This article was brought to us by Tami Lynn Kent
Pregnancy has a distinct sense of energetic fullness. The energy gathers to sustain a new life. You will be transformed by the child unfolding in your center. Even as you consider making decisions for your pregnancy, listen to your own center and draw upon the ancient wisdom that resides there to engage the mystery at each step.
Pregnancy represents a nine-month journey to the birth point, and there is a corresponding nine-month journey to the other side, during which you leave the linear and logical world behind. For some, this is upsetting because their lives are rooted in a linear construct that corresponds to being organized and structured. For others, they are happy to leave behind the boxes that were too limiting anyway. Either way, shed the old and embrace what comes. Let yourself be moved and changed.
The First Trimester: A Star Unfolding
With each pregnancy, I experienced a moment where I felt a tingling in my center, as if a tiny cosmos were unfolding. In fact, it was. The womb cradles the precious new life, and the star inside expands and unfolds, drawing in and upon the potent life-force energy.
Though the medical establishment would have women go about their business during the first trimester, the first trimester is a delicate time. The cells are fragile and the bond between the early hint of baby and womb is still tenuous. It’s wise to rest and let life take hold. Slow your pace from running to walking. Read books, make fires, eat well, rest, and stay hydrated. Nausea also serves to slow us down. Let yourself enter the dreamy state that pregnancy invites.
The first trimester carries a hint of the sweetness coming to you, but it can also make you feel unmoored. When you go through any major transition, there’s a natural vulnerability in the process of shedding your former structures, identities, and energy patterns. You also feel more vulnerable because your energy fields are more open to receiving the incoming energy of pregnancy and a new being, sensitizing you to everything.
Because many miscarriages occur during this time, early pregnancy can feel tenuous in other ways. A woman may hesitate to bond with the baby in her center until she is assured that he or she will stay. However, faith requires opening to what is — without knowing the outcome. Let yourself receive the blessing in your center.
The Second Trimester: Taking Root
In the second trimester, the baby and womb have made a more secure connection. The pregnancy is taking root, and the mother may feel strong and energized by her growing belly. This is the period to savor the pregnancy experience. Join a community of pregnant women, whether by taking prenatal yoga, prenatal water aerobics, or a birth class. Prepare the baby’s room and read books about birth and parenting.
Getting in shape physically will assist your body in birthing. In the second trimester, you may have more capacity to do so. However, be careful about vigorous exercise, as your pregnant body is less able to discharge heat and the fetus is vulnerable to high body temperatures.
It’s important to avoid sitting for long periods and to rest by lying on your side rather than leaning back on the couch. Babies tend to find a better position in the pelvis, particularly toward the end of the pregnancy, when a mother is moving or in an upright posture. Extended sitting increases pelvic congestion, while body movement increases cellular flow and pelvic health. Sitting back tilts the pelvis and potentially shifts the baby into a posterior position, rather than the optimal anterior position, which aligns the baby’s head and body to move more easily through the mother’s pelvis while birthing. Optimal baby positioning can make the difference between straightforward and difficult labor, and ought to be part of the pregnancy and birth education.
The Third Trimester: Moving toward the Spirit Door
As a woman enters the third trimester, she is moving closer toward the spirit door. This is the time for her to prune away excess commitments and clear a wide space on her schedule in order to feel unpressured and prepare for the birth and postpartum period. Anticipate the sensations of birthing as an exquisite opening in the center of one’s being. Think of this path as a holy trek through the body to retrieve the sacred essence of mother and child.
Pregnancy and birth are bodily events, rooted in the core of the body. The exquisite expansion necessary for birth is assisted by moving toward, rather than away from, its intensity. The more you can connect to your body and the physical and energetic expansion that’s unfolding, the better prepared you are to access the resources there.
I’ve come to understand the spirit door as an opening in the energetic field. The birth is not only of the baby’s body but also of this soul’s life essence and the energetic information to provide mothering and care. It’s a sacred process.
Because modern culture lives largely separate from the natural rhythms of the earth, we’ve mostly forgotten the spiritual and energetic aspects of birth as well as death. These life and death processes are related: the energy moves in for life with our first inhale, and moves out in death with our last breath. By waking up to the energy potential in our bodies as women, we can remember the truth of our entry as spirit embodied. In remembering this truth, we’ll be better equipped to make a life that is soul-based and connected to our full creative potential, as well as to die with more peace.
As women, our bodies directly download the sacred information for each soul. Prepare to witness nothing less than this in your own journey.
Tami Lynn Kent is a women’s health physical therapist, a TEDx speaker, and the founder of Holistic Pelvic CareTM where she utilizes her ability to read energetic patterns of the body. Kent maintains a private practice and an international training program in Portland, Oregon. She has authored three previous books. Her latest, Wild Mothering: Finding Power, Spirit, and Joy in Birth and a Creative Motherhood (Atria Books, May 7, 2024), is a newly updated edition of her classic, Mothering from Your Center. Learn more
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
