...Without sorting our Heart, it is more difficult to know
the correct actions to take, easy to fall into a position of trying to control
labor and birth increasing the potential for unnecessary interventions. Liu
Baigu of the Huai Xuan[1]
school presents us with the steps to cultivate the Heart, the first being to
remove selfishness by observing inner phenomena, desire and emotions. This
means replacing wants and desires from the exterior with gratitude and
contentment on the interior. For birth this includes eliminating the desires
and wants to induce labor for exterior purposes, including the desires of the
provider, discomfort, schedules or fear, and replace it with gratitude and
contentedness in knowing that nature takes care of things in the appropriate
manner and knows the proper time for gestation to end and labor to begin.
When making decisions in pregnancy, there are several
influencing factors: what we ourselves want to do, what we think our healthcare
provider wants us to do, what we think our friends, family and society want us
to do. This struggle in making decisions can feel like
a game of tug of war with the mind, weighing the pros and cons, trying to
justify our choices to ourselves and everyone else around. If instead, the decisions
are approached with a clear Heart, the correct path arises
naturally with less anxiety and fear about the judgments from others. There are
no universally right answers when it comes to health, pregnancy or childbirth,
thus it falls upon each of our own Hearts to make decisions that induce Courage
within.
[1] See
Seidman & Jaensch, 2013. Hunyuan Xinfa: The Lost Heart of Medicine.
p 74, for more information about Liu Baigu and the Huai Xuan school.
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