As long as I can remember, I have identified as an empath; as someone who feels so deeply myself, but is also painfully aware of everyone's feelings around me, making it very hard to be around crowds for a long period of time before I feel completely drained. I'm also a pretty vocal person and believe deeply in equality for all beings; as well as being an advocate for birthing people and holding space for them to feel empowered in their experience. I identify as a woman, and like to roar about it.
I have 2 kids, and giving birth to them was the most raw, primal, epic experiences of my life. I have always had a deep trust in my body to do what she needs to do, when she needs to do it. This feeling of trust is what helped me have fearless birth experienes. Birth didn't scare me...it felt like the thing I was supposed to do with my body and my life.
When I take The Class-I often feel like I can tap back into some element of that primal part of myself. I love the sound aspect and I get loud; I cry; I scream; I laugh. I always feel such a beautiful release. The biggest thing The Class helps me with (especially in a pandemic with 2 young kids) is to remember all parts of myself. The Class helps me hear my feelings, feel my physical body, see my surroundings, and most of all: connect all of those things into one experience of being present and finding acceptance.
In early November, after 7 months of trying, I found out I was pregnant. I was so overjoyed and excited and just rode the wave of happiness for weeks. I wasn't feeling physically great-which I knew would happen- so I didn't practice The Class for about a month. My early morning routine was no longer accessible to my body, and it was very hard to find another time of day amongst the busyness of my schedule to make time to practice.
Fast forward another month and we're at Dec 10. I had an early ultrasound to confirm things were ok-because I had some spotting during the week. I got the worst news of my life to date that afternoon: baby had no heartbeat, and I would have a miscarriage in the coming days. The wails and primal sounds that escaped my body were feral and full of the deepest pain I had ever felt. To hear my grief was actually very healing and it was in this moment that I had a deeper understanding of this truth: we cannot heal the things that hurt if we don't name them and talk about them. These sounds were the beginning of naming my grief and my hurt.
The day I miscarried, I was home with my midwives close by when I needed them, and went through the hardest 4 hours of my life. My mantra through all of it (which I later realized was embedded in my bones from The Class) was this: The only thing getting me through this day, is knowing that it will eventually end. I could see how easily it would have been for me to spiral into a black hole of anxiety in the 4 hours of misery and passing this baby back to the earth...but I took it one contraction, and one trip to the bathroom at a time. Every time I wanted to run away and be somewhere else I kept saying "This is going to pass, my feelings will shift, and right now just sucks, but it's not forever."
After a week of tears, screams, writing and sharing: I stepped back onto my mat and took Taryn's class on demand from 12/11/21. My bleeding had stopped, and I was feeling the need to move so much stuck energy out of my body. I hadn't taken a class in 6 weeks, and I am feeling SUPER uncomfortable in this body that was pregnant for almost 10 weeks, then all of a sudden wasn't anymore.
Moving in this body felt simultaneously like coming home, but also like a foreign country. Some things felt so familiar and natural...and some things felt like I was doing them for the first time. There is more flesh that can bounce around, there is a flabbier pooch on my belly that was bouncing more-and in my way when I folded forward. When we got to core work I realized that I CANNOT FEEL MY CENTER. It's like my core is buried so deep under the physical flesh that I now have where my uterus had expanded that I can't feel it like I used to.
However, even through navigating these changes, I found the same mantra coming back: this will pass-it's not forever-one step at a time. When it came to meditation after I had moved so much stuck energy through my body-I felt a deep shift sink it. My midwives and doulas had been telling me all week how good of a job my body did at knowing how to miscarry with no complications, no meds, no procedures. This didn't resonate with me because my sadness was so deep and the only thing I could feel. But when I was sitting after Taryn's class, processing the familiar and unfamiliar, these words came back to me. My body had never had a miscarriage, but it knew what to do. She is intuitive, wise, and efficient. She needs compassion, space and movement. We (my body and I) need The Class to keep processing the feelings, the changes and finding acceptance.
I still have a long road ahead to find comfort and acceptance in my body, but all of these practices that The Class teaches on the mat, absolutely translated into a healthier more spacious grieving process for me over these last 10 days. It's made it more accessible to share my feelings, share my experience, process my emotions, and make time for healing. Grief needs to be accomodated and just like our bodies need accomodation in class sometimes, so does this pervasive emotion.
Anything that elicits this kind of grief, is only so big because of how much love is possible and present. I will continue to show up to The Class, for myself, my healing, and anyone else who needs it too.
Thank you to all The Class teachers for holding such a sacred space that allows so much healing to occur in all of us in so many ways.
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