Meditation & Pregnancy | Heather Hayward

Pregnancy can set you off on a WIDE range of emotions. You’re experiencing hormones like you’ve never known before and that can be a bit troublesome to navigate at times. Meditation can be an effective way to keep calm and know what’s real and what’re just your baby “feelings”.

One of Fancy Mama’s favorite humans Heather Hayward, meditation and hypnosis expert, sat down with me to explain the science behind it all.

Your meditation tracks helped me stay calm during my pregnancy when I was on an emotional rollercoaster. What is it about effective meditation that can calm the hormones and the rollercoaster that pregnancy can get you on sometimes?

So when we’re pregnant, whether it’s the first or the seventh, your body is taking you emotionally on an experience. It’s not like “okay I’m on this spin bike and I’m really, really happy and I’ll get off when I want” No, no, you’re ON THE RIDE. There’s no getting off. And when you can direct the thoughts you want to repeat, that has a chemical response which effects your physiology which effects your baby which effects just the whole entire experience from feeling to thought to belief to behavior. And also, it’s how you go about your day, so what you want to be is more present with how you’re taking care of yourself, that you’re not just in the “when I give birth”, “when then, when then..” which is completely out of the moment. Because all of our intuition happens in the moment.

What tracks do you offer that are in particular really great for pregnancy?

I would say for the most neutral it would be the Ocean and Rain. It’s not even music to start. Sometimes you just need something — rain has a very soothing effect, that white noise. The Ocean is the amniotic fluid, there’s a flow to it and you’re in the flow. And some of these have alpha waves, theta waves which are binaural beats that help the brain go into a meditative state. And also I would say just the pure “My Meditation” the 5,10,15, 20 minute because it’s guided so you can have all the the thoughts in the world – just listen to my voice. And it has Jonathan J. Beaudette’s music which I call the cosmic cuddle because it’s so non-memorizable, because I can’t stand music you can memorize. It’s timed so you can actually say “I have 10 minutes, I can give myself over completely to this experience, follow every work, do the breath.” And it will actually get you into that coherent state where the heart is slowed down and then the mind starts to follow. And the nice thing about the “My Meditation” is with each track there’s the same beginning and end so there’s a lot of structure to it but in the middle it’s different with each and every track and throughout each track there is a period of quiet where you get to realize “Wow, how am i today?” You may realize there is a lot more noise or that you should really slow down.

Are there any benefits to the baby?

Oh my Gosh, absolutely. They have seen that when a mother’s heart rate slows down the baby’s heart rate slows down. So when you are, as the mom, the more that you are in that beautiful, dopamine, serotonin well-spring that happens when we just feel good, when you’re doing that your body is then marinating like a tea bag and just soaking that all up and it’s just YUMMY and so beneficial to you both!

How can meditation help out in giving birth?

If you think about when the body is going through such a miraculous experience of bones separating and things opening for that baby – there’s going to be a bit of, uh, pain. When you stay focused right on that place and you breathe with it, the body knows exactly what it’s doing. When you still feel like you’re in control being out of control but your body is in total control and you can stay in with just this contraction knowing you just went through that contraction, you’ll never have to go through that contraction again and you can stay riding that kind of thing, you stay out of the anxiety that can rip you because your body, it’s very focused. The mind can read the pain through a very negative, anxious filter. Sometimes meditation can be just following the breath or going into an image of opening, like floating in a lake, maybe its being at the beginning of a shoreline and its 88 degrees with turquoise water and the body is moving and giving birth but your mind is in a different place. So it’s really capturing one’s thoughts instead of letting the mind think for itself because the mind – it’s going to think. I’m not into emptying the mind, I’m into focusing the mind into where I want it to go.

How do you find the time as a mom to do meditation when you have a crying baby in the next room and barely any time to even shower?

You first off remember that you are no longer a person without a child. So you don’t compare anything to how you’ve been. So you literally walk away from that, in the best way! Just the way a child leaves home to go away to college you don’t wake up and wait for your mom to make you breakfast when you go to college. So you don’t think “Oh, I can’t wait until the baby goes to sleep tonight so then I can back to..” It’s never going to happen again. And that will make you crazy if you think “I should have my morning, I need my coffee, I need to be alone” You’re never going to be alone – this is going to be on your tit. So you learn ways to be present while maybe breastfeeding. Making it a very present, mindful time. So that when you’re changing diapers that’s all your doing. When you can delegate where you’re going to put your attention – that is meditation. It’s when you’re changing the diapers and you’re like “oh I’ve got to walk the dog, and my husband didn’t even get the oatmeal, I can’t  believe it” That’s when you’re going to feel like you miss your time in the morning but you can actually have that time anytime it’s just usually going to be with this little person.

How early do you think its okay to teach your kids meditation?

Right away. Like 2.

And how do you go about doing that?

I would say  [to my son] “Let’s go on a journey” So I would have him close his eyes, picture his bedroom and now he has wings. So it was more of a guided imagery than a meditation. And then we would float up through the roof, over the sky down sunset, to the PCH and down into the ocean and he would swim with the dolphins and the fish and then he’d go into his cave where his wizard was waiting for him. He remembers this to this day. Or I would take him to the fairies in the forest. And as he got older 5, 6 ,10 and he had homework for school we would have him do a tree meditation where the tree would take away his stress and the tree would wrap him up. You can play because kids imaginations – they’re there, they have no question that it’s not happening and if you set them up that this is how they can self-soothe instead of watching TV or eating a cookie, it’s really witnessing to the child “Looks like you really had a rough day” You’re saying “I see you, I can see that something is going on. Why don’t we move a little bit, go for a walk and then why don’t we get quiet to see what’s going on.” You’re teaching them that they can do things to change their mood so it’s never too early.

Find out more: http://www.harmonic-one.com