you will see me bounding out of yoga class with a round belly and a glowing face, laughing and smiling away, oblivious to everyone around me.
annagetty.com