This New Year's Eve we welcomed 2022 with a cozy practice and some inspiring words, here are all the readings from our workshop:






"Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment,
to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
Peace is all around us in the world and in nature, and within us;
It is in our bodies and our spirits.
Once we learn to touch this peace,
we will be healed and transformed.
It is not a matter of faith,
it is a matter of practice."
-Thich Naht Hanh

Silence by Hafiz
A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.

A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvelous lute and drum.

Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a humbling fort?

I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,

To Dance within
In celebration of Love's Victory!

The Guest House by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
​A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
​Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
​The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
​Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Skinning Your Knees on God by Hafiz
Little by little,
You will turn into stars.

Even then, my dear,
You will only be
A crawling infant,
Still skinning your knees on Gad.

Little by little,
You will turn into
The whole sweet, amorous Universe
In heat
On a wild spring night,

And become so free
In a wonderful, secret
And pure Love
That flows 
From a conscious,
One-pointed,
Infinite need for Light.

Even then, my dear,
The Beloved will have fulfilled 
Just a fraction,
Just a fraction!
Of a promise 
He wrote upon your heart.

When your soul begins
To Ever blow and laugh
And spin in Eternal Ecstasy--

O little by little, 
You will turn into God.

"We are all on a journey together...
To the center of the universe...
Look deep
Into yourself, into another.
It is to a center which is everywhere
That is the holy journey...
First you need only look:
Notice and honor the radiance of
Everything about you...
Play in this universe. Tend
All these shining things around you;
The smallest plant, the creatures and
Objects in your care.
Be gentle and nurture. Listen...
As we experience and accept
All that we really are...
We grow in care.
We begin to embrace others
As ourselves, and learn to live
As one among many." -Anne Hillman

The Winter of Listening by David Whyte
No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel we desire,
what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.
All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.
All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.
All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
have led m to that
otherness.
So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

Every sound
has a home
from which it has come to us
and a door
through which it is going
again
out into the world
to make another home.
We speak
only with the voices
of those
we can hear ourselves
and the body has a voice
only for that portion
of the body of the world
it has learned to perceive.
It becomes
a world itself
by listening
hard
for the way
it belongs.
There it can
learn
how it
must be
and what
it must do.
And
here
in the tumult
of the night
I hear the walnut
above the child’s swing
swaying
its dark limbs
in the wind
and the rain now
come to
beat against my window
and somewhere
in this cold night
of wind and stars
the first whispered
opening of
those hidden
and invisible springs
that uncoil
in the still summer air
each yet
to be imagined
rose.

It can be incredibly important when experiencing hip pain to incorporate strengthening as well as stretching. Often times when muscles aren't being used effectively, we will feel soreness as smaller supporting muscles step up to bat (and fail pretty quickly).

During pregnancy, with the increased weight of baby as they grow and the added strain on joints due to relaxin, hips are often the number one complaint. But remember, if hips are aching, try strengthening them first! Most of the time this will help to alleviate some of the discomfort you feel.
Add these five practices to your daily routine (or pick one or two to make it easy!) and begin to notice a huge difference in the hip pain you are experiencing (or visit our online yoga pregnancy yoga classes for practices to help the hips):

Generally for most folks pubic pain shows up in the third trimester, though if you had it in your previous pregnancy, chances are good it will show up again (and earlier) in your following pregnancies. For most people this shows up as a sharp, shooting pain in the region of the pubic bone. The interesting thing about the pubic bone is its actually a joint, there are two bones that meet at what we think of as the pubic bone, and like any joint, there is connective tissue that holds the joint together.
 
Because of relaxin, a hormone released during pregnancy, connective tissue in the body is softening over time. As baby grows, added weight presses down on the pelvis which puts strain on this joint, and for some folks this ends up causing pubic symphysis dysfunction. It will usually show up one of two ways 1) when doing lunges or after long walks or exercise where legs are going forward and back or 2) when opening the knees away from one another in things like rolling over in bed. ​

Opening the hips and pelvis: in general, creating extra space in the hips and pelvic region can be helpful for childbirth given the expansion that happens in the pelvic region to make way for baby’s descent and birth. Using poses to help open these areas can help prepare the body to open and stretch once childbirth begins. It can also be hugely helpful in creating space that can allow baby to maneuver their positioning if they’re not in an ideal spot leading up to or during labor. Here are some yoga poses that can help you with that:

• Squats
• Gate Pose
• Warrior II
• Pigeon Pose
• Bound Angle Pose
• Wide Legged Forward Fold

Strengthening the legs: if we look at mainstream media’s vision of birth, birth happens lying down. For most laboring folks, however, that is not the case. Labor happens in all sorts of different positions including side-lying, hands and knees, squatting, sitting and standing. Doing work to help strengthen the legs can be immensely helpful during our pregnancy as we start to carry more weight around in our bodies, but having the stamina and the strength to use our legs in labor can be immensely beneficial. Here are poses that will help build leg strength:

• Chair 
• Warrior I and Warrior II
• Tree 
• Half Moon
• Squats

​Deep squats: squatting in general is a huge part of labor for many people. Some folks find squatting during labor to helpful, some people will birth the baby squatting. On a physiological squatting creates more space in the pelvic outlet for baby to travel through and can also align the pelvis much better than lying down can for the birth of baby. The tough thing? Squatting for long period of time is hard! There are lots of ways to do supported squats in labor and childbirth, but building strength in the body beforehand can make a big difference in finding support and ease in those positions later.

Try exploring staying in yoga poses longer than you think you can: in poses like Warrior II or Squats at the wall, we have foundational support for our bodies and generally are not putting them in a precarious position. So, when you’re in the pose, notice when your body tells you its time to come out (this might show up as trembling or a sense of exhaustion or tiredness in the muscles) and see if you can stay a few breaths longer than you think. Of course, if your body is telling you to come out because you’re in legitimate pain, please come out when you get that feedback.

When we stay in difficult poses for longer periods of time this also gives us the opportunity to practice different forms of managing our sensations. When we are in a place of intense sensation, be it a long-held yoga pose or a contraction, we can manage the sensation by keeping our mind on something else. If we keep our minds busy and focused on something else, the brain has less bandwidth to focus on telling us we’re in pain. Yoga poses can be a great place to start exploring this as a practice for managing sensation in labor. Here are a few ways we might distract our minds in yoga poses or in labor:

• Visualizations: visualizations can be anything. You might imagine yourself floating in a pool, your body calm and relaxed. You might visualize the sensation in your body like an ocean wave, rising and peaking and then going out to sea. You might visualize your baby, seeing them and holding them for the first time. There’s no right or wrong here its all about what works for you.
• Breath: coming back to breath as a tool. Watch the breath as you’re in a pose for a long time. You might count your breaths as you inhale and exhale or you might start to take more audible breaths to keep yourself connected to your breath.
• Mantra: in yoga, mantras are usually specific chants in Sanskrit that are meant to invoke different energy, pay homage to different deities or direct oneself into a meditative state. In birth and prenatal yoga mantras can be very different and very simply. It could be as simple as chanting “out baby out” or “doooowwwwnnn” during a contraction. It might sound silly now, but I have been at births where parents have used these “mantras” repeatedly during contractions and they have helped to keep them focused and keep their minds of the sensations of labor.

​Every few months I teach a Partner Yoga for Birth workshop that helps pregnant folks and their partners explore how yoga and breath can help prepare for labor and also ways they can explore together what support looks like during labor.

With restrictions in place on the number of support people currently allowed at hospital births, many folks have been inquiring about how to better prepare their birth partners for supporting them in their labor. Here are some key takeaways from that workshop that will hopefully be of service to you and to them.

Tips for Labor

• For partners you offer support through presence, just being there and not doing anything is a huge support, your job is to hold space and be the protector of the space
  • There can be pressure to be the coach but serve them best by being the partner
  • Your job is to be the protector of the space
• Explore if there is anywhere in pregnancy, birth plan or with new baby where you’re not seeing eye to eye?
• Remember in labor that when the laboring person turns inward the connection between the two of you can feel small, but know that its there
• Partner’s job is to keep the labor rituals going if they stop
  • Labor rituals can be anything: movement, sound
  • Labor rituals stop when things get hard, and that’s when the birthing person needs them the most
• A huge tool is distraction during contractions. This forces the brain to split its attention and it can only then spend so much time focused on the intensity of the contraction. Ways to distract that work vary from person to person and may change throughout labor, but might look like:
  • Massage
  • Gentle touch, rubbing or scraping with fingernails
  • If in tub or shower, pouring water down their back or over their body
  • Song, making noise, music
  • Eye contact
  • Breathing together
  • Aromatherapy

 
Communication in Labor

• What does support look like: verbal, physical, presence, distraction
• Practice communication:
  • Remember communication may be limited, especially later in labor
  • How can we communicate without words?
  • Listen with eyes, look for non-verbal feedback
  • Try not to ask open-ended questions, ask things that can be answered with "yes or no"
  • Don’t take things personally

 
Poses for Labor

• Slow Dance Pose: perfect for labor because you utilize gravity while standing, it’s a way to be close and also for the laboring person to be supported (what a video of it here).
• Double Hip Squeeze: which is helpful for back labor and contractions (watch a demo of it here)

​
Birth Partner Support During Labor
Don't forget to think about what kind of support the Birth Partner will need during labor:

• Wear comfortable clothes
• Pack snacks and beverages for yourself
• Hydrate, use the bathroom and rest as you can
• Remember, you are in charge of your needs so make sure they’re getting met

 
Homework

• Make time to spend with one another and connect
• Explore these questions together, giving your partner the opportunity to share without trying to jump in and “fix” whatever they have mentioned:
  • What are you the most worried/anxious/scared about? About pregnancy, labor and birth.
  • What are you the most excited/happy/joyful about? About pregnancy, labor and birth.

 
Resources

• The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin
• Spinning Babies https://spinningbabies.com