Create Connection by Becoming a Prenatal Yoga Teacher
People who have taken my classes, or know me, or have happened to stumble upon my pseudo birth story blog post know that, despite years of yoga practice, a sporadic (ahem) vegetarian lifestyle, and fairly regular use of a neti pot, both of my births contained a laundry list of medical interventions. It's become a point of pride for me. I really really don't want to be sanctimonious about not being sanctimonious but, y'all, ALL birth is hard. There may be varying degrees of intensity and pain. Sometimes joy and beauty and magic are in the mix, too. Sometimes crushing grief.
But it's all hard.
It's hard if it's a woman's 10th baby and she's figured out how in heaven's name to have an orgasm while a head emerges from her vaginal canal.
And it's hard if it's in an actual river, or at home, or in a hospital bed with an epidural that actually works.
It. Is. Hard.
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What birth is very much NOT, in any way, shape or form, is a competition. If we could all settle on the very real reality of the challenge involved in giving birth, no matter the form it takes, we could hold each other up in a way that smashes patriarchal competition and allows us to love and honor one another and each experience of birth. As a result, we could also more easily honor the choices we make prior to birth and after birth that make sense for us as individuals, as mothers, as birth parents, as families, as human beings trying to make their way in this world.
The practice of prenatal yoga is not revelatory in a way that immediately erases all sense of individualism or exceptionalism.
In a very small way, teaching prenatal yoga to yoga teachers and other birth professionals allows me the opportunity to connect to what it is that IS, in fact, essential, about the power of what yoga can do in the face of the facts of birth; that it is both hard and transformative, and that, while yoga may offer tools of breathing and help to ease some of the discomforts of pregnancy, its real power lies elsewhere.
Birth will still be hard, no matter how much yoga you do. As I mentioned above, it's hard for everyone. And therein lies the beauty of what prenatal yoga can REALLY do.
CONNECT US.
What happens in a prenatal yoga teacher training is the same thing that happens in a prenatal yoga class. Connection happens.
Realization dawns that those who chose to deliver in a high-risk hospital didn't have a better birth because they chose a way that would be "safest for their baby" and for them. Those who gave birth at home in warm water didn't form a bond more intense and satisfying than those who chose or needed to utilize pain relief or anesthesia. There is not a hierarchy in birth. (Or, in an ideal world, there wouldn't be, but we live in a country where privilege pays a LARGE role in your birth story)
When people connect with one another, just as in ALL of life, we discover that differences don't make us better or worse. They MAKE us, sure. And that realization that our stories are all important is a point of connection that happens so easily in a space of self-discovery and disclosure and vulnerability and community, all of which is fostered in both prenatal yoga class and yoga teacher training.
When viewed in that light, it's pretty clear why teaching prenatal yoga and leading our yoga teacher training is pretty high on my list of favorite things to do.
We would be honored for you to join us for our upcoming PYTT, which returns in-person in Chapel Hill this February!
And please feel to reach out to us directly with any questions or concerns. We are available at wholemamayoga@gmail.com.