by Joanne Dahill CD(DONA) LMBT and Davenne Essif CBE (ICEA-trained) & Doula trainee (ICEA)

Next class meets Sunday, August 25, 12:30-6:00 PM

To register, contact Joanne:

Phone: (919) 698-9110
Email: journeyofmotherhood@gmail.com

A steady sense of peace may be difficult to find during pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood. Rather than connecting to one’s own inner resources and inherent strength, moms, dads, and partners may find themselves struggling with feelings of fear, doubt, and uncertainty. This is the reason birth professionals Joanne Dahill and Davenne Essif are excited to offer Calm Birth Prenatal Meditation for Conscious Childbirth at WBWC.

While acknowledging fear and stress as a normal part of life, the empowering mind-body practices taught in Calm Birth, and its postpartum counterpart Calm Mother, help moms and their partners move through and past these negative emotions, transforming suffering into ease and harmony.

Progressive muscle relaxation, energy breath, and healing breath come together to form a very powerful set of tools for expectant, birthing, and new parents. Calm Birth student, WBWC client, Katherine Rowe shares, “At some point…I found myself enjoying the simplicity and deep significance of Calm Birth. Womb Breathing brings me into my own body and into the present moment. I used it a lot in the early phase. I had 2 long nights of regular but not extremely strong contractions. They were intense enough to need something to help me through them, but I knew I was not yet in active labor. I used Womb Breathing for strength and endurance.”

The three central practices of Calm Birth—The Practice of Opening, Womb Breathing, and Giving and Receiving—each have a unique focus, respectively guiding moms and partners to relax their muscles and release tension, to breathe in vital energy for themselves and their babies, and to transform negative feelings, energy, and other kinds of suffering into peace and healing. Each of these practices combines ancient meditation wisdom with successful mind-body methods developed at the Harvard Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. If you have the opportunity to take a class with Joanne or Davenne, you will learn to connect with yourself, your partner, and your baby as you deepen your sense of awareness, your connection with your breath, your ability to return to or remain calm, and your innate capacity for healing self and others.

Reflecting on his experience, dad M.W. remembers that the healing practice of Giving and Receiving gave him the sense that he had “an intermediary vessel that could take stress in and breathe calm out.” He recalls, “On the way home from work I would imagine breathing in any concerns that I had or J had and imagine breathing calm out.” When their daughter needed medical attention after birth, mom J.W. feels the same practice brought great benefit, “I focused healing breath for myself and for S and for all the other babies in the NICU… the practice helped me to avoid a feeling of helplessness. Even during the time when I couldn’t hold her, I could still focus my energy towards something positive.”

Want to know a little bit more? Here is an excerpted meditation that your partner can read to you once you have found a place to sit undisturbed, with your hips raised just above your knees (preferably on the floor, otherwise in a sturdy chair). Find a place of balance where you feel an effortless lift in your spine and the crown of your head.

And…

Sit down into your body as if you’re sitting into life itself.

Feel your balance and stability lift.

Sit still to stop the world.

Sit into all your inner resource.

“A thousand secrets are revealed in sitting still.”

Sit to come into your power.

Turn your attention to your breath.

Feel your body breathing itself.

Pay attention as you slowly breathe in,

and then breathe out, effortlessly, completing the cycle of breath.

Notice that at the end of the out-breath there’s a gap,

a break, stillness to help you calm your mind.

Then your mind comes in powerfully and takes your attention away.

To regain awareness keep coming back to your breath.

You keep bringing attention back to awareness, free of mind.

Mind takes your attention away and awareness brings you back.

You can shift the power in you from mind to awareness.

You can bring yourself to life with awareness of breath.

The outer world is full of life-giving energy we were made to breathe,

vital sustenance that’s always in the air.

We’ve been breathing it in and out without using it fully.

Many people in the world do breathe it. Now it’s your time.

Sense vital energy in the air.

Make the intention to breathe that energy in.

Your breath is still relaxed; it has its own rhythm.

Your stomach rises on the inhale and falls on the exhale.

Let your awareness sense the energy that fills the room

Feel your body breathe it in and down,

intending it down into the energetic center so near your womb.

Feel the energy go into your center.

Feel your child sense you take the energy in.

Feel how you both become enlivened from it.

-Adapted from “The Three Steps to Power” and “Womb Breathing in Three Steps to Power” in

: Prenatal Meditation for Conscious Childbirth by Robert Bruce Newman

Calm Birth