My Pregnant Pause

The rare and special times when I have had a pregnant yogini grace my classes, I found myself awed and wondrous. What would it be like to move and to breathe, not as one being, but two? How would my body feel as a bunch of cells miraculously expanded inside it from quietly microscopic to a solid, kicking form with a heartbeat like a freight train?

During our teacher training, the module on yoga for pregnancy captivated many of us. Guided by the late Marilyn Freedman, who was very involved in the UK’s Active Birth Movement, I learned for the first time that a hospital was not necessarily a natural or conducive place to give birth. I discovered there were so many possibilities for postures in labour other than lying supine like an upturned beetle and that women could be encouraged to move instinctively in a graceful birth dance. An upright body, grounded through the feet, could make use of gravity’s powerful force, something well- known by our squatting tribal sisters for millennia.

I loved the idea of teaching a pre-natal yoga class, of providing a weekly sanctuary for women on this sacred journey, but I knew that although I had been well-trained, I had never experienced pregnancy myself. It would be like learning French from an academic who had never sipped pastis in Paris or fondued with the Francais. So I put it on hold. Now, ten years along my yoga teaching path, I am at last sensing pregnancy from the inside out as my uterus expands from the size of a small pear to that of a large watermelon. 

Sometimes I feel like a textbook case, as much of what we learned has manifested. Thanks to the magical hormone relaxin, which softens ligaments and joints, my pelvis has become as loose as a Bangkok exotic dancer, allowing me to ease into wide-stride poses like never before. As predicted, my emotions have run riot at times, from pure frustration at missing surfing perfect waves to sentimental gushes of tears brought on by some harmless song on the radio.

My preconceptions have been challenged too. We were taught that certain spinal twists should be avoided as they compress the baby and that lying prone would prove impossible. That I won’t deny. But plank pose can, it seems, be practised with absent abdominals and even an occasional gentle crane balance doesn’t seem to disturb my womb’s inhabitant. Gradually, wheel pose and other strong backbends started to make me feel like an orange about to split its skin, but headstand and other inversions remained my closest companions until about 30 weeks. I loved turning myself upside-down, lightening the weight of the belly as my elbows planted into the earth.

When I go back to the first trimester: those early shell-shocked days of “is this really happening to us?”, I remember how surprisingly earthy it all felt. I expected to launch onto a cloud levitating with a luminous third eye from the moment of conception. Instead I became more animal. My sense of smell heightened, I cocooned, slept and ate only those few foods that didn’t repulse me, like small orange citrus fruits and strangely, fried chips. It seems my pregnancy has been a progression through the chakras, from the exhaustingly grounded base chakra phase of morning sickness, through the sacral chakra fuelling my libido, then the power of the solar plexus recharging my energy in the second trimester. From there came warmth and bliss as my heart chakra opened to connect lovingly with my man and welcome wholeheartedly this beautiful little soul we have conspired to co-create. As the birth approaches I am entering the realm of the throat and third eye chakras, with sound and visualisation the tools I am using to prepare for this ultimate female initiation. When dreams loom large and thoughts crowd my nights I  remind myself to breathe, which like a magic remedy, always brings me back. Back to my body, back to the ground, to trusting the universe to hold me.

The real test of my yoga will be the birth itself. Only then will I discover which yoga poses have been most powerful in preparing my body and which ways of breathing will ease this little soul’s passage through the labyrinths of the womb most effectively.

Maybe the most difficult for me will not be the birth itself, but the life adjustments parenting will bring. In the ancient yoga texts, the path of karma yoga, the yoga of action and life work is expected to follow four stages. It begins with brahmacharya, a time of discipline and education, which I have been lucky enough to have followed for about fifteen years, with abundant time to delve into yoga studies and personal practice. I have been blessed to have travelled, worked with many influential and inspiring teachers and to have unearthed many gems in my daily practice. And through teaching I discovered even more.

Now I find myself on the brink of the second phase, garhasthya, the life of the householder. I will need to find wisdom in the mundane, to continue to seek enlightenment while changing nappies, as motherhood becomes my divine service. I will have to surrender to the other responsibilities competing for my attention and may have to put physical yoga practice a little to the side for a while. What will keep me going is the awareness that our child has chosen us as parents, and will be our teacher. To lovingly welcome this miniature guru into our reality and give him/her the space to provide lessons.

My reassurance is the knowledge that nothing is permanent. In future the last two phases on the karma yogi’s journey may come;  those of vanaprasthya or retreat and perhaps eventually I will shave my head, relinquish my possessions and take up residence in the wilderness to follow sanyasa, the life of the ascetic.

For now I take comfort in my yoga, feeling so grateful for Vanda Scaravelli’s legacy and to have found my way into “this way of working”. Instead of being enslaved by a mentality of pushing and pulling, of competitively and mercilessly driving my body, I am lucky to savour, to explore, to fully enter each pose. I have learned to remain present, to wait and observe and I am always rewarded by feeling my body release. Slowly, gradually and without effort. I am learning to surrender to my lengthening muscles and elongating spine and sometimes to be overcome by that elusive spontaneous wavelike movement that becomes so much more accessible when we are able to let go. Could that be the most valuable preparation for birth? There’s only one way to find out.