Tag Archive | childbirth

Havening and mindfulness life coaching

Jan19

It has been sometime since I wrote on this blog. Many events occurred since the last entry, such is life! I am reminded of the three eternal truisms; Life is always changing, life always has challenges, suffering and difficulties, yet, always these pass and we glimpse again our interconnectedness and the joy of being that is our birth right.

I have spent 44 years in health care practice and related research and education. I still work at the university with my wonderful post graduate students doing amazing doctoral and masters projects. It is always a joy to see them find ways forward in fresh understandings and glimpse insights about life in their emerging thinking. However this has transitioned to part-time as I also actively pursue my passion to help community directly beyond the confines of academia. I could do this in many ways of course but after much seeking for the right modalities, I have found healing modalities that speak to me on many levels resonating with my personal and professional experiences. I will explore the mindfulness coaching in a subsequent blog post. In this blog I want to tell you about Havening.

Havening is integrating all that I have learnt and experienced across my life. I am currently working with people in person in New Zealand or online from anywhere globally. My focus is helping others self-actualize and reach their full potential. To help them remove what binds them, the stuff that creates barriers to their own awakening which conceals their joy of life. Although, as you would expect, I do have a special focus on childbirth trauma, fear of childbirth, medical phobias, and birth preparation; I am currently working with anyone who is wanting to self-heal traumas, phobias, and fears using the psychosensory techniques of Havening.

So what is Havening?

The Havening Techniques® are healing modalities designed to help individuals overcome problems that
are the consequence of traumatic or stressful encoding. They belong to a larger group of methods called
psychosensory therapies, which use sensory input to alter thought, mood and behavior. The system is
comprised of protocols and methods that use touch as a therapeutic tool called Havening Touch®. This
touch generates a delta wave in the brain. Delta waves are calming and down-regulating and make the brain more permissible to neuro-pathway changes. Specifically the Amygdala where trauma gets encoded. The techniques are used by many allied and medical health care professionals, counselors and coaches as a powerful protocol for coaching, wellness, stress reduction and resilience building.

I found it works amazingly well in childbirth related traumas, phobias, fears and anxieties. Even when traumatic childbirth events are 20-30 years ago.

I have witnessed positive impact on a wide range of concerns including:

Phobias
Chronic pain
Distressing memories (childhood, parenting, broken relationships, shocking news, loss, embarrassment, etc.)
Survivors of natural disasters and man-made (e.g. war, fire, assault,home intrusion)
Anger-Fear of abandonment
Stress, Burnout
Self Esteem, Cravings, Emotional eating, confidence issues
PTSD, Panic attacks
Sexual abuse
Performance enhancement, Public speaking, exam anxiety

If you want to know more then email me: drsusan.crowther@gmail.com or telephone/text me on NZ 022 310 1978

Meanwhile, here are some links to useful videos where you can learn more:





Compassion in midwifery, maternity and childbirth

Sep14

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to be part of an interactive event in Dundee. It was the 2nd Scottish Improvement Science Collaborating Centre (SISCC). A wonderful liberating and inspiring day. I just want to share some insights that came during the day which focused on care and compassion.
I was confronted by a series of questions that arose both within myself and in communication with others: 

  • What is compassion? 
  • Where does it come from? 
  • Does it dwell within us or outside of us? 
  • Can compassion be taught and learnt? 
  • Is compassion an innate human quality?
  • How can compassionate care be spread to places where it may not yet be realised?

My personal life experience is that compassion is a quality and energy that manifests, and awakens between us within relationship. Such relationship is born of communications both silent and spoken. It is in the richness of a reciprocal dialogue that the possibility of empathy and compassion awakens. For me it is a way of being in the world and being with others. 

Following last week I am left wondering how do institutions and organisations in which we work enable and disable the potential for compassion to be revealed? Do our organisations ensure relationships can flourish? I am thinking of organisational structures that resonate at a particular tone or mood of fear and control that may not value human connection in which compassion can thrive. 

What does the organisation you work for value most? I’m not speaking of written policy, guidelines and organisational rhetoric but coalface interactions between and through all layers of an organisation. Does the context you work for allow the magic between people to unfold and energise compassion? Are the the conversations we have with colleagues and users of services based on a democratic dialogue, that is to say, does our use of language create a level playing field between us? 

For compassion to thrive and inform our connections with others a particular mood is required. A mood of congeniality, openness, transparency, care and tenderness. If we understand that we have to be in one mood or another and that we cannot be without a mood then the mood of a places and persons are significant. If a mood permeating your place of work is largely fear based then that is how that environment comes to be understood and how all interactions in that environment become interpreted. I would contend that in that mood a maternity (or any health environment) unfolds into a risk orientated experience. That can feel threatening and stressful.

I remember transferring a women into a hospital from community. I was happy to see an old colleague on duty in the hospital yet the communication between us was uneasy. I was confused and disoriented. I was met by a host of questions about the care I had provided prior to admission. This was all necessary yet it was the tone of the communication that left me feeling uneasy. The obstetrician then entered and the mood drifted into antagonism which translated into a barrage of risk discourse that awakened anxiety both for me and the family I was working with. I remember becoming overly judgemental of my own decision making, second guessing myself and feeling defensive. I was on guard and felt no sense of connection between the staff and myself. I went quiet. 

My relationship with the mother and partner became challenging as they too were being pulled into this new mood since being admitted. Suddenly everything became dangerous and risky. We transferred in for slow progress of labour and maternal request for analgesia. It felt we had arrived just in time to stop a terrible outcome! I felt that no one was having a good day in that environment. 

On the other hand I have admitted from a homebirth with a woman having a retained placenta and been met with congeniality, respect and a listening ear. The admitting midwife made me a coffee whilst I admitted the woman and spoke to the doctor. The admitting doctor was friendly and professional. The mood on both occasions was startlingly different. Although the outcomes both times were positive for mother and baby in terms of physical needs there was a tangible felt difference postnatal in my relationships with the mothers. In the first story I went home exhausted, questioning my abilities and feeling frustrated. The postnatal care did not flow easily in the way I had hoped. In the second story I felt connected to my colleagues and went home feeling part of a team and that I had done a good job. The compassion in the second story left me sustained and nourished my relationship with the mother throughout the postnatal period.

Compassion is a quality awaiting a fertile ground to awaken and grow. Once compassion and care takes root it can nurture the possibility of compassionate connections in each moment. So for me compassion requires the right ground, a freeing type of resonance. Once the mood of an organisation shifts from one that narrows potential, for example when fearful, to one that opens to possibility something enlightening between us awakens. A spark of compassion, once a spark of a potential flame awakens it can be fanned into a roaring fire warming and bringing brightness to all our encounters.

Let us think about how our leadership is attuned? Our colleagues? Our policy makers? Our researches? Our educators? Our new graduates? 

Maternity and midwifery have been shown repeatedly to be based on relationships. Indeed it is the relationships that keep care safe. Midwives are the ambassadors of maternity care and have a responsibility to safeguard what is precious in childbirth and ensure its continuance is holistically orientated. Facilitating and turning to moods that enable compassion to flourish between us is therefore worthy of our efforts. We may or may not have innate compassion, in a certain sense that does not matter. However we can be accountable to the moods which we contribute to and choose to awaken and we can also decide the moods we choose to turn away from. We just need to be aware of moods and take notice of the affects certain moods have on ourselves and others.

For me the good news is that compassion awaits us all. It is not dependent on whether you or your colleague next to you has a good amount of innate compassion! The notion of compassion being inside or outside creates a kind of false objective -subjective dichotomy that is antithetical to compassion. Compassion wants to gift us all those wonderful experiences that come from giving and yielding to each other. Compassion is thus realised and expressed in our relational encounters. Compassion for me is thus unfolding moments between us in the reciprocal play of our interactions. Without the play between us compassion finds no ground to take root and grow. Compassion only asks for a fertile ground to grow and come forth. The delight of feeling compassion once awakened between us reminds us of our shared human needs of wanting to be understood to feel loved and to feel safe.

It may only take a kindly moment of eye contact, perhaps a smile and some gentle verbal acknowledgement of the others you meet and work with. Such moments can be the fan that ignites the flame of compassion between us.

taken from collective notes board at SISCC in Dundee 2016:Sept

New book early 2017 “Spirituality and Childbirth: meaning and care at the start of life”

Sep10
kali-squatting
Co-editors – Susan Crowther and Jenny Hall.
Publishers: Routledge: Taylor & Frances Group.

The book will draw attention to the beginning of life; a poignant human journey that holds meaning and significance within and beyond current maternity care systems.

For more information click here.

Your examples of Caseload continuity of carer midwifery practice?

Sep4

Hi all. I have received a variety of comments and feedback about caseload, continuity of carer midwifery practice. Would love to hear more. So vital to share our examples. There is a lot of misconceptions and fears about this way of providing midwifery. Also if you received care from a caseload midwife and want to contribute you are welcome! Let us have a conversation. My example was previous blog…..

Kind regards, go well

Susan

Feeling safe being free

Aug24

img_0083-1

Safe and free

Focus on safety safety safety breeds fear,

fear then attunes us to more fear and then

the situations we find ourselves in, like childbirth,

become coloured by more fearful feelings ….

then it all feels even less safe!

Being constantly fearful is an unsafe place to dwell, function and be human,

we are simply not free when we are fearful!

Needing to feel safe is a human need yet it need not imprison us

let us not cover over what it means to be human in the pursuit of safety;

find ways of being and doing that awaken our potential to

flourish and feel safe and free

Susan Crowther 2016

What are we protecting? Midwives and other professionals

May11

This is a short blog to garner a dialogue I hope. I am curious about how midwives feel the need to feel in someway “other” to colleagues in the maternity team. I have been guilty at times of feeling the need to safeguard the sanctity of midwifery from others that I perceive don’t understand. Or feel a need to protect and shelter what is precious in midwifery from those I believe will overpower my own professional position, stand, opinion and indeterminate knowing that directs my art of practice.

Yet is such positioning helpful, constructive and empowering? I am proud to stand as a midwife within my community. I live and work in a community of practice with lay as well as registered medical colleagues. I know my skill set, my scope of practice and have a knowing that stirs within me and bubbles up into action when needed. Such intuitive knowing is a wellspring of knowledge issuing forth just beyond my visual awareness; an historical and cultural embodied knowing. A knowing that brings deep awareness of how I stand on the shoulders of giants. Of a vast history. I need not be intimidated and lash out, avoid, do good by stealth, aggressively reject what I disagree with or even passionately accept what fits my present knowing – others may feel awkward in hearing my over zealous self righteousness. They perhaps have a different knowing. They may feel attacked, unacknowledged and grow uneasy around me. These encounters of difference, of divergent ideas are merely an opportunity to explore more of the complexity that is childbirth.

The knowledge and embodied knowing about birth does not belong to an individual group, time, place or person.

It is not feasible that anyone person or professional Group can hold all there is to know. Surely no one would claim this?

What matters most to us all is – being safe, feeling safe, being loved, being seen, being with-others respectfully. What matters is that we all engage in miracles daily. We, those privileged to be at birth, get to be at the time of an exquisite specialness. A time which is the greatest of equalises. A time when we can gather in awe at the mysteriousness of life! Surely that transcends any professional differences and conflict; surely within this living kairos time the silent voices of our collective inner selves are permitted to sing out in unison? We can transcend, just for a moment, the divergent discourses that serve us little when what matters most arrives as a message in a bottle from beyond the horizon. This is a celebration of our diversity and differing ways of coming to our knowing. Then we see there is nothing to protect. Then we become still and silenced.

What do you feel?

 

Birth as holy event: what do I mean when I say “Holy” in relation to birth?

Dec3

Birth is a special event in all our lives, whether we have our own birth experiences, been at births, or not been at births, other than our own. In my own work I find that there is certainly an experience of deepening insight of a holy timeless moment involving numinous encounters and connections across generations at births. My own research work supports the sacredness of birth. I interpret sacred in this context as meaning a sense of holy specialness beyond mundane yet, at the same time, experienced as imminent and tangible.

Early and traditional creation stories tell of wonder and joyousness at the advent of new life and belief in holy other at birth is found through early history and remains throughout many religious cultures (Callister et al 1999). To this day myth and magic, ritual, sacred acts and holy rites around birth continue to be found universally throughout human cultures (Campanelli & Campanelli, 1998; Selin & Stone, 2009). The idea of birth being under the auspices of Earth Goddess and other female deities was strong (Crowley, 2001; K. Hill, 2011; Kitzinger, 2011). Women birthing may have called upon a feminine divine presence dwelling in the universe providing order and purpose. For example, the Gnostic gospels speak of God as Mother or Sophia (wisdom) who exists before all else. There is evidence that birth was interpreted as sacramental with spirits invited or/and sent away (Kitzinger, 2011; Selin & Stone, 2009).

Callister & Khalaf’s (2010) review of anthropological studies reported birth as a sacred and spiritually transforming experience rich in meaning. Some women connected deeply with their religious beliefs. A mother recalls: “…right as she [baby] was born… It felt honestly like a moment frozen…it was one of those moments when the spirit is there” (p.18). Another woman recalls the mood: “…there was something holy around me, something beyond the ordinary, a feeling, a spirit about being part of God’s creation of a child” (p.18).
Birth invokes a felt sense of holy, something of beauty inheres within birth. In my own 2013 study I say:

“There is also the feeling that holy-others draw near; others that are so near as to be unnoticed, others that bring comfort, new insights and deepening sense of connection. This mystery is difficult to ‘say’ but is at the same time something so simple and so near within the experience”

I contend that birth is a sacred and holy moment that acts as catalyst for change. Birth as holy is something greater than us as individuals. To name the holy can inspire but can also frustrate because it is invisible, immeasurable and dependent on belief and/or faith. However to be absent or invisible and unmeasurable does not prove that it does not exist or not! Love is arguably equally ungraspable. The holy numinous qualities at birth are timeless, they remind me of a Dionysius ecstatic experience “… something that captivates and transports … with a strange ravishment, rising often enough to the pitch of dizzy intoxication…” (Otto, 1917/1923, p. 31).

I will end this blog and share my interpretation of holy I wrote several years ago:

Holy for me is something private, tender and special. It is a blend of western Christian theism and Asian mysticism. It is the profoundest relationship in my life. It is an interconnecting knowing and loving, the source of all things; a creative force that provides and liberates. The Holy is invisible but whose actions are visible. It is the something ineffable, unexplainable that peeps through a poem, a painting, a child’s smile, the fragrance of an unfurling flower, the unseen artist painting the crimson dawn over the ocean. It is benevolent and seeks my happiness.
The holy calls me to serve others as in that serving I feel closer to what is holy. It shows itself from its invisibility through my experiences. When I catch myself moved to tears by another I know I have been touched by the holy. It is the glint in the eyes of all I meet every day and everywhere. It shows itself in the simpleness of being still and silent and in the raw of thunder and exploding volcanoes! When I stop and take notice the holy gazes back in the mirror. It is the wonder of body and senses. The holy holds all together and makes up the material of the physical earth; both imminent and transcendental.
The holy has a personality that attracts and inspires constantly sending messengers from beyond into my everyday life. It is all relationships in one. When I find myself in despair I feel furthest yet the holy is nearer than my ‘I’. The holy desires that I remember the deepest belonging and connection; the feeling that ‘I am in love and loved’. I come to know the holy in special moments when the invisible touches and reminds me of who and what I am.

To be at a birth is to be amazed, touched and connected. Being there is always a privileged and unique experience unlike no other.