Have we lost the beautiful art of yield?
What is it to yield?
To willingly bend and stretch?
To willing give over; to the Divine, to another, to a higher power, to situations we cannot change. To our babies growth and our babies big stretch out of our bodies?
I find surrender hard to sit with - the thought of waving my white flag and bowing my head low to in submission (it’s like battle imagery).
Somehow yield is sexy. The CHOICE IS to soften and go super languid (physically or otherwise).
In the battle of just surviving in a western, sympathetically charged nervous system charged environment, though waves of feminism that required us to battle and fight to be acknowledged for our rights and for our needs to be met. In needing to be so strong all the time somewhere did we lose the practice of yielding.
During conception we can yield to our lover, in pregnancy our body yields and stretches , at birth our vagina and the tissues of our perineal yield and stretch. After the birth our breasts stretch and fill with milk, our nipples yield to a little ones suckle and our heart stretch’s and yields to the rhythms and needs of our baby.
Some of us are very good at body mastery. We can make our bodies ‘let go’ what a skill! For me yielding is the art of letting go deliciously, it’s dropping deeply into what is , rather than trying to change or force change. For me yielding is stepping into a place where softening feels so good, where there is peace in all I allow (I can choose to allow what is in and what is out of my control). Where rather than mastering my body or situations (being the master) I just drop and soften deeply into what is and let it get really loose.
In yielding I feel held - like a wild animal that is held. There is an art it is holding the space for Someone to yield within. I am still wild but like a wild animal by a warm fire who is being feed.
How do we hold our own space as birth workers/ birth support people that the wild animals of birthing women, so deeply primal , instinctive and wide eyed can feel safe enough to yield to the experience of their own bodies , to the wild rages of labour and to the deep stretch of their own hearts as their baby comes to rest on their chest after its slippery entrance into the world.
I would suggest that we need to get familiar with our own wild animals, to the stretches of our own hearts and rage. That we explore yielding from our hearts, minds and bodies just as we would gently lower ourselves into some warm liquid or clear ocean and submerge ourselves.
For some women birthing and mothering is entering the deepest rank, dark, earthy caves of their own being, how can we journey with her if we are afraid of our own cavernous tunnels?
For other women they ascend to the stars to gather to their babes and bring them to earth. How do we trust her galactic journey when we haven’t lifted our feet from the earth?
It is easy how to learn how to rub someone’s back in labour or take her blood pressure however it is the art of holding a space safe enough that someone can yield into the edges of their own wildness that can take some art and skill.
The exploitation of finding the edges where you fear to lift your feet from the earth or you may fear to travel into the dark cavernous underworld of your own being is where we start to grow, to stretch and to yield.
Have a go next time you are at the beach on a sunny day , in the supermarket , your kids are having a meltdown, when you’re making love. Drop your shoulders and see how soft you can get , how languid , how much can you melt into what is (regardless of what is ).
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be born in this woman’s body. A body that has birthed and breastfeed and absorbs my lover. That expands and contracts. That yields.
