Laboring

If ever there were a time in my practice when I was viscerally connected to the speed of vinyasa, it is now. Slow, slow. The body supporting this belly stopped growing weeks ago, and now the belly grows out, out, out as my child develops into his readiness to be born. I feel the weight of him on my hips, now moving like well-oiled gears as the tops of my bones roll in their sockets. Arms and leg and back muscles continue to support the relationship with gravity through each vinyasa as I slowly move through the building summer heat, the steam of the shala, the beautiful chaos of the breathing around me in my sweet yogi community. It is like moving through water, each position entered ever so slowly, gently. Careful to protect the spaces that will soon break wide open on the day he decides to emerge. 

This practice has always been a form of its own labor. Now, it is an extension of my laboring this child. I remember so palpably the feelings of my water breaking at the shala while I was in Downward Dog on the day my daughter was born three years ago: the lightness of losing that water, the sweeping feelings of empty unknowing and worry, the pain, the utter release of pain when she emerged, and the gushing flood of love and relief and pride that we had done this together. It is different now; I anticipate what is to come, I wait for him with some knowledge, I find faith that my body will remember how to birth him with minimal intervention.

It will not surprise me if his first knock at the door of the world is during practice some morning in the coming weeks. Indeed, I would be honored to find him ready to face his life during the breath-led movement of this practice.