Talk about an area of our lives fraught with pain, shame, blame and shadow: childbirth
I believe it's Genesis 3:16 that says, "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children."
Enjoy an excerpt from my article as well as the ABC news story and a link to an extraordinary site.
Why is it that so often where there is the intimacy, love and familiarity of long-term and life partnership, the sexual spark seems to dim, flicker and perhaps fade altogether? What gives?
Arousal is a complex paradoxical cocktail: it requires some amount of adrenaline, some degree of excitement and danger, while also requiring just enough safety to open to the risk of the unknown, the new and they mysterious.
Our conundrum: shadow aspects can be hot, exciting, intriguing. The taboo has simultaneous repulsion and appeal. Can our shadow – the very things we’ve decided have nothing to do with our best, most sacred selves have a place in our sacred sex and turned-on relationship lives?
When we can unlock formerly locked doors and embrace what was previously rejected, the result is often more wholeness and a divine homecoming. As Dossie Easton, marriage and family therapist and co-author of The Ethical Slut puts it, “… the shadow, our personal garbage pit, becomes the gateway through which we pass to travel in realms beyond ordinary consciousnesses.”
Dossie Easton explains when we dive into our past with consciousness, we get to rewrite the ending ourselves; we travel a familiar path, but come out as victors, rather than victims. And when it is injected with eros, with the very life force that sexual energy is, it is powerfully affirming – and we have created a new memory, now accessible in our consciousness. We turn our personal tragedies into triumphs.
She offers, “Lucifer actually means “light bearer”… the fallen angel who goes into unfathomable darkness with an unquenchable light inside him, and who carries the power of the villain and of the emancipator.”
But is going deeper into pain always necessary for its transformation? “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer,” says influential thinker and founder of Analytical psychology, Carl Jung. For some the healing process cannot bypass pain, and the “powers of enlightenment” have to bore directly through the dense center of suffering. Often, going through pain becomes the access to pleasure; it becomes a question of degree and the intention behind the exploration.
I admit to being rather skeptical, until I ran across an abcNews video story on orgasmic birth. Birth is considered to be one of the most painful experiences a body can endure, yet this showed many women having the same blissful, expansive sensations in birthing their babies as in sexual orgasm. One woman explained her process as re-interpreting the intense sensations of contractions and labor from painful to pleasureful. In fact, many of the same physiological actions occur in labor and birth as in sexual intercourse and orgasm.
We are all influenced, to one degree or another by spiritual lineages that have included shadow and pain in the quest for enlightened union: fasting, sleep deprivation, whirling dervishes, self-flagellation, walking uphill on the knees, etc. While many of these sought to punish and deny the body in order to get to spirit, others used pain as a transformative tool to lovingly unite the body with the divine.
Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron reminds, “Staying with pain without loving-kindness is just warfare.”
----
News story:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=6120045&page=1
Amazing site:
http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/
----
4 comments:
I've been addicted to sugar for most of my life, from childhood through my 30s. I first recognized myself as a sugar addict in my early 20s, but it took me a decade to give up sugar for good. My sugar addiction has caused me so much pain in my life, appearing hand in hand with depression, low self esteem, and overeating.
Last year, I finally gave up sugar for good, recognizing that I had a choice: either sugar, or my life.
I'm currently writing an ebook on how I gave up sugar for good to help others kick this terrible habit. It will be available for purchase on my blog, firstourselves.com, in February.
To all of those who feel like they can't give up sugar, who feel terrible because of their addiction, who feel lost: you can do it. You can give up sugar. You are not your addiction.
I cheer you.
Best,
Karly Pitman
Forgive me LiYana...I had written a lengthy comment on this post and then when I entered my password this errant comment showed up. Ah, technology!!
What I meant to say was this:
While I haven't experienced an orgasmic birth, I've read about them in noted midwife Ina May Garten's fantastic book, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth.
I remember thinking, "How can I order up one of these??"
While I didn't have an orgasmic birth, I did have an amazing, beautiful, empowering stress free birth with a midwife at home with my 4th child. In fact, my labor and delivery were so quick that I mourned them, knowing that was my last pregnancy and birth.
I can get on my soapbox on how birth has been denigrated from the most powerful, affirming, empowering experience of a woman's life into a medical event that is to be managed, feared, and anesthesized. But I'll just say that I am saddened that more women don't trust the amazing birth process to be more than just about pain, but also about trust, vulnerability, intimacy, growth and overcoming fear. Hmm, sounds a lot like sex and relationships...
Thank you for the food for thought,
Karly
Actually, childbirth more naturally is not painful and can be pain free. Really, its true.
I was fortunate to have a rather lengthy 100 hour program exploring many aspects in the use of hypnotherapy when I was becoming a Certified Hypnotherapist (CHt).
Hypnotherapy has now an established track record of being able to help most Mothers experience pain free childbirth. The positive benefits are obvious for both Mother and Child.
One most interesting aspect to have come out of the research and clinical experience was comparing the records of indigenous peoples on the childbirth experience versus victorian england.
It seems a very strong case exists to show the perception, and associative beliefs, about sex as guilty, shameful, and that childbirth is suppose to be the most painful of experiences, all of which are associated with the European/Religious dogma culture which still prevails today, was the only operative thing at work, since that was, and is, not the case in other societies.
In other indigenous cultures that viewed sex as natural, normal, guilt free, they actually experienced childbirth with discomfort only, if that, and not excruciatingly painful.
Today, those midwives, and childbirth experts who use Hypnotherapy quickly experience the same is true for their patients where childbirth is at most a mild discomfort and often pain free.
Where most women can benefit from Hypnobirthing as it is called, some can not. It depends upon the individual induction capacity as well as the Health professional practitioner.
Thanks for the post and sharing the blog. Valuable and excellent post, as share good stuff with good ideas and concepts.
lots of great information and inspiration. I just would like to say thanks for your great efforts.
I appreciate your excellent post.
Clipping path service India
Post a Comment