“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain
I just gave birth to my first child, a healthy 21 inch 7’14 lb baby on May 4, 2016 at 6:21am. I never knew what it was like to muster everything I had to support another’s well being. Sure, I do service work, and I have stood at the front line with my heart on my sleeve to do what I can for another human being’s well-being. I also try to give my all when I teach yoga and when I teach or practice other avenues of mindfulness and Love. All of that matters, and yet none of it compares to what I walked through in order to birth a new life.
I thought I was prepared, and maybe I was. I started working with and studying under well practiced Doula’s and Prenatal yoga teachers. This happened when I got back from India in 2012 after a psychic in Rishikesh said it was a part of my karma and Dharmic path to do so. I didn’t believe him fully, but a piece of me knew he was right, and upon my return to the States I was swept up in a current of what some may call coincidence that led me to pursue this path along side of my already budding holistic studies. I took Doula certification classes in the Bradley Method and Hypnobirthing that same year. I started teaching Prenatal yoga around the same time, and it seemed that everywhere I went, pregnant women found me. When I posed the question to the Universe while living in Costa Rica Just 2 years ago, “Can you guide me in the direction of where I can be of the most service in my teaching here?” the first group that responded were pregnant women. I don’t ask questions. I trust that this is destiny.
Yet, with all of that knowledge. With all that training in breath and mindfulness, the stages of pregnancy and birth, I was left on my birthing day with a ton of questions. I did what I could to prepare and visualize this birth but I was told by mothers who had gone before me to hold it all loosely because on that Day, it could all go out of the door. Most of it did. A lot of it was even better than I could have imagined. In fact, the mystery of it was what made it so incredibly unique because after all of it, I was looking around at the people in the room like, “Can you believe I just did that!?” My baby was healthy and on my chest, breathing… I did that. With the help of the Universe, I conceived and birthed what Rumi so powerfully muses, a, “Breath, breathing, human being.” Wow. This is New Life.
I don’t take birth lightly. In my re-birthing breath work training which has taken years of intensive study, we look at the effect prenatal, perinatal, and birth have on the psyche. Everything, everything, everything, we do while that child is being conceived, in our womb, and how they are held in birth dictates how they will cope with life in the years to come. It’s all written in the stars out there some where, so we do the best we can and leave the rest up to fate, but we do the best we can.
While doing the best that I could, here are 3 things I’ve Learned about New Life.
- New Life is created with explosions of Energy: “like when the mother met the father, met the mother, kissed the horizon, gave birth to stars.” IMua, Nakho Bear and Medicine for the People. We too, are created with this force of nature. We go through all of it while coming into existence. While birthing my daughter, I experienced moments of deep silence, silly laughter, deep breath, tears, loud expression, ease, and pain. The more I breathed into knowing that this was exactly what was needed for her to be born, the more strength I had to continue on.
- New Life teaches us to let go of expectations: and drop into the now. New life is well, NEW. In birthing my daughter, I had to let go of everything I thought I knew about birth, and drop into what the experience was actually bringing to me. My expectations would bring me out of the moment. When I was out of the moment, I was dropping into fear, and fear while birthing can bring up resistance.
- New Life makes us grateful for life. While she was being born there have been friends of mine who have suffered great loss. She is a reminder to us all of the great Earth cycles. She is a reminder for me to thank God for every morning I get to wake up knowing that I have another day to live this extraordinary life, especially now that I get to live it with her.
Alana Roach is a International Yogi currently based out of Annapolis, MD. Formerly adorned by the city lights and the busy streets of America, she was then whisked away by the illustrious path of yoga and took to traveling the world to share it with others. A few years back she started to write about the transformation she undertook by practicing conscious meditation. Her passions became her career and she now holds RYS Teacher Trainings & International Retreats, Health Coaches, and writes every opportunity she gets. In her spare time she loves cuddling with her daughter, surfing, being in nature, and living amongst her ever growing and global loving and conscious community. She is on Facebook , Instagram, Twitter, and can be reached by email explorationsofself@gmail.com
