I would suggest that we need to get familiar with our own wild animals, to the stretches of our own hearts and rage. That we explore yielding from our hearts, minds and bodies just as we would gently lower ourselves into some warm liquid or clear ocean and submerge ourselves.
For some women, birthing and mothering is entering the deepest rank, dark, earthy caves of their own being. How can we journey with her if we are afraid of our own cavernous tunnels?
For other women, they ascend to the stars to gather to their babes and bring them to earth. How do we trust her galactic journey when we haven’t lifted our feet from the earth?
It is easy to learn how to rub someone’s back in labour or take her blood pressure, however it is the art of holding a space safe enough that someone can yield into the edges of their own wildness that can take some art and skill.
The exploitation of finding the edges where you fear to lift your feet from the earth or you may fear to travel into the dark cavernous underworld of your own being is where we start to grow, to stretch and to yield.
Have a go next time you are at the beach on a sunny day, in the supermarket, your kids are having a meltdown, when you’re making love. Drop your shoulders and see how soft you can get, how languid, how much you can melt into what is (regardless of what is).
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be born in this woman’s body. A body that has birthed and breastfed and absorbs my lover. That expands and contracts. That yields.
Claire is a Mumma, midwife, Spinning Babies ® approved trainer and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapist. She provides care for families choosing homebirth, she offers private bodywork sessions in Auckland for pregnancy, postnatal , babies or anyone wishing to have support with women’s issues. For midwifery or bodywork Claire can be contacted at clairehomebirth@gmail.com.
Claire has the honour of facilitating Spinning Babies ® workshops in New Zealand and internationally. For information on Spinning Babies workshops you can click on this link.
