My body always danced. I couldn’t stop it. Everyone can dance, but not everyone is a dancer. You know you are a dancer if you can NOT keep your body still when you hear music. Something physical happens to you. Your cells absorb and merge with the music, a marriage happens. You accept it, let it in, welcome it…the music, your divine lover. It matters not the beat, the genre, the melody, you become one and you surrender to how the music wants to move you. It is intimate, it’s a prayer, and a meditation. 

I’ve studied many types of dance. They all have a different feeling and have their own music. My three favorites are ballet, salsa rueda and hula. 

Ballet – To my visual cortex a ballerina appears to be angelic, to take flight, to defy gravity. When dancing, it feels rigid and structured on your body, it is pure disciplined graceful strength. Your focus is up to the heavens. As a ballet dancer your strength will double, triple even, as you propel yourself into the air, then landing ever so softly. It is akin to a superpower. 

Salsa Rueda – Salsa rueda is a Cuban partner dance done in a circle. It feels earthy, sexy and communal. As you switch partners every few seconds you look into another set of eyes, touch new hands, and smile at a new face. The music is fun. Everyone has permagrin and you hear laughing throughout.  As a woman/follow I am led by the man/lead – he twirls me, catches me, moves me around like a play thing and I let him. He is in charge and taking care of me while we dance. I surrender to him. All I can say is this feels amazing. 

Hula – This is a sacred Hawaiian dance with song or chant. It tells a poetic story and it can also be for entertainment or sacred rite. When I dance hula I feel my heart crack open. Sometimes I even get teary eyed as it moves heavy emotions out of my body. Hula is done barefoot. You feel the Earth absorb everything and transmute all back into light. I float like a wave, literally syncing with the tempo and rhythms of Earth itself. You become the flow. You mimic mother ocean, the wind, the trees. It’s like you become a channel for all living things as you impart the message through your hands. 

If you are an expecting mama join me for my online prenatal yoga and dance class where we learn birth specific yoga and ancient dance movements that were used during birth to help ease babies into the world – this is the original form of childbirth education. I combine movements from brain dancing, ballet, hula, Egypt, Greece, and Persia. All of my students tell me this is their favorite prenatal class. You can now stream anytime.

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My goal is to bring more happiness to alI families and help them step into sacred living. This means honoring self, family and community, celebrating rites of passage and encouraging a life filled with beauty.   I take enormous amounts of information and condense it into easy digestible healing systems. I take healing modalities from across the globe and present them, ready made for a wide audience. What I teach are Human Truths – concepts and techniques that work regardless of your belief systems or cultural heritage. 

My work offers information and guidance for individuals who aim to create a sacred family life. 

Birth & Postpartum Health – Starting with the motherhood journey, my classes, workshops and consultations give women tools for relieving discomfort, healing, bonding with their babies, and creating a sense of wellness and calm. I teach women how to celebrate motherhood and create a sacred experience every step of the way. 

Sanctuary Design – My work as a professional organizer goes way above and beyond an ordinary organizer. I offer therapy level organizing and help people design a sanctuary to live in, a space that HEALS in every sense of that word. I make sure all of your senses feel balanced and at peace in your space. I want you to have a home where your family can thrive, you feel comfortable, safe, it’s beautiful, clean, efficient and has that special cozy vibe that makes a house a home – Ha (sacred breath) – Om (sacred sound), because the space you live and work in will affect your emotions, functionality, production, efficiency and overall wellbeing. 

Illustrated Heirloom Memoirs – Documenting the highlights of your life is also a form of therapy. It’s like journaling 2.0. I take students through very specific writing exercises and we play with different illustration techniques to create something special. The Illustrated Heirloom Memoir concept emerged after the passing of my mother. I realized there was so much I didn’t know about her. When you document your life and pass it on, it takes you on a journey of recollection. I’m helping you bring out your moments of joy, your lessons, your family heritage. This is something your family members will cherish. 

All of my classes and services are now available online. Sign up for a class, workshop or consultation that fits your schedule. I look forward to meeting you. Blessings, Zoe  

The post Stepping Into Sacred Living appeared first on Zoe Weston.

ZW: Dr. Odent, thank you so much for taking the time to answer some of my questions today. Can you give me and our audience a brief history of your work in the birth world?

MO: I started to be involved in childbirth in 1953, as an “externe” (medical student with minor responsibilities) in the maternity unit of a Paris hospital. This was a time when a c-section was not yet a safe operation, when there were no plastic catheters, no intravenous drips, no epidural analgesia, no electronic machines, and oxytocin had not yet been synthesized. Since that time and until now, I have been in a position to continuously follow the history of childbirth, either directly, or indirectly because, in the middle of the twentieth century, c-sections were usually performed in the framework of emergency surgery. It happened by chance that in the hospital where I was in charge of the surgical unit, in the 1960s, there was no doctor in charge of the small maternity unit. The midwives started to call me when they had to face difficulties.  I developed such an interest for the effects of environmental factors on the physiological processes in the perinatal period that the number of births a year went gradually from 200 to 1000. This is why I am known as an obstetrician, although I am officially a surgeon.  

ZW:  You were one of the first people to talk about using water/pools during labor. I did labor most of the end of my labor in a tub and I can say that for me, the level of discomfort was significantly reduced while I was in the tub. Can you tell me why you originally suggested birthing in water and in your experience, has the suggestion held up as a positive experience for birthing women? 

MO: I realized the power of a watery environment in the 1970s, at a time when one of my objectives was to develop strategies to reduce the need for pharmacological assistance in the particular case of women in established labour with unbearable back pain, when the dilation of the cervix could not progress. 

In such a context I postulated that immersion in water at the temperature of the body should be a way to break a vicious circle by inducing a state of relaxation and lowering the levels of adrenaline. This is how, as a temporary measure, we had a garden paddling pool. This was the beginning of the history of hospital birthing pools. Later on, we installed a larger, round, deep-blue bath that was plumbed in. On the walls of the small aquatic birthing room there were pictures of dolphins.   I had a revelation the day a woman gave birth on the floor before the pool was actually full. All she needed was to see the blue water and hear the noise of water. Until that moment I had only simplistic physiological explanations regarding the effects of water immersion during labor. 

This was a first lesson: when in labor, many women are irresistibly attracted to water and a great importance should be given to the way they are introduced in the aquatic birthing room.  

The second important lesson was that, in general, when a woman enters the birthing pool in well-established labor, there is a spectacular progress of the dilation of the cervix during the first two hours. The progress of cervical dilation is usually associated with an obvious and spectacular reduction in neocortical control. This means that the woman behaves as if on another planet, as if cutting herself off from our world, forgetting what she had been taught, forgetting her plans, and behaving in a way that usually would be considered unacceptable regarding a civilised woman, for example screaming or swearing. Some women can find themselves in the most unexpected, bizarre, often mammalian, primitive, quadrupedal postures.                

Ideally, the bath should be deep enough for real immersion and the water temperature comfortable (in practice around 37^o Celsius). A dim light is, of course, an important factor and, if it is acceptable, there would be nobody around apart from one silent, low profile and motherly birth attendant who does not behave as an observer. After two hours there is usually a feedback mechanism and the contractions become less and less efficient.

At the time of the garden inflatable pool (before we installed a solid pool), women were not influenced by the media or by what they had read in books about childbirth. Their behavior was spontaneous and thus we learned about the genuine effects of a water environment. A typical scenario (with many possible variations) was the case of a woman entering the pool in hard labor, spending an hour or two in water and then feeling the need to get out of the pool when the contractions were becoming less effective. This going back to the dry land often induced a short series of irresistible and powerful contractions so that the baby was born within several minutes.      

One day, a mother-to-be had not been in water for long when suddenly she had two irresistible contractions and the baby was born before she felt any need to get out of the pool. While giving birth, this woman was really “on another planet”. Clearly, in that altered state of consciousness associated with hard labour, she intuitively knew that her baby could be born safely under water. There was no panic. It is as if a deep-rooted knowing was able to express itself as soon as the intellect and its knowledge were set aside. Such births happened again. It is as if, while in a particular state of consciousness, some women knew that a birth under water was safe for the baby. 

When we had the experience of one hundred babies born under water (while thousands of women had used the birthing pool), I found it relevant to publish our observations in a mainstream medical journal (Lancet 1983). This was an opportunity to warn my colleagues that in any hospital where a birthing pool will be available, a birth under water is bound to occur occasionally, even if it is not intentional. It is notable that the original message was distorted: many women were the prisoners of their project of “water birth”, staying in the birthing pool when the contractions were becoming less and less effective. For that reason, I tried – with limited success – to recall the original message in midwifery journals (see pubmed.com: Odent M). 

ZW:  My understanding is that you believe that changing the way the modern world is birthing will also evolve humans accordingly. Can you expand on this thought and the science behind it?

MO: To participate in the initiation of a collective new awareness, the first step is to realize that the way human beings are born is not just a topic for specialized health professionals and pregnant women. Let us use the analogy of anticipated climatic changes in relation to human activities. We have reached such a phase of collective awareness that it is not a topic reserved to climatologists. Everybody is involved. How to reach the same stage where birth is concerned? It is not by transmitting beliefs. It is by transmitting useful knowledge provided by a great diversity of emerging and fast developing scientific disciplines. This is why, in the age of “information bombardment” and overspecialization, the objective of my books is to guide a diverse public towards selected valuable and relevant pieces of knowledge.

ZW: Dr. Odent, many in the audience might not have read your works. Can you tell us why you think it is important to initiate breastfeeding shortly after birth?

MO: We have learned recently that, in our species, lactation is supposed to start during the hour following birth. Let us recall that, for thousands of years, the main effect of widespread perinatal beliefs and rituals has been to delay the initiation of breastfeeding. However, human beings survived. We are now in a position to explain that in our species the early colostrum is precious, without been vital. Human babies can survive without consuming the early colostrum because they have received maternal antibodies through the placenta, before being born. Among humans the main questions are: “How familiar and how divers the bacteriological environment in the birthing place is? Which microbes are the first to educate the immune system of modern human babies?”  The point is that today nearly all newborn babies, for obvious reasons related to the place of birth, are deprived of familiar microbes. To compensate this unprecedented situation the early colostrum is becoming more precious than ever.

ZW:  If there is just one piece of advice you can offer to an expecting mother/couple, what would that be?

MO: When in labor, forget everything. Just keep in mind that you rely on the release of oxytocin, the “shy hormone” that does not appear among observers and strangers.   

ZW: I want to thank you so much for taking time to answer my questions and for sharing your wisdom with the world! I believe this work is one of the most important things we can do for the successful survival of our species. 

If you would like to know more about Dr. Odent’s work please visit his facebook page, or check out one of his many books available on amazon.com

His books include:

• Birth Reborn (1984, Pantheon, NY)
• Primal Health (1986. Century Hutchinson. London)
• The Farmer and the Obstetrician (Free Association Books)
• The Caesarean (Free Association Books )
• The Scientification of Love (Free Association Books)
• The Functions of the Orgasms: The Highways to Transcendence (2009, Pinter & Martin Ltd.)
• Childbirth in the Age of Plastics (2011, Pinter & Martin Ltd.)
• Childbirth and the Future of Homo sapiens (2013, Pinter & Martin Ltd.), reissued as Childbirth and the Evolution of Homo sapiens in 2014
• Do we need Midwives? (2015, Pinter & Martin Ltd.)
• The Birth of Homo, the Marine Chimpanzee (2017, Pinter & Martin Ltd.)

The post Rare Interview with Legendary Dr. Michel Odent appeared first on Zoe Weston.

Birth dancing is one of the oldest and misunderstood forms of dancing. It has been greatly misrepresented in popular culture and even has a negative connotation among the less informed. As featured in the Winter 1996 issue of Habibi magazine, a birth dancer, Morocco, said:

“Dance du ventre, or belly dancing, is not at all what Western society thinks it to be, i.e. a dance of sex and seduction. This is an erroneous and ignorant belief, reinforced and perpetuated by stage and movie writers too lazy to do research. Neither is it a ‘belly’ dance, since much more is involved than just the stomach muscles. Oriental dancing, as the Arabs themselves call it, is one of the oldest forms of dance, originating with pre-Biblical religious rites worshipping motherhood and having as its practical side the preparation of females for the stresses of childbirth. Thus it is the oldest form of natural childbirth instruction.”

All the best,

Zoe

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