Prenatal yoga, Pleasure and Self-care
August 31, 2010
Elisabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love journeys to Italy, India and Bali. During her escapades in Italy, one of her newly made Italian friends comments, “you Americans don’t know how to have pleasure…” I was reminded of his comment upon seeing the movie this past weekend.
Webster defines pleasure as: desire, inclination. a state of gratification. a sensual gratification. a source of delight and joy. The origin is Anglo-French from Plaisir; to please.
The yoga practice that is popular in this country currently is the asana practice. A series of poses sometimes linked together as a sequence flowing one into the other, sometime postures held for longer periods of time. There are as many styles as there are people. No matter what style one practices I have not observed many modern yogi’s experiencing pleasure in the yoga room. There was a shift in my own practice when I began asking myself, am I experiencing pleasure in my practice. Some would say, “yoga is not meant to be pleasurable”, and I would ask, “why not”.
I teach prenatal yoga. Some women come to the yoga room and it’s easy for me to discern that they are at ease in their body, they are delighted to be pregnant and feel at home in the yoga room. Other women come and it seems that they are there because the pregnancy has called them home to their body. They want to feel better. After many years of teaching, it is obvious to me that when we come together to move, to breathe, to laugh and to express what ever needs to be expressed there is a felt sense of pleasure.
Pleasure involves all the senses. My greatest sense of pleasure comes through my mouth and my skin. It comes when I am with friends enjoying a meal, fully embodied in the moment. Pleasure comes when I’m driving or walking down my street and the sun-light hits a huge Bougainvillea spray of magenta flower at a moment that floods my sense of being with delight or when I see a few small finches frolicking in the dirt beneath a rose-bush. Pleasure comes when I take out the trash and the new crescent moon catches the corner of my perception to say hi, how are you, I am here. I love the feeling of movement of my breath flowing easily in and out of my body as a practice yoga asana, swim or dance…and a myriad of other ways!
I am learning that to feel pleasure, to give pleasure, I must be open for it. A willingness to take it in. I am learning that I don’t have to actively seek it. My senses and my consciousness need but be willing to notice.
I think many women have been conditioned to believe that pregnancy is uncomfortable, some will even say during class I feel great now, but later when I’m bigger I won’t. There is a pre-conceived notion, an expectation that they will be uncomfortable. What about this pre-conceived notion. We’ve been told by our mother, our sister or our co-worker, “just wait till you get bigger.” I’m curious about all the notions we have about pregnancy. I am especially curious about what keeps a woman from experiencing it as anything less than pleasing. I’m not saying that we need to feel ecstatically high 24/7. I am asking that we explore what keeps us from experiencing a deeply felt sense of pleasure during pregnancy.
The path to Self-care includes experiencing pleasure. I do not feel this is the same as self-indulgence. For eg. A women recently came to my class and during the circle time she said, “this feels really self-indulgent, taking out 90 minutes to focus on my-self.” I don’t know, why she made that statement. I wonder what she has to believe in order for her to make such a comment. I do know that many women are waking up to the possibility of movement and breathing and coming together to celebrate pregnancy as a means to experience more pleasure in our life; And perhaps then a greater sense of well-being and ease in life.
