“In actuality, there is never any such thing as solid ground, but strapped securely inside our heads, where we live most of the time, things seem pretty predictable and safe. We think we are the captain of the ship. We are prepared to steer, to give orders, and to reach our intended destination just the way we want to. How we fear our navigational errors! How earnestly we aim! When you go into labor, you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. there are only waves.” ~ Karen Maizen Miller, from her book Momma Zen
“In this way, every birth is a natural birth: each of us is part of nature, not separate from it, and nature is always stunning in its variety. Your birth, then, is part of the natural world, however it unfolds.” ~ Lauralyn Curtis
“This, and nothing less, that’s what Birth wants from you: to go along with her wherever she takes you. To take a full body, head first plunge into this breath and the next, saying Yes! and Yes! again to the wild adventure of each moment. It is the adventure of your life time, the resounding echo of an agreement you made decades and eons ago when you first said Yes to this lifetime, to being on earth, to being born. Birth wants nothing new from you. She won’t ask you anything you don’t already know. Give her your whole hearted Yes, and she will dance with you in wisely measured ways. She will give you space to grow and time to rest, peak after valley after peak after valley. Birth’s wisdom is in her pacing. Everything has its place. Follow with her cadence. There is no other place to go. Be the storm, and sweep across the sky. Be the stillness in the quiet folds of labor, sweet heaviness of flesh and bones.” ~ Tina Lilly, from her book Labor, Love and Liberation
“Always remember that children are born exactly the way they need to born. We are born into this lifetime to grow, and it is only through experience we grow. Once labor starts, the process is bigger than any one person’s plan. Sometimes a soul coming through needs a certain experience for its journey, or many the mother needs it for hers, or the father needs it for his. We call it a complication, but it is a thread among the many thousands of threads that create the rich tapestry of life”. ~Gurmukh, from her book Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful
“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” -Rajneesh
“One of the most challenging things about Birth is that you have to go through it yourself. No one will take your place when labor starts. Blindfolded, barehanded, and with the timing that is not of your choosing, you have to cross a stormy ocean. You have to move in ways you haven’t moved before, and step into depths you didn’t Fathom. Your partner and friends can call out to you and keep in touch from the lighthouse of their love, but where you are going no one can follow. It is your solitary path to walk. There are no road maps, cancellations for second chances, and there is nothing you can bring along – Except yourself. How you let go. How you hold on. How you face fear. How you forgive. How you love.
When you are in the middle of this Ocean, you will meet yourself. It is a guileless encounter, and you will see yourself in your nakedness and innocence. Can you except and love, who you may meet? Can you see yourself like a newborn babe? Birth is not a time to bemoan your cries. Hear your cries, yes, and all they speak of – desires, fears and sorrows – and kindly smile upon them. Give them to the ocean, all. With nothing left to let go of, you become the ocean, and there is nothing left to cross.” ~ Tina Lilly ~
excerpt from her book, Labor, Love and Liberation
“Labor is one contraction. It just happens over and over again.” ~ Tina Lilly
“Expansion and contraction are the shuttles of labor. Those two processes move labor along and compose the rhythm of birth. They give rise to each other – inhale gives rise to exhale, exhale to inhale – and they happen simultaneously. When the uterus contracts, the cervix stretches (expands); and when the uterus returns to rest (expands), the cervix contracts. If you like, you can do a short practice to observe those co-existing rhythms. Make sure you sit with the relaxed posture and straight spine. Notice how inhale and exhale fold into one another. Notice parts of your body expanding while others are contracting.
Birth abides by this rhythm.”
-from Labor, Love and Liberation by Tina Lilly- Founder of The Yoga Way to Birth
“Birth is an initiation, a passage through the gateway that brings your child into life and you into your mothering role. You body expands to accommodate this new being and then gives birth to both the child’s body and life force. Birth itself is an act of trust, no matter how much you prepare, you will ultimately learn as you go. Still preparations are necessary and can enhance confidence, ease fears, and otherwise help you to feel ready for labor and meeting your baby.” ~ Tami Lynn Kent, Mothering from Your Center
“Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.” ~ Carrie Fisher
“The whole point of a woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve help, but in essence, she always had, currently has and will have the power.” ~ Heather McCue
“Imagine what might happen if women emerged from their labor beds with a renewed sense of the strength and power of their bodies, and of their capacity for ecstasy through giving birth” ~ Dr. Christiane Northrup
“…Respecting the woman as an important and valuable human being and making certain that the woman’s experience while giving birth is fulfilling and empowering is not just a nice extra, it is absolutely essential as it make the woman strong and therefore make society strong.” ~ Marsden Wagner
“My dream is that every woman, everywhere, will know the joy of a truly safe, comfortable, and satisfying birthing for herself and her baby.” ~ Marie Mongan
“It is not only that we want to bring about an easy labor, without risking injury to the mother or the child; we must go further. We must understand that childbirth is fundamentally a spiritual, as well as a physical, achievement. . . The birth of a child is the ultimate perfection of human love.” ~ Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, 1953
“Birth is as safe as life gets.” ~ Harriette Hartigan
“Many women have described their experiences of childbirth as being associated with a spiritual uplifting, the power of which they have never previously been aware. To such a woman, childbirth is a monument of joy within her memory. She turns to it in thought to seek again an ecstasy which passed too soon.” ~ Grantly Dick Read, Childbirth Without Fear
“There is a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are strong.” ~ Laura Stavoe Harm
“When I say painless, please understand, I don’t mean you will not feel anything. What you will feel is a lot of pressure; you will feel the might of creation move through you. Pain, however, is associated with something gone wrong. Childbirth is a lot of hard work, and the sensations that accompany it are very strong, but there is nothing wrong with labor.” ~ Giuditta Tornetta
“Each woman brings her self to birth. Like a baby who needs to descend through her womb to be born, each woman needs to descend into the depths of her own truth to be born a mother. This is often a gradual process and one with many unknowns. It requires time and radical honesty…
How can self-knowledge serve us, and what do we need to know about ourselves on the threshold of a new life chapter? What stands in the way?
Pregnancy is a fertile time to ask those questions…” ~ Tina Lilly, from her book Labor, Love and Liberation
“When enough women realize that birth is a time of great opportunity to get in touch with their true power, and when they are willing to assume responsibility for this, we will reclaim the power of birth and help move technology where it belongs–in the service of birthing women, not their master.” ~ Christiane Northrup
“Birth is an opportunity to transcend. To rise above what we are accustomed to, reach deeper inside ourselves than we are familiar with, and to see not only what we are truly made of, but the strength we can access in and through birth.” ~ Marcie Macari
“So the question remains. Is childbirth painful? Yes. It can be, along with a thousand amazing sensations for which we have yet to find adequate language. Every birth is different, and every woman’s experience and telling of her story will be unique.” ~ Marcie Macari
“The instant of birth is exquisite. Pain and joy are one at this moment. Ever after, the dim recollection is so sweet that we speak to our children with a gratitude they never understand.” ~ Madline Tiger
“A woman in birth is at once her most powerful, and most vulnerable. But any woman who has birthed unhindered understands that we are stronger than we know.” ~ Marcie Macari
“Although the popularly desired outcome is ‘healthy mother, healthy baby,’ I think there is room in that equation for ‘happy, non-traumatized, empowered and elated mother and baby.’” ~ Midwifery Today
“Childbirth is an experience in a woman’s life that holds the power to transform her forever. Passing through these powerful gates – in her own way – remembering all the generations of women who walk with her… She is never alone.” ~ Suzanne Arms
“Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.” ~Gloria Steinem, Ms. Magazine, April 1981
“Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong until we’re pushing out our babies.” ~ Louise Erdrich
margot yoga ::: lcsw | prenatal yoga | childbirth education 