Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Tai Chi and Labour

Well, after a bit of a break to adjust to the arrival of Ethan Owyn Robins on January 13th, I'm back with more knowledge and understanding of just how amazing Qigong and Tai Chi are.

Despite everyone's horror stories of how terrible it could be, labour was actually a fantastic, life affirming experience for me.
Positioning:
Knowing that my mum had had issues with the position of my brother and I, and my grandma the same, I did lots of work beforehand to make sure Ethan was in the best possible position: I found that waist turning tended to move him into a more horiaontal position and so adjusted my practice to do less of these exercises.

Early Labour
Labour started at around 7pm with my 'show' and ended at 1.26 in the morning with a beautiful baby boy - around 6 hours. The first stages were all about learning to breathe with each cycle - a great insight into my qigong practice. I found that the exercise of breathing into and out of the Ming Men was really helpful at this stage, it helped to slow my breathing down, to relax the back muscles where they were cramping and deepened by physical breath to help me take in more oxygen. It also gave us enough time to work out how to use the TENS machine.

Second Stage
Once we arrived at the hospital, my breath work helped to create a focused state of intention which blocked out everything apart from the relationship between myself and Ethan and our need to help each other through his journey to the outside world. As a study in the qualities of resting in and supporting it was a truly fantastic experience; I understand much more about the qualities of connection trained in jue shou and tui shou now that before those few hours. Feeling his head transition from the womb into the birth canal and then feeling it descend and ascend, descend and ascend with each wave of contraction and working with my ability to push clearly and release the push completely to enable it to happen as effortlessly as possibly was an enlightening journey for me.

Many of our students have said that they found tai chi helped them in labour, sped things along, reduced the need for pain relief; I agree. I was more relaxed, more focused, stronger, more confident and able to trust my body's instincts because of my practice. Thank you to all my teachers.

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