Mindful Birthing Quotes

“As best you can, you say yes to the sensations, yes to this change. You remind yourself that this is normal, transformational pain. All is well.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. —the Dalai Lama”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“In mindfulness practice there is nothing to achieve, nothing to get, and nowhere to go. Instead, you are cultivating another way of being, learning how to be fully aware of exactly where and how you are in this very moment, even if the moment is painful or you don’t like it, because in this moment, this is your reality. A non-striving attitude can be especially valuable during childbirth. As you will see, allowing things to be exactly as they are during labor actually creates the optimal mind-body condition for your body to open, change, and give birth.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“This is what Michel de Montaigne was alluding to when he said, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“Where does the joy of living exist anyway?,” you may find that it exists in the sweet taste of an orange, the sudden smile that lights up your baby’s face, the warmth of a hug from your partner or a friend, or the sweet smell of your baby’s skin. When we practice mindfulness we become more awake and alive in the present moment, for ourselves and for our children.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“I so don’t want to be the kind of mother my mother was for me! I think mindfulness practice might help me with that.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“Experiment with making up a labor gatha of your own. Some women have found that words like open, yes, baby, and out are particularly helpful. Or you might encourage an attitude of curiosity by saying “What’s this?” on the in-breath and “Don’t know” on the out-breath. Be sure to coordinate the words with the in-breath and the out-breath as you practice.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“We have a choice, a choice not about whether to experience pain, but about our relationship to that pain or how we interpret it. This is the difference between pain and suffering. It is sometimes said about life that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“We have a choice, a choice not about whether to experience pain, but about our relationship to that pain or how we interpret it. This is the difference between pain and suffering.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“In the very observation of pain, a tiny window of freedom has opened up in which you have the ability to choose how you will relate to the painful sensations in that moment-and in the next, and the next after that. With mindfulness you have brought an entirely new element into the pain-of-the-stubbed-toe equation, and because of that you have changed your relationship to the sensation in your toe. And in doing so, you actually experience the pain differently. You still feel pain, but you are liberated from the reactivity of the mind.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“While there’s nothing I can do about the pain signals being sent from the nerves in my toe to my brain, with mindfulness practice there is a lot I can do about how I perceive it-how I handle the thoughts and emotions that spring up in relation to that pain…. In bringing mindful awareness to the pain, I have in that very moment stepped out of reacting, and instead found a way of responding to the unpleasant sensations of my toe.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“While there’s nothing I can do about the pain signals being sent from the nerves in my toe to my brain, with mindfulness practice there is a lot I can do about how I perceive it-how I handle the thoughts and emotions that spring up in relation to that pain.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“humans actually have a bias toward negativity. As”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“you will make an amazing discovery: right in the midst of the process of childbirth there are profound moments of ease and peace.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“The vast majority of time the unequivocal answer to this question is yes.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“They feel whatever we’re feeling! If we’re stressed out, they’re stressed out! If we calm down, they calm down!”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond

“Patience is the understanding that events unfold at their own pace and not necessarily on a timetable of our own choosing.”
― Nancy Bardacke, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond