Did I find yoga, or did yoga find me?
“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. So I searched for an alternative to the only Fitness First classes I had been reduced to attending - step classes. For the last few weeks in those step classes I had bounced and puffed and moved around like a low-lying crab using the lowest possible platform setting. It was disheartening to come away from the class feeling exhausted, clumsy and hot when pre-pregnancy I would relish the physical buzz of an intense workout. My body was craving something that felt strong and yet catered to my expanding girth and aching joints.
I joined the mid-morning yoga classes at the gym and found myself enjoying the simple, slow and almost mysterious sequences. I assumed we were ‘just stretching’ and that was enough for me. After a few classes one of the teachers suggested that I really start to focus on the breathing practices, as I might be able to use breath work for my impending labour. She said it would be worthwhile to develop my focus so that when the time came, I could tap into the meditative benefits of managing the pain with my breath. I still had a few weeks before the due date and was looking forward to cramming as much as I could with that newfound practice .
Turns out my son didn’t want to wait! He arrived two weeks early and 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 rather than going along with whatever the nurses offered to me. I clearly remember trying to manage the labour pain and being offered pethadine as an option. As they prepared to jab my thigh with the needle, I looked down and instinctively pulled back and said ‘no, that’s not for me’. Don’t get me wrong - the nurses were very supportive and I was open to having drugs if and when they were needed, but that moment was the first time I really remember taking some agency in the process.
No amount of basic pranayama could save my sanity when, after hours of being in labour, at a crucial point my baby didn’t move around from his posterior position (head facing up instead of towards my bum). Our heart rates started playing up. The midwives called for the paediatrician. I’d been in labour since Wednesday morning and finally, he arrived Friday afternoon after a few 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 taking all types of classes to regain my strength and fitness. I’d occasionally squeeze a yoga class in to give myself a ‘slow down and relax’ vibe.
Wow, in hindsight I wish I’d embraced yoga more fully during those first few years of being a new mum.
My yoga practice kicked up a notch when I was pregnant with my second child. Miraculously I had found a wonderful yoga class with a fantastic teacher at the gym near my work in North Sydney. I would rush over the road during my lunch hour and squeeze in a class, maybe once a week if I was lucky.
While I wish I could remember her name, I’ll never forget how this yoga teacher made me feel and the exhilarating space she was able to hold in that gym environment. The room was downstairs and away from the clanging weights. It was a little darker than normal and she would light candles and incense. For the first time I was enjoying basic but more regular breath work, chanting and meditating. My asana practice started to include more challenging poses and I’m certain this teacher helped prepare me to stay grounded and manage the impending pain of my second birth. I’d been so scarred physically and emotionally by my son’s birth that I was determined to take more control over my second pregnancy. I wanted to be more fully embodied this time around, even if (little did I know) it would be just as profoundly painful and exhausting.
So really, I found yoga, and it found me, with my experience of being pregnant and giving birth to my two babies. Both times were incredibly difficult, and I needed the drugs, oh how I needed those drugs…“give me the druuuugs!!!” I’m so grateful that I had enough basic yoga experience to help me at this important time in my life because it helped me in a truly impactful way.
It’s amazing to think back on what a miracle it is to have a healthy birth and baby. I am to this day so thankful that my babies emerged safely into the world, squealing and hot and squishy. I look back at both experiences and marvel at how instinctively I knew when to push, where to place my body to ease the pain (somewhat), and how to embrace their wet, slippery bodies and put them onto my breast. Just incredible. That awareness of my body, and tapping into my babies’ rhythms and needs, was a real taste of how yoga can be experienced off the mat.
I am also innately reminded that like animals we hold a deep, instinctual knowing about certain things. With the birth of my daughter, I reached a point of earth-shattering pain where I thought I was literally going to die (before the epidural finally kicked in). Just when I thought I could not possibly go on, right before she emerged into the world, I experienced an incredible, roaring wave of power, which I now recognise as the divine feminine. It was probably only a matter of seconds, but it could have been days. It was beyond pain – an all-encompassing, all-powerful emotion that transcended the agony that was ripping my body wide open. This divine feminine energy wrapped me, and my baby, and all the other women in the world who had ever given birth, and their babies, and in fact the whole world and every one and every thing in it, into what I can only describe as a full and enveloping and warm embrace of love. Mighty. LOVE.
After the profound insight I was gifted during my daughter’s birth, I went even further down the path of yoga. By the time she was a year old, we had moved to a new suburb and I kept up my gym membership. Again I explored different gym classes but I was continually drawn to the yoga sessions.
Within a year my focus moved almost exclusively to only attending yoga classes, and there, in that loud and bright and almost crass gym environment, I met more teachers who would change my view of yoga, myself and more broadly, my life.