Accepting the time of now

On becoming

I chose to elude the transition of motherhood twice before. Those experiences guide me as I am called to the transition again, this time with an altered presence. I confront my former self and accept the time of now.

I recently submitted my recollection of physical challenges that mounted during the years of working in commercial kitchens. A professor in Illinois, who is a master teacher of the Alexander technique, wanted to know what physical issues, challenges, and muscular patterning that bakers notice in their bodies after years (or hours) of baking and what do we do to bring ease to our time in the kitchen.

In an email exchange, Joe Bowie asks, “Do we simply “turn off” our aches and pains to survive in the bakery? Do we lose our connections to our bodies? What are the consequences of disconnectedness? And, how might we mitigate these moments of disconnectedness with conscious, physicalized choices like focusing on mobility in our joints, lengthening our spines, and breathing deeply into every cell of our bodies?”

I have spent years after leaving the kitchen full time to find and study holistic, embodied practices. I thought I only had tension where I felt pain, but I quickly learned that my tension filled movement patterning found homes in many more places than I was aware of. I have since become more interested in physical and energetic anatomy, how I can tune into the countless connections within the body, sensing the system as a whole rather than its parts.

I reminisced with my mother about her tai chi practice when I was a young child. We would attend expos where she would demonstrate the form (there are five main family styles of tai chi) with her practice group and master. “The energy is real. I can really feel it move through my body,” she recalls. I’ve only in the past few years tuned into my own energy body, a producer of magnetic force fields.

This concept I remember learning in the 8th grade when we built magnets with an iron nail, wire, and a battery. When the battery’s circuit moves through the wires coiled around the iron nail, it produces a magnetic field. We were challenged to make a magnetic field strong enough to move a filled filing cabinet. (See: YouTube, Science World: exploring electromagnets) 

To an untrained viewer, the movements of tai chi seem simple or easeful; however, these movements have a lot more intricacy to it. It has less to do with looking identical to the person practicing the same tai chi form and more to do with an internal awareness and of non-doing. If the body and mind aren’t in harmony, the movement sequences seem (robotic/heavy/without fluidity) like an uneaseful attempt at mimicry as the mind continues its chatter. There must not be any blockages in the wires to produce the strongest field.

I dreamed these embodied practices would result in an easeful pregnancy. The first five months I felt mostly like my former self: traveling to three places that required a passport, hiking at an altitude of over 9500 ft., catering a wedding of 100 with J, sleeping in a tent on camping mats many nights. The challenge of the sixth month caught me unprepared as I felt anything but myself, in much discomfort of the present self, arguably one of the purest experiences of the present moment. The physical experience would overwhelm the mind of the past or the future. I crippled to the present moment. Being the seeker that I am, I fell short in uncovering the cause or remedy of the intense physical experience. Search engines and printed matter were useless. I had to learn to be here now. The past and future is lost in translation during transition. Sometimes the release was tears. Sometimes the relief was a cold plunge. Oftentimes, the ending of the discomforted mind was sleep—a quieting of the physical realm, an altering of the brain waves. We know this journey.

I would realize over time that the somatic practices and the month of discomfort (that tapered off only enough to dream again) would be a necessary experience to prepare me for the most present time to come—birth. I would have to go into my joints and be the discomfort to move the pooling fluids. I would have to take my breath and mind to the tension and learn how to find ease. I would also need to train my mind to become one with the physical experience, rather than a separate observer. The journey would be unique from others walking the path. In my own terms, at my own time, there would be an emergence.

We all need a woman to come into this world, yet we do not hold their gifts, their value in reverence.

In the past, movements to raise the feminine voice mostly succeeded to make women more active participants in the patriarchal-dominated world. We called women out of the role of caregivers to the family, out of their yin qualities, out of their love-gifts to the world, out of the practice of receiving, out of their cycles, out of their sacred offering of creation, out of their stories. Why are mothers and caretakers not offered an abundance comparable to the accumulators of wealth?

J and I talk about the imbalance in a world where mothers are not more supported during this experience, this transition, this transformation. This isn’t a finger pointing to men or the patriarchy. I ask for us to all remember where we come from. I believe many mothers may downplay their pregnancy experiences to appear unaffected or “strong” (as our masculine aspects would lure us to show) and refer to the oxytocin instead, fading the memories of discomfort in exchange for some inflated external ego. In the childbirthing course J and I took, not one expecting mother could say they were without discomfort. It occurred to me that as horizontal as I was for much of the days in the 6th month, that perhaps back pain may have broken me. In my decades of playing sports, one word comes to mind: endure. I prepare in my way for the transformation ahead.

I have had to let go of many of my more masculine qualities, especially this one: Mia Hamm and Michael Jordan’s Gatorade commercial, “Anything you can do I can do better…I can do anything better than you.” I feel very aligned (I believe less in luck these days) to have met J and to have received the support from a partner that allows me to be all the ups and downs and arounds emotions during this transition. I feel more feminine than I ever have before. As the yin rises to meet the yang, I unfold in understanding the symbol and practice of tai chi.

Some believe there is a larger transformation happening.¹ They refer to the shifts as morphing of duality. As we ascend in consciousness, our differences will become less and our similarities will increase. Rather than the feminine rise up with the intent to overtake the masculine, the unification is the morphing of women and men supporting another.

I recall Abuela Eva, herbal mama Leticia, and the mamas of Peru on the most recent visit there, reminding me how full of an experience pregnancy is to be in and that everything is as is—to not worry, ‘Karencita, no te preocupes.’

I breathe for the moments of stillness, to listen to the ancient wisdoms that ask to be passed on—to live. I wish to honor the story of the divine feminine and the divine masculine—the sacred natural order.

A writing that I felt has assisted in preparation of this passage is titled, “The Holistic Stages of Birth.”

We birth through the feminine into the physical world. This is our first right of passage. The sacred womb is one of compassionate space­, of sacred water, of sacred spinal fluid. Breast milk is a sacred milk of life. The womb restores a sacred natural order of the universe. In the womb, we can experience oneness and abundance of resources, if the mother and community is able to provide. What we need is there for the taking, but this, for many of us, doesn’t hold true when we become participants in the system of the physical world. We have been taught, misguided, or required to choose aspects of us that place us out of balance.

We start at a relatively blank slate and absorb impressions of the world. Those impressions can either take us closer to our natural state or away from it. War, fear, isolation, depression, othering, excessive use of substances, deforestation without reverence for the life and role of forests, excess accumulation of any form, prolonged pain in any realm—these can’t be our natural state. That would be a harsh way to celebrate birth, life, and even death.

Our natural state is to love and be loved—to know the widest transformation of the heart. As I travel from Beta² (active, ordinary reality) to Alpha (relaxed, passive attention, bridge to subconscious) to Theta (deeply relaxed, accessing intuition, the subconscious), J and I will arrive at the moment of Motherhood.

Any moment, under the Leo Sun.

1. On 8 June 2004, Venus transited the Sun. 8 years later, Venus would transit again. It will not occur again until 2117 and 2125 (Nasa). The Mayans and other ancient cultures tracked the Venus cycle and the transits of Venus over the Sun because these transits marked major shifts in the collective experience.

Read The Venus Blueprint by Richard Merrick and chase the rabbit hole of the orbital geometry of Venus, tracing a rose pentacle between the Sun and Earth, a sacred fertility symbol. From Penguin Random House, “The symbol he discovers—the Venus Blueprint—is based on that planet's orbital pattern, which takes the shape of a five-pointed star when seen from Earth. As Merrick digs deeper, he realizes the Venus Blueprint was an integral part of the design template of some of the most significant religious architecture around the world--including St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, the Roman Pantheon, the Greek Parthenon, the Temple of Jerusalem, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, as well as many buildings designed by the secretive Freemason society.”

2. Brainwaves during labor, Whapio Diane Bartlett. Same writing as Holistic States of Birth, with a quick overview of brainwaves.

For other considerations on altering brainwaves: yoga nidra, meditation, sound therapy