This is one of the quotes that really stands out to me from my most recent adventure: Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training.

Wow. What a wild ride. For the past 12 days I have been soaking up everything I can... so much knowledge about pregnancy, labour, birth, and motherhood. I've learned about vaginal birth and cesarean births, home births and hospital births, births with doctors, mid-wives, doulas, and births in the water and births with music, and so so so much more.

But I've also learned more than I ever could have thought possible, in an experiential way, about the power of community and connection - of being accepted exactly as you are in a circle of women that is healing and supportive and full of admiration, respect and reverence.

I've made lifelong friends - of that I am sure. 

I've come away not only with knowledge of yoga poses and alignment and making the physical practice of Yoga safe for pregnant mammas, but I've learned how to offer tools to pregnant women that will help them in their labour, their birth - and beyond: tools to empower women to trust themselves, to accept their own power, to embrace and trust their innate intuition and inner authority and to have a pregnancy, labour, and birth experience that will be meaningful for them for the long term.

I've seen (and experienced), first hand what happens when women claim their power, when they stand up and say YES, I can do this. YES, I deserve unconditional love and acceptance. YES, I can be fierce. YES, I can forge my own path even when surrounded by dozens of people telling me how I should experience my life. And these are the tools I am excited to offer - not only to pregnant mammas in the prenatal yoga I will offer at the studio, but with all the people I teach.

I know that these past 12 days have not only changed my teaching, but also my life.

Yes, when women embrace their power - their innate inner wisdom - they are amazing to behold. And wow - what they can accomplish. I am moved and I am humbled and I am in awe and deeply, deeply grateful.

So often, I find myself in a situation where I seem to be completely surrounded and inundated with everyone else’s thoughts, opinions and beliefs.  Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world (it seems) to do is to figure out what I think, what I feel, or what I believe.

Whether it’s a decision about my step-sons, my job, my love life or even what I should wear, it just often seems so noisy in the world.   There is messaging around you all the time that tells you what you should wear, how you should parent, how much money you should make, how much sex you should be having, how much stuff you should own, what type of food you should eat, how you should spend your free time, and the list goes on and on and on. .

So, with all that noise, how do you figure out what’s true for you when it’s time to make a decision about what you want to do?

You tune in.

“Oh sure,” I can hear you all say, “just like that?”

Yes. Just like that.

Tuning in, for me, is a two step process. First, I have to shut out all the noise, and then I need to specifically check in with my Self, the center of me, where my own true innate wisdom lies. How I go about that may not be the same way you would go about it. But if you don’t know where to start, maybe try my method and see what you think of it.

• Stand or sit nice and tall.
• Close your eyes.
• Bring your awareness and full attention to the sensation of breathing for a few moments.
• Consciously deepen and slow down your breathing
• Find a single point within your body to focus on. (for me, I find my “center” is the pit of my belly, below my belly button and above my pubic bone or the center of my heart)
• With all of your awareness and focus on this central part of you, think about the decision you want to make and notice how this central, sensitive place within you responds.
• Do you feel your belly or heart or other focal point soften or harden, constrict or expand, grow warm or cool, tense or tighten?

Use this feedback to come to your own truth and then, most importantly, bravely follow it!!

That is tuning in.

So, tell me below in the comments - did you try this method? What were the results? Or, if you have another method of tuning in, tell me about it!