HOW DO WE IDENTIFY THE CONNECTIONS? HOW CAN WE BEST LEVERAGE THE CONNECTIONS FOR TRUE HEALTH?
When we stand back and appreciate all these things that interweave for birth’s unfolding, we can be overwhelmed by our responsibility to the complexity. How can we discern the patterns that we can usefully work with, to serve women? How can we work with an appreciation and raising up of our instinctive knowledge that we need to be healthily FULLY HUMAN, that there is a wholeness to our health that includes our purpose, our contribution to others and this planet, our connection to others and this planet, our own inner serenity; our sense of a deeply nourishing, deeper connection to Life. That our souls need to be as healthy as our beautiful, incredible bodies. How do we serve this fuller understanding of health in birth? How do we acknowledge and serve the soul’s journey being as valuable as the safe journey of our babies through our bodies? How can we first of all name and then consciously work amongst the factors that help and hinder all of these things?
BEING FULLY HUMAN: SURVIVAL TO RADIANT THRIVING
We can perceive that we have many facets of experience that are more than our bodies, even as our bodies are the incredible tool that allow us to experience these facets of being alive. We are not only physical but relational, emotional, spiritual, psychological beings, both ourselves as midwives and the women we care for. We can plot our health in each of these facets of being alive on a scale from survival to radiant thriving. I believe there is a deeper, overall equilibrium where we all sit at any one time on these spectrums that is slower to change except perhaps in times of great stress (positive or negative), and then a much more fluid everyday movement around the spectrums (more mood). We cannot move towards radiant thriving if our needs for survival at base are not met first (a la Maslow’s hierarchy of needs).
We can identify these elements in women as they come to birth – and meet each one with the greatest respect – that is, salutogenically. Raising up the factors that enhance health, against those factors that hinder it.
