There is a short, yet insightful
work attributed to Confucius, The Great Learning (Da Xue), that
illuminates the end and beginning in the course of the cultivation of the Heart.
In summary, he says the beginning is with investigating the natural world, from
which knowledge to cultivate the Heart is acquired, when the Heart is
cultivated, the physical body is naturally nurtured, when the physical body is nurtured,
the family is naturally cared for, when the family is cared for, society is
benefited. With society benefited, the family is benefited, when the family is
benefited, the physical body is benefited, when the physical body is benefited,
the Heart is cultivated, when the Heart is cultivated, knowledge has been
acquired. With this passage, Confucius is not only showing us where to begin
with cultivation, but also directing us to notice the dual directionality of human
life; the individual must cultivate oneself to benefit society and the
individual is cultivated when the society is benefited. This is the unification
and separation dynamic of the Heart within the human body; nature unifies with
us in our Center to create the spirit of life for another day, and then we separate
outward with that spirit to live and gather nature from the exterior to unify into
our Center once again.
Where life exists, there is always
an in and out motion; we have many examples within the physical body—lungs,
heartbeat, food and water—and the same is true for the spirit. We must first
unify ourselves and our Heart in order to separate outward into society, and
only once we have separated can we unify once again. This endless cycle, in and
out, unifying and separating, is the foundation for life and the basis of how
to understand pregnancy, fetal development and birth, all part of the endless
cycle. Once we begin to observe and identify this motion in the natural world, and
then within ourselves, it becomes easy to translate it across all natural
phenomena, including the unseen depths of the womb. Western medicine can take
pictures of the fetus inside the womb, see the heartbeat, count the fingers and
toes, identify the gender, but beyond these physical factors, seeing the
development of the spirit and life of the human being is beyond current
technology’s capability, but not beyond our reach if we do the work to acquire
the knowledge and cultivate our Heart. The development of a human life is a
continuous thread that is constantly vibrating, not a series of steps and
stages, nor a single snapshot; only by understanding the true principles of
life can we find clarity concerning the continuous development of human life
and what is needed to bestow it with as much life as possible.
Confucius lived during a time of
great unrest, much like what the obstetrical field is experiencing today. During
times of change such as this, true principles often become obscured. It is easy
to lose track of what is right and what is wrong, what is beneficial and what
is harmful. Yet, if we can see through the external shroud, hear beyond the
biased words, we find the simple, unwavering true principles that are always at
Heart and able to guide the way if we do the cultivation work to see it. True
principles found, and Heart cultivated, no amount of shrouding or biases can tempt us from the true
and correct path.
As a childbirth educator, my job
is not to teach women all the hard facts of labor and birth, the orchestration
of hormones, memorization of numbers and time lines, how far the baby descends
in each stage of labor, nor to inform them of every potential negative experience
they may encounter during childbirth. These are facts that doctors, midwives
and nurses learn in their medical training and should stay with the medical
staff; it is the kind of information only related to external factors, not the
thoughts that will be in your head or the emotions in your Heart during labor. Focusing
on external factors separate women from what is happening within, where birth
is truly taking place. What I find most beneficial for the mothers I teach is exploring
what happens within the Heart, the mind and the body and the purpose of the whole
event for the baby, as they transition from one (mother and baby united) to two
(baby separated from mother). Breaking the process into tidy, sectioned pieces--the
cervix dilates x number during this stage, the uterus is this size at this
stage, the baby should be in this rotational position at this time—is not
reflective of how we live or how we understand life; creating stages and pieces
is not seeing life for the continuous thread that supports it, it is birth viewed from the outside, merely a series of snapshots that don’t reveal the whole story.
I hope this class inspires mothers to be excited about their birth, as they leave equipped with the skills to build inner strength, increase trust in their ability to birth and provided with information reflective of the experience from the birthing mother's perspective. The topics are taught in a manner that is easy to understand and apply, not only in pregnancy and birth, but throughout life. Birth is an important event for both mother and child as we can see when we understand the true purpose of it and the true principles of life as preserved for thousands of years, now brought to the forefront once again through Hunyuan medicine.
Learn more about Hunyuan Childbirth Series here.
“The best way to manage a difficult labor, the Chinese male
physician declared, was to prevent it from happening in the first place.”[i]
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