Having “the DREAM”

This is a pivotal moment in your life.

You have never been in this exact position before.. preparing for this birth of this baby.

Yet… you have been here before. You know this feeling.

You have been faced with the inner struggle of knowing what you really want and being afraid you can’t have it.

What if you fail? What if what has worked for other women won’t work for you? What if it’s just too good to be true?

That feeling is what I want to speak to. And THAT actually has nothing to do with birth.

This is what I learned going through the Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training Program.

I know that Ecstatic Birth represents the “dream”, an ideal. We have those all over our life. Or have you become so resigned about your dreams coming true that you have buried them?

I took a course once where the instructor asked us if our “wanter” was broken. I thought to myself, “nope, mine is in full effect.” I want things all the time! In fact, I can think of about 10 things that I want right now.

But what I discovered is that I don’t allow myself to “want” the big things. The dreams that I have already decided will never come true.

Once I allowed my “wanter” to be turned back on, I realized that I had put a great big glass ceiling on my desires and had limited my joy in the process.

(I did this simply by allowing myself to dream again. Brainstorming what I would want if I had no limitations. To trick myself, I’d even journal things like: What do I believe can never happen for me? If I had a genie grant a wish, what would it be? If I was born into another life, what would I want?)

I started to feel alive and excited about these desires. It felt like a part of me had come back to life. I started remembering more of who I really am as I uncovered my inner guidance system.

I now believe that our desires are our personal, built-in guidance system for this life. Your neighbor, mom or friend do not have the same desires as you. That is because they are unique to you, and you are meant to go after them! (This was a mind-blowing realization for me. After being raised religiously, the last thing I thought I was supposed to do was choose my life direction based on my desires. However, now I cannot un-do that knowing.)

But then, I hit my first big bump (or breakdown) of this transformation I was experiencing. My high flying kite started running into trees and was having a hard time staying up.

What was happening, was I was hyper aware of these dreams I had and the lack of them coming to fruition. Sure, some of them were happening right away. But some of them… well, they were taking a while. Maybe I wasn’t meant to have them? Maybe I am not good enough? Maybe I can’t un-do these negative beliefs I have adopted from my past?

This is where my next big lesson came. I was so focused on the fruition of the dream that I forgot to enjoy the process. We have all heard this before… “it is not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” But this is where I really got it.

And this is why it’s so important to consider all of this while you are looking at Ecstatic Birth.

Having an Ecstatic Birth (or facilitating it, if you are a practitioner) is “the dream.” It is the best case scenario, the ideal, and the thing that may feel a little out of your reach. It is the space where your fears come up, because….what if you fail?

Down below your glass ceiling feels safe. But yet… do you really feel alive??

It’s just like the basics of the law of attraction. What really matters is how you FEEL.

So, what do you want to feel during and after your birth?

Just like any goal in your life, I invite you to look at the feelings you want that desired outcome to produce.

If you can practice feeling that NOW, you will open the gateway to attract that into your life. Birth is the same way.

Training for Ecstatic Birth is like opening the gateway to the birthing heavens and allowing the birth experience of your dreams to pour in.

Again, if you have trouble feeling pleasure and joy now, it most likely won’t show up out of the blue during labor. However, it is 1000% possible.

What I discovered in my own journey is where I still have blocks in my way to feeling pleasure. I had some deep rooted beliefs that I don’t deserve to be happy and am not worthy of my dreams. I thought I had addressed that, as I am a personal development junkie and have worked through these things multiple times.

What I got in the Ecstatic Birth Practitioner training is the body work. I had learned to be so in my head as I prepared for everything in my life, that I had missed the point! 

The whole point of higher levels of consciousness is to get out of our head!!!

By learning to get in my body, I actually realized that I have not been present in my body since I was a child. I experienced significant amounts of trauma from the time I was 3 to 21. I watched myself from the outside looking in.

As I learned to hold space for women preparing for Ecstatic Birth, I learned to re-enter my body and discovered the magic of having this new access point to pure presence and pleasure.

So, this pivotal moment…

The one where you are faced with going after what you really want and busting through that self-inflicted ceiling, or staying underneath it… only you know if it’s time. But my guess is that it is 🙂

Krystina Sloan is a pregnancy and childbirth expert specializing in holistic practices. She attends births as a doula in Arizona, and teaches specialized childbirth education online to women all over the world. She is a trained doula, certified lactation counselor and Ecstatic Birth Practitioner.

Her favorite thing about this work is to see women heal their relationship with their bodies and learn to trust themselves on a deep level. She has a four year old little boy who she says sparked new life in her. She believes parenting is an opportunity for self awareness and releasing the past, and loves assisting couples in their transformation.