How I found yoga
“We are practicing to live, not living to practice.”
I stated yoga to help my body move a little more easily during pregnancy.
Little did I know how vast the practice of yoga is and how much it would become a major force in my life.
I attended my first yoga class in the summer of 1999. Heavily pregnant in the last trimester, I wanted to keep exercising and moving my body in the lead up to giving birth. As my pregnancy progressed, the only type of Fitness First classes that still seemed appropriate were step classes. At 30 weeks I found myself huffing and puffing and moving slowly, using the lowest possible platform setting. It was disheartening to come away from those step classes feeling exhausted, clumsy and hot. It was SO hot. (This was the summer of Y2K and partying like it was 1999 to celebrate the year 2000. What a time to be heavily pregnant!)
Feeling heavy and constricted, and not being able to experience the physical buzz of an intense workout that I had enjoyed pre-pregnancy, I craved a class that would give me a chance to move physically while catering to my expanding girth and aching joints. So I joined a mid-morning yoga class. Expecting the class to be ‘just stretching’, instead I was introduced to meditation, breathwork and simple, slow and almost mysterious sequences and shapes. These were not prenatal yoga classes (indeed, I don’t recall any being available back then), but I was exhilarated by being introduced to experience ease and fluidity in my body with a bulging belly, without feeling disappointed, HOT, or exhausted.
After a few weeks, the teacher approached me after class and suggested that I continue with a home yoga practice, focusing on slow transitions and building my breathing practice. She even suggested that using my breath could help with the impending labour. I was intrigued. Using meditation and breath to help with managing labour and birth pain was a new concept. I still had a few weeks before the due date and was looking forward to building my skills with newfound excitement.
As it turned out, my son didn’t want to wait! He arrived two weeks early. I was surprised and completely unprepared for the events that followed. I used the rudimentary breath work I’d learned to that point as well as I could, and it helped during the first few hours of labour. I also used the newfound awareness of being ‘in’ my body, and listening to what I really needed. I clearly remember trying to manage the labour pain when a nurse offered pethidine as an option. As she set it all up and prepared to jab my thigh with the needle, I looked down, instinctively pulled back, and said, “No, not right now”. Don’t get me wrong - the nurses were very supportive and I was open to having drugs if and when they were needed, but at that moment I was able to have some agency in the whole process.
No amount of basic pranayama could help me stay calm or save my sanity when, after hours of labour, at a crucial point, baby Evan didn’t rotate from his position of head down, face up. The technical term is occiput posterior position - what they call ‘sunny side up’. The ideal position is when the baby faces towards the mum’s bum - that way, the top/back of the baby’s head is the first point of entry. Instead, baby Evan was facing up towards the sky - the top/back of his head pressed against my spine and sacrum.
A posterior birth is also called back labour.
Indeed.
I can honestly say that back labour is definitely a thing. When I compare that first labour with my second baby’s labour, it was like having a jackhammer in my lower back versus a steady drumbeat I could dance to.
Our heart rates started playing up. The midwives called for the paediatrician. I’d been in labour since Wednesday morning and finally, the baby arrived on Friday afternoon. There were epidurals, forceps, multiple stitches and heaps of blood loss. I’d never felt so close to death in my life. And I’d never been so exhausted.
After the baby arrived, yoga didn’t feature much during the first few months. But soon I was back at the gym, attending different classes to regain my strength and fitness.
Every yoga class I was able to attend was a gift. I could slow down, build strength, and then rest. I could allow space to process what I’d experienced during that, quite frankly, traumatic labour. I could find a way back to feeling a sense of balance an ease in my body.
My yoga journey had begun…