Equanimity in pregnancy and birth

I signed up to a virpasana - a 10 day silent meditation retreat in January 2022.

Little did I know that when I arrived, sat in a hall full of silent meditators, I would receive the first hint that I might in fact be pregnant.

When my bleed didn't come the first day, I started to suspect I might be pregnant. My cycles were very regular and predictable and so it was unusual for it to be late. I watched this thought come by through my mind, and let it pass, noting that all there was to do was to wait and see what happened tomorrow. It would either arrive, or it wouldn't. There was nothing to do.

This practice of witnessing the unravelling of events in the body and mind was something that was taught to us in the Virpasana retreat, and my potential pregnancy was a fantastic opportunity to put it directly into immediate practice. It worked beautifully. I neither clinged to and analysed, nor avoided - I just observed and accepted things for what they were in each moment, and the next. with a continuing sense of watching and waiting.

Equanimity it turned out, would be something that came in very handy for my pregnancy, birth and postpartum, What a gift that was.

It is the thing that could bring us to the dissolution of pain. With the practice of obesrving and accepting we are with each sensation in the body in each moment. There is nowhere else to be, and nothing to do. We do not resist any sensation, even if it is very large, in choosing to stay with it you are also choosing not to resist what is. When one resists sensations in the bvody (ie when these sensations are very large and unappealing, called 'pain') resisting causes your mind and spirit to attempt to depart from your body, creating a separation, turmoil, and it is what transforms an 'experience in the body' into suffering.

Here is a little formula to sum it up:

Suffering = pain x resistance.