Meet.. Shoshana ( and baby #3)
How long have you been practicing yoga?
I was introduced to yoga as a child, about 30 years ago. Gradually my practice has deepened, especially in the last three years, since I did my teacher training.
How did you get started in yoga and what types have you practiced?
I started doing yoga with my mom when I was a kid – she taught me the sun salutations and various other poses. We used to do yoga with my best friend, to a Raquel Welch VHS tape in the ‘80s! In the late ‘90s, as yoga studios proliferated, I tried classes in lots of different styles, and usually found a teacher I liked wherever I was living in some vinyasa style, but never became wedded to any particular style.
During the first trimester of my first pregnancy, I was feeling awful and not doing any yoga. A friend sent me Gurmukh’s book “Beautiful, Bountiful, Blissful,” which was my introduction to Kundalini yoga. I was so inspired by it that I wanted to study with Gurmukh, but she was in L.A. and I was in D.C., but I was lucky enough to find a prenatal Kundalini class at a local studio.
After that, Kundalini became my main practice, and I did my Kundalini teacher training three years ago.
How has yoga influenced your pregnancies?
The yogic idea of connecting to a something universal beyond your individual ego was key during my pregnancies. Yoga also gave me physical and meditative practices that helped address and manage the physical and emotional changes of pregnancy.
Before I studied Kundalini yoga, my only experience of meditation had been of the Zen variety, (as in the Jon Kabat-Zinn book “Wherever You Go, There You Are”) which I did not find very accessible.
Meditation is an integral part of Kundalini yoga, and I found it more accessible because there are thousands of distinct meditations, usually involving a particular eye gaze, hand position, breathing pattern and mantra. They are usually practiced at first for 3 minutes, building up to 7, 11, 22, 31 or 62 minutes.
Something you hear a lot in Kundalini classes is “Keep Up” – an encouragement to be your best self and to go a little farther than you think you can. This is great preparation for labor and childbirth!
The meditations are often uncomfortable (sometimes involving holding your arms above your head), at least for the first few minutes. What you find is if you stick with it, you get to practice observing your discomfort and your mind’s reaction to it, and then stepping past that reaction by surrendering and opening yourself to whatever sensations you are feeling. If you stick with it beyond where you think you can go, you sometimes move into a place where the meditation becomes manageable, enjoyable and even blissful. Afterwards, you often experience a heightened state of consciousness and connectedness.
Being pregnant and giving birth is an opportunity that we only experience a few times, if at all – being present for the entrance of a new soul into the world. Amidst all the discomforts of pregnancy and the hard work of childbirth, it’s easy to forget that that’s what it’s about, but a yoga and meditation practice can open you to that and help you stay connected to it.
In pregnancy, it can be easy to push yourself too much and wear yourself out, or to go in the other extreme, wallowing in discomfort and longing only to feel comfortable. For me, yoga helped me find the balance, to listening to myself and my body in pregnancy and childbirth.
You have chosen a home birth for 2 of your babies, can you explain why?
My mother had natural childbirth experiences (in hospitals), and described them as hard work, but manageable and very positive, so I grew up thinking this was the normal way to do things.
My health insurance when I was pregnant the first time gave me two choices – a big hospital or a birth center run by certified nurse-midwives. When I visited the hospital, they told me laboring women were not allowed to eat or drink anything other than ice chips. I found this infuriating, since I am a generally thirsty person and I knew that the nothing-by-mouth policy comes from a time when women were completely sedated during childbirth. When I asked the nurse how they supported natural childbirth, she literally laughed in my face and told me that 90 percent of the women in that hospital immediately got epidurals. Meanwhile, I found that the birth center had been assisting women having unmedicated births for over 20 years with excellent outcomes for mothers and babies, backed up by obstetricians in hospitals for high-risk scenarios. They also had a huge hot tub for laboring in, a comfortable bedroom and a kitchen where you could eat or drink whatever you wanted. For me, that was a lot more appealing!
When I switched my care to the midwives, I found them relaxed, compassionate and interested holistically in the physical, emotional and psychological health of my whole family, as opposed to the rushed, somewhat indifferent care I had received from my obstetrician, who seemed mostly interested in telling me what tests we should run.
At the time, my insurance didn’t cover home births, only the birth center, and home birth was too unfamiliar to me to be a comfortable choice, but I was intrigued by my midwives’ attitude about it. They said it was no different than having a baby at the birth center (except for the hot tub), and that they would bring with them to a home everything they would have at the center.
My first labor was relatively short (too short to even use the hot tub by the time I got there), and afterwards the midwife suggested that I consider a home birth the next time.
After experiencing childbirth, the idea of a home birth was less intimidating. By the time I was pregnant again, I had also moved farther away from the birth center, and changed insurance, so I decided to try it. It was also appealing to me since my older child was very attached to me and I thought she would have an easier time adjusting to her new sibling if she was included in the birth.
I had a great home birth experience – it was lovely not having to go anywhere before or after the birth (other than to the pediatrician a few days later). I also felt it was very important for my kids’ relationship that my oldest felt included in the experience – from the beginning she has felt like a partner in helping to bring up her brother.
How has/does yoga influence your parenting?
Yoga helps me stay in the moment and appreciate and enjoy my life instead of living in the past or future. Yoga helps me cultivate the “yogi mind” -- a place from which I can observe, appreciate and feel gratitude for whatever’s going on, or find the lesson in it, or find the humor in it. I think before I studied yoga I didn’t differentiate between whatever my instinctual reaction was and all the other choices I had, if I could just pause long enough to get some perspective.
Yoga reminds me to stay connected to my breath, and to always seek my higher self rather than staying mired in emotional reactions. I find the more I do yoga the more I remember to slow down and enjoy my children and savor my time with them instead of getting bogged down in the stresses of the day-to-day.
Favorite yoga pose? breathing technique?
At the moment, being pregnant, I am enjoying half dog and cat-cow a lot and alternate nostril breathing.
When not pregnant, sun salutations are key to my morning, as is Ego Eradicator (a seated Kundalini posture with arms raised, doing breath of fire.) I also can’t wait to get back to stretch pose (another Kundalini posture that builds core strength) after I have this baby!
What do you find most relevant during birth in relation to your yoga practice? What have you used in yoga to help in labor? give us some tips!
Labor can be like a long meditation – so it helps if you have practiced surrendering to discomfort during meditation. In a strange way, labor is easier than meditation, because you can’t really run away from it. If you really acknowledge what’s happening, the easiest path is forward, even though it’s challenging. You can always make an excuse and run away from your meditation practice, but once you go into labor, everything is moving towards you having the baby, even if you try to avoid it. And what you find is that once you accept and surrender to what’s happening, instead of resisting, something shifts and a path opens, just like in yoga and meditation
Labor is also the ultimate opportunity to surrender to the moment and breathe through it. When it gets difficult, you can put it into practice your “yogi mind,” which observes from a more neutral place the messages your mind is sending you: “This hurts,” “I’m scared,” etc. You practice compassionately acknowledging whatever thoughts and feelings come up, but you don’t hang on to them, you let them flow in and out. It’s also good practice for parenting – you can be present and compassionate in the same way with your children when they are in pain, scared, etc., without going off into your own anxiety, and they will find this calming and comforting.
Childbirth is also the ultimate opportunity to listen to your body, because labor is an instinctual process, and the more you get your mind out of your body’s way, the better things progress. When I had my son I remember moving through a number of positions before pushing, and at first I remember feeling discouraged that nothing felt right. Finally, I found the right position (squatting with my husband supporting me) and it just felt like everything clicked – of course this was the way this particular baby needed to come out. That’s not to say it wasn’t still very challenging to push him out, but beneath that challenge I had the comfort of knowing this was the best possible way forward.
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