Prefer to Listen? Find the accompanying podcast episode on the Unschooled Homebirth podcast, Episode 58, wherever you get your podcasts! 

Can you have a natural birth without really understanding nature or your connection to nature? One of the core pillars of the Natural Birth Compass approach is becoming aware of nature's cycle and attuning to nature's rhythms and when this is done, you can start to connect your inner world with the external nature around you, and this is how holistic homebirthers are intuitively and instinctually guided through birth. 

Today, I am sharing about one of my all time favorite things to talk about and that is harmonizing with nature for your birth. Discovering the cycle of nature, which would eventually lead me to write out the cycle of birth, like literally write it out in a way it's now used by the holistic homebirthers who go through the Natural Birth Compass Program. This is what finally unlocked all the secrets of birth for me. Birth really isn't a big secret, when I saw it laid out on the cycle after I drew it out, it was as if it had always been there, and of course it had, me figuring out how to put it on the framework of nature's cycle isn't what brought it into existence, it was always this way, but after I saw it there, I suddenly understood it.

I even remember the moment it really crystalized, I was sitting at the desk in my office with notes from my mentor all around - the Yì Jīng, the Dào dé Jīng, even the Huái Nán Zǐ if you are familiar, all these old texts and a pack of colored fine tip sharpies, drawing and redrawing the arrangement of everything from birth to death... and then it was there, how a mother and child go from one into two in one spin of the cycle, one trip around the universe and an entire new human being is created and born.

I wrote it out, spent some time really digging into it, and then sent it to my mentor to see what he could see. From there I started teaching some of my Chinese medicine colleagues about the birth cycle and all we could learn from it. Eventually, I knew what I really wanted to do was to help families with this knowledge, so they could turn it into knowing and have births that sent waves of change toward a self empowered birth culture throughout the world and into the universe, and spread the message that families and women, mothers, we are ready and we are strong and we are in control of the destiny of humanity.

Now, let's regather around your birth and how to bring nature into your birth space, starting with - what does that even mean? 

Nature is our ultimate guide, as it was for our ancestors, it cues us when to eat, what to eat, when to work and when to rest, when to bundle up and when to bathe in the sun. You are doing this all the time, if you live somewhere where the winter is freezing, you probably don't go out in winter wearing shorts and a t-shirt with flip flops, you are probably wearing a wool sweater and pants and boots because you have experience with the signals from nature that the air temperature is cold and you need to protect your physical body and keep warm.

From experience, you know what to do under these conditions, and that can be the same with birth, after all you have had enough experience with birth in many ways throughout your life, every morning you are born, every spring you see rebirth.

So you see you already respond to many cues of nature without even thinking about it, which means you are attuned with nature, you just have to start noticing it, becoming aware of it and then see how it relates to the nature of birth and that guide will be there for you as second nature.

What happens when you haven't done the preparation, when you haven't noticed your connection to nature and how it guides your life and you haven't seen how it guides you through birth, how it shows you the very birth cycle your birth will go through? What happens when you have only focused your birth preparation on gathering information and details about the physical process of birth?

When your preparation doesn't include connecting to nature, becoming aware of these cycles and how they relate to you and your birth, you are limiting your understanding of the process of birth, you aren't able to see beyond the boundary of normal, this is what plagues the western understanding of birth today - there is one path for "normal" birth to follow, anything outside of that is, if you're lucky a variation of normal, or in some cases, just plain abnormal and in need of intervention. If you go past your designated due date, if your baby's bag of waters breaks and labor doesn't start within the outlined timeline your provider has, if you labor longer than your provider allows or your cervix dilates too slow, then you may start hearing the list of options and interventions your provider thinks you need so you and your baby stay safe. They may be right or they may be wrong, only you really know if there is a problem or not, your provider has to assume based on the information they can obtain from things they can see - fetal heart tones, your temperature, meconium in the fluids. Their only gauge of your progress is anything they can measure based on what is tangible, and this is how they make decisions about the progress and future of your birth.

The problem is, making decisions based only on what can be seen is like walking in the dark with a flashlight. Have you ever noticed something specific to walking in the dark with a flashlight? If you're an outdoor enthusiast, if you have done any wilderness training, you might already know this phenomenon, but if not you will soon realize that you have always known this about flashlights, but maybe you weren't fully aware of it yet.

Think about your experiences walking in the dark, in complete darkness. It seems hard to do, but if you wait a few minutes, you gradually gain your night vision, your eyes adapt, your pupils dilate and your receptors capture as much light as possible from the stars or moon if it's out, and you can actually see well enough to walk around, you adapt. You might notice you also engage your other senses - your hearing gets more focused, you might also notice you walk differently, softer and yet more confidently as your whole body feels its way through the space. Somehow you realize you can feel beyond the boundaries of your physical body into the space around you, your energetic field can actually feel the space around you. It's a skill we don't use frequently in our lit up modern world, but at this time anyway, I think most of us can still feel with our energetic body if we become aware of it.

All of this is your normal, whole body, whole being, holistic ability to adapt to darkness so you can move in the darkness within the larger environment, as a part of the larger environment.

Now, what happens if you turn on a flashlight?

If you're not used to maneuvering through the darkness, at first it seems better, you can see around you better. But have you ever noticed when you turn on a flashlight you create an invisible boundary that separates you from the environment beyond the boundary of the light? Sure you can see better in the five foot diameter of the flashlight beam, but beyond that, you see less, much less than you might see without the flashlight. Essentially you have limited your broader vision of the world in exchange for seeing what is right in front of you better, and now you are dependent upon the flashlight, your pupils are constricted, your focus is on the circle of light directly in front of you, your hearing is muffled, your energetic field might even contract inward, although I'm sure there are no evidence based medicine looking into that because who would gain financial benefit over your energetic field? Maybe sometime in the future, but not yet, thank goodness!

Now there might be a time where you do need the light of a flashlight, it is a useful tool and serves a purpose in some circumstances, but much of the time, as those who are experienced in moving in the dark know, often it's better to go without the artificial light and adapt to the darkness, to be able to see and feel the larger environment instead of shrink your visibility to that of the flashlight with limits and boundaries. It's more practical to become a part of your environment rather than create a separation. There's definitely more to learn and discover that way, you learn more secrets and gain an understanding of the Earth and the environment when you allow yourself to be fully open to its messages, and you develop your inner knowing of how you are a part of your environment, of the very Earth you are from. When you are no longer limited by boundaries of knowing only what is right in front of you, when you let go of the tools and trust nature, trust your inner knowing, trust the wisdom that's in your cells passed from your ancestors, your lineage of Wise Women, you will see more than you ever knew was there.

This is as true for the natural event of pregnancy and childbirth as it is for moving through the darkness. Both are worlds we don't fully see with our eyes, and that we shouldn't see with our eyes, if we were meant to, then it would come naturally. Instead, we are meant to see and feel with our inner eye, develop our inner knowing, which can only be done by harmonizing with nature and dissolving boundaries.

This is also why I believe that scientific explanations for life cannot fully express why intuition might completely defy science and yet still be correct. This is why you will often hear me mention that evidence based medicine and research based medicine will never be the most important advancement for birth. Scientific research, as interesting as may be, is limited by the tangible information we can gather, it's bounded by evidence from the observable world, but ignores that which is only understood in the darkness, that which is felt rather than seen, input received through our less obvious senses.

Most all of pregnancy and birth is hidden from our eyes, cloaked in the darkness of the womb. That being the way, your providers are using their assumptions from the evidence that has been gathered based on observable data collection, which may or may not even be accurate, to make decisions about your pregnancy, your baby, your health, predict outcomes for your birth, and this is true regardless of your provider type. Midwives have to rely on the same science as any other birth keeper, but they may be more open to their other senses, to your senses, to your inner knowing, but only if you have tapped into your other senses and your inner knowing, which awakens when you become aware of nature's cycle, when you connect to these rhythms.

There are many ways to do this, simply noticing the rhythms throughout your day and noticing what you feel throughout those rhythms. Notice different times of day, different types of weather, different environments, how do you feel? How are you breathing? What do you see? What do you hear? Your senses are your most important tools for connecting to the world, all you must do is use them, engage each sense very intentionally everyday and it will become more second nature to you.

If you want to speed this process up and learn how to connect your senses and inner knowing to the cycle of birth for a truly informed pregnancy and birth, you can always come find me at naturalbirthcompass.com and learn about my childbirth education course for homebirthers that takes you on a journey through your pregnancy with your senses and your inner knowing, tapping into your inner wise woman so you arrive at your birth not as a hopeful homebirther who just hopes she gets through it, but as a holistic homebirther with the inner knowing you need to be self-directed in your birth and not dependent on anyone else. With this level of knowing, you can confidently maneuver through the magical realms of birth without a flashlight, only using tools if your inner knowing calls for it, not just because someone handed it to you. This is the course that will take you from being that hopeful homebirther to becoming a holistic homebirther able to use all her senses, even those that seem beyond the ordinary to guide her birth.

For now, remember that we can't see everything with our eyes, and the more boundaries you have between you and nature, the more difficult it becomes to see the unseeable. Remember to take some time each day to notice what you feel, see, hear, even taste and smell in nature everyday, and notice your reactions, notice what's below and beyond your senses, what's in the depths of your knowing, your awareness, and tapping into these depths will get you started awakening your connection and harmonizing with the natural world on your way to birth.

If you would like to start to explore a new paradigm of homebirth preparation, download the free guide Three Cycles You Need to Know for a More Confident and Intuitive Homebirth, get your free copy by clicking here!