Pregnancy, practice and my pelvis

For those of you who don’t know, I’m now 23 weeks pregnant. Over the past few weeks I’ve started to get a lot of pain around my pelvis – a condition known as symphysis pubis dysfunction (spd) or pelvic girdle pain (pgp).

I had this when I was pregnant with my son, Jacob, but not to this degree and it began much later during my pregnancy.

I’ve seen an osteopath a couple of times and today while she was moving me around, she said, “ You are very mobile in your pelvis – maybe too mobile.”

Now, I know this. I have a naturally flexible pelvis. I’ve never really had to work to sit in padmasana (lotus pose) and other hip-related poses come relatively easily to me. But what good is that if, during pregnancy, you lose the strength to contain that flexibility? And what good is it when you’re in physical pain getting up the stairs?

Very often people are in awe of flexibility in yoga, fuelled by images on social media and other channels. Bendiness is something to strive for and if only I had a penny for every time I’ve heard someone say, “I can’t do yoga. I can’t touch my toes.”

The curse of flexibility in yoga has been well documented – London teacher Jess Glenny writes a lot about it and my teacher Norman Blair has written this piece from a yin perspective. 

I know that my pelvic pain will go away once I’ve given birth but I wonder if my practice has exacerbated the problem. I know of other yoga teachers who’ve had similar issues during pregnancy. Or perhaps it’s purely down to the pregnancy hormone relaxin opening my body and the pelvic ligaments being stretched from my previous labour and childbirth.

Who knows? But for now, it’s cat/cow, chest openers, pelvic tilts and hip circles for me.

For this reason, the 2 March yin yoga workshop at BAYoga Studio will be my final one before I meet my second child in June.

Kate Atkinson will provide cover until I return in October/November.

Find out more and book.

Making space and letting go

Last Monday morning I threw up shortly before leaving the house to go and teach. At 24 weeks pregnant, I haven’t totally put aside the sickness I had earlier, but it’s much better than it was. The tiredness remains and I need a daily nap.

I arrived at the venue feeling less than great and tried to start preparing the room for class around groups of mums and toddlers glued to the floor chatting at the end of their children’s weekly dance class. I found myself sweeping grass and mud that had come loose from one toddler’s shoes. An awkward conversation with the dance class teacher followed.

As my students settled into the space and found their breath, I sat at the front of the room preoccupied. Is this all really worth it? Why am I doing this?

And then it was a lovely class. Two women had come for the first time, new to yoga, and their smiles and kind words at the end provided answers to my ponderings.

The future of my weekly classes

But having spent time this week thinking things through, I have decided to stop teaching my weekly classes at the end of this month, coinciding with the start of my third trimester.

It hasn’t been an easy decision. I’ve been teaching for over six years now, firstly in London and then locally in Hertfordshire for almost three years. It takes time to build classes and reputation and I am attached to all my students. I love teaching you. I feel a duty of care towards you. I enjoy hearing about your daily lives. But I need to let go. I need to make space for the next phase of my life.

At the end of Monday’s class, one of you said to me that I shouldn’t continue teaching on your account. I know this is true.

I had previously thought I’d take a maternity break but I’ve decided to wholeheartedly hand the classes over to another teacher. I don’t want the pressure of thinking that I need to get back to teaching every week after x number of months. I know I’ll come back – but in what form and where – who knows?

Yoga teaching is what I know. I know what I’m doing. It’s safe. But caring for a baby human? Many of you have told me how wonderful motherhood is, and I can try my best to be prepared, but it really is totally unchartered water. I need to accept that my future life will be very different. I need to make space to prepare and focus on my own practice.

My teacher Norman Blair talks about how we must stay at our ‘growing edge’: if we’re behind our edge, we get bored. Things are predictable and comfortable. Go beyond our edge, and we panic and become fearful as we’re way out of our depth. We need to stay at this edge in order to grow as a person. We need new experiences and challenges to push ourselves. Hello motherhood!

Teaching/class plans post October 2016

Niki Clark and I
Niki Clark and I

The lovely Niki Clark will take over teaching the Monday and Thursday morning classes from 31 October onwards. I know you’ll be in safe hands. I will no longer teach the Tuesday Mysore Ashtanga class fortnightly. April will go back to teaching this weekly and has her own plans for this class.

I will however continue teaching my yin workshops at BAYoga in Berkhamsted for the rest of the year (Saturday 5 November and 3 December) and you are very welcome to book a place. April will cover the yin workshops at BAYoga from January – May 2017 and I plan to resume teaching these from June onwards (fingers crossed).

April and I will continue to send our email newsletter so please look out for this for updates. If you don’t receive this and you’d like to, email April.

We will go for a cuppa after my final classes on Monday 24 October and Thursday 27 October so please feel free to come along if you’re local and available.

Thank you to everyone who’s come to class over the past few years and let’s just simply be open to what the future holds.

 

The Open Door by Danna Faulds

A door opens. Maybe I’ve been standing here shuffling my weight from foot to foot for decades, or maybe I only knocked once. In truth, it doesn’t matter. A door opens and I walk through without a backward glance. This is it, then, one moment of truth in a lifetime of truth; a choice made, a path taken, the gravitational pull of Spirit too compelling to ignore any longer. I am received by something far too vast to see. It has roots in antiquity but speaks clearly in the present tense. “Be,” the vastness says. “Be without adverbs, descriptors, or qualities. Be so alive that awareness bares itself uncloaked and unadorned. Then go forth to give what you alone can give, awake to love and suffering, unburdened by the weight of expectations. Go forth to see and be seen, blossoming, always blossoming into your magnificence.”

A pregnant pause

A quick search on Google produces various definitions of this familiar idiom. My favourite is:

A pause that gives the impression that it will be followed by something significant.  (www.en.wiktionary.org)

 

I am now 15 weeks pregnant and I paused for nine of these. I’m now coming out of the other side and safely into my second trimester.

During my nine-week pause, I didn’t teach a yoga class. Making it into London for my freelance work felt less like a step too far and more like an entire staircase out of reach.

My world shrank. On a good day, I had the energy to make cheese on toast and who knew it was possible to throw up so unexpectedly and forcefully!

I found myself sharing the contents of my stomach with a motorway hard shoulder and then refuelling at a service station with an emergency Nando’s.

When I told this to a friend and yoga student, she said how she’d thought she’d be doing a modified ashtanga practice and drinking green juice during her pregnancies. Instead, she found herself lying on the floor eating peanut butter on white bread and bags of crisps.

And the changes your body goes through! In the very early days, I had such intense muscular sensations across the sacrum and back of pelvis, I could feel everything stretching and moving to make space for what was to happen over the coming months. The only thing that helped was child’s pose with a hot water bottle across the area.

At ten weeks I looked pregnant and I’ve been told that my ever-expanding boobs are now the temperature of the sun – by my fiancé, Rob, I hasten to add.

Although anything more than child’s pose and the occasional cat/cow eluded me for the length of my pause, the lessons of yoga were ever-present. Never before had listening to my body been quite so important. If I tried to get out of bed before 10am, I was sent running to the toilet, head over bowl, and then straight back under the duvet and my ginger oatcakes.

I concentrated on my breath when any pregnancy fears rose to the surface and the ‘what ifs’ threatened to take over.

I had to accept what was possible for me on that day as there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. This beautiful little being inside me has been totally running the show, gradually making its way through bigger and bigger fruit-based size comparisons (‘this week, your baby is the size of an avocado’).

In the ancient teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, on a battlefield, Krishna teaches Arjuna to do his duty. He’s a warrior facing a battle that doesn’t appeal. My duty right now is to do what’s best for our baby. And that has nothing to do with trying to advance through advanced ashtanga poses.

Now I’m able to leave the house more, I am appreciating the little things. I’ve made it to a yoga class and enjoyed being back amongst familiar faces. Just being able to move with my breath in a sun salutation has been an utter delight.

“The practice helps me to process things in life more effectively; that is important, as during pregnancy and the aftermath there is a lot for us, as mothers to process. The changes in our bodies – the hormones alone – can alter our perceptions and experience of life enormously.

 

… We are all so lucky to have this practice as a central and stable resource, bringing awareness and light into our lives and into our being.”

 

Lucy Crawford, taken from Yoga Sadhana for Mothers.

 

I am so grateful to Celia, Louise, Niki and Sam for covering my weekly classes. I’d also like to say thank you to my regular students who’ve known I’ve been pregnant for what feels like ages! All your emails and texts of support and congratulations have meant so much.

I will be back teaching from Monday 8 August. View the classes schedule to see what’s going on with classes during the summer.

In light of being in bed by about 9pm every night, I have decided to give up my Thursday evening yin class at The Yoga Hall, St Albans. It hasn’t been an easy decision and I thank all of you who have attended the class over the years. I have enjoyed our after-class natters over tea and fig rolls. I hope to see you soon and keep up the practice.

If you’d like to get an extra dose of yin, ashtanga or gentle yoga, Cathy and I have places on our October retreat near Bedford. View details.

baby scan pic