Hurrah for the Equinox!

Equinox time... ready for a big shift in energy.
Winter has always been my dormant time, Spring my springy-time. (I'm a perennial.)

I have a tendency to create new possibilities for myself at this time of year and get a burst of positive energy to make things happen.

(Working on being an evergreen...)

So I have registered for a class and I am so excited to be learning something after not (formally) learning anything for a few years. And it's something I'm very passionate about, so I'm going to be launching myself into it and generally being a girly swot about the whole thing. I'm training to be a childbirth educator, so when I am qualified I will teach birth classes to women and couples. I found an organization whose people share my feelings about how these things should work and about what women need to support them and allow them to trust in their bodies natural capacities for carrying and giving birth to their babies.

I was fortunate enough to take my own childbirth education classes with Janet Balaskas, one of the foremost 'pioneers' in the active birth movement. I lived in London at the time, a 30 minute walk from her active birth center. It was a wonderful place, with holistic health practitioners specializing in working with pregnant women and babies, pre and post natal yoga classes, water birth classes and of course childbirth classes. Oh and a great shop which sold all the best natural stuff you needed (or just plain wanted) to make pregnancy and mummydom healthy and comfortable and happy. I was so happy to see that the first core text book on my list is by Janet Balaskas. So I know I'm in the right place.

Her classes were wonderful, definitely leaning toward active natural birth, but not judging those in the class who wanted something more medicalized. The classes were designed to give women and their birth partners the information they needed to make good choices, to form ideas of what they would like their experience to be, to make an informed birth plan, to explore the options, to learn about alternative/holistic ways to deal with labor - in short, she empowered people to trust the birthing process as the beautiful, natural, powerful and enriching experience it can be.

I'm about to write about my own birth experiences, but for now I am just so so happy and excited to be embarking on this adventure and hoping to be an inspirational force to many women and couples through my classes.