With a special look towards pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium

Text:

The labyrinth is a very old symbol that appears for millennia in lands as diverse as Crete, Indonesia, Scandinavia, the Americas and Russia. It is registered in the rock, in jewels or currencies, it is painted on ceramics, temples or manuscripts, and is done on a large scale by means of stones on the ground.

Although a symbol in case it never lets itself be explained or interpreted through words, the maze can be understood as a mirror or a metaphor of the path of the life of human beings – the journey of the soul, with all its challenges, transformations, depths and discoveries.

The labyrinth is especially useful to understand the universal trip of each rite of initiation, any experience in which we leave a life stage to start another, in which we die symbolically to be reborn with a new identity, such as birth, puberty, the passage from adolescence to adulthood, motherhood, menopause, or death, to name a few.

If we explore through different cultures the ceremonies that are created to point out that transition from one stage of life to another, typically we find three sequential phases, phases that at the same time can be reflected in the route from the threshold of the labyrinth to the center and out again. (Here we talk about the labyrinth in which there is only one possible path to get to the center and leave again – it does not have bifurcations or roads without exit.)

The preparation phase

First there is the phase of preparationbefore crossing the threshold to enter the labyrinth. This is the moment when the trip begins, in which we break with our previous life and we know that we will never be the same person. What are we leaving? What are we going to give birth? Reflection and preparation is needed for the important change that comes in our lives.

The test phase

Then there is the phase of prooffrom the entrance of the labyrinth to the center. This is a trip to the unknown, a transition between the familiar and the new, in which we embarked on an adventure to go to our deepest center, beyond the limits of our previous identity, A deep transformation to be reborn with a new identity.

THE INTEGRATION PHASE

Finally there is the phase of integrationthe return from the center of the labyrinth out. It is a necessary path to recapitulate everything that happened, to return with a broader awareness of who we are and to integrate this knowledge into the next stage of life.

The labyrinth as a metaphor for the trip of pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium

When the midwife and artist Pam England, creator of the delivery preparation program Birthing from withinhe discovered the symbol of the labyrinth, it seemed like a perfect metaphor for the psychic and physical journey of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium, and immediately began to use it in their classes to start pregnant women and their partners to the rite of birth passage.

In these classes, pregnant couples learn to draw their own maze to customize that rite of initiation. Just in front of the entrance to the labyrinth, they draw a symbol of a threshold, a physical representation of the passage between the world of the maiden and that of the mother, between the known and the unknown, the mundane and the sacred, before entering the mystery of birth.

They also draw two footprints in front of their threshold to represent the current moment in which they are, in the preparation phase, before they are delivered and enter the labyrinth. In front of this threshold, it is time to contemplate your beliefs, and those of our culture, about pregnancy, birth, babies, parenting, pain, love, maternal instinct, the fear of losing control … Ask yourself: are you dreaming with a type of labor in particular, an ideal delivery? Or are you open to live and discover every moment of this birth with unconditional love, whatever?

Prepared or not, when the first contractions begin, or the waters are broken, you will be projected through that invisible but palpable threshold and you will have entered the labyrinth. Such as the labyrinth path, when we walk through the first exterior, long and rather simple circuits, during the first phase of childbirth there may be stages that easily evolve, without major changes, for example during the first hours or even days of spaced contractions. Suddenly we find a closed curve, a change of unforeseen direction that is analogous to these unexpected moments and sometimes disconcerting that are part of each birth and postpartum. You realize that there is now no reversal or shortcuts to reach the center, at the time of the birth of your baby and yours as a mother.

It can be, as in a maze, that there are moments that you feel lost, you do not know how much you have traveled or how much to give birth, you have completely lost the notion of time. Pam England says: «Remember, in a maze, and when you are delivery, there is nothing to understand, you don’t have to ‘do it well’ to win love or approval or to be a ‘good mother’ … do the best you can, as you know at that time. Love yourself especially when you are lost. When you do not know what to do, you see step by step. You know that you will reach the center and return.»

The last trajectory of the labyrinth has increasingly closed and sinuous curves, and reflects the most intense stage of childbirth, in which it is totally normal courage. The great Treasury of the trip lies in your unique way of giving yourself to the intensity and strength of the process. «Every woman Live the mystery of its physical, psychological and spiritual transformation in its own way, whether it gives birth at home, in the operating room, in the car or in a cabin in the jungle ” (Pam England).

In the great myths, the center is the sacred place where heaven and earth cross, the place of lighting, when you stop and stop fighting, a state of grace. At the end of the trip we arrive at the center, the moment when baby, mother and father are born. It is as if you stop, you are in a suspended place between two worlds. The initiates need their time to arrive, to enter their new life.

The hero’s journey, or the mother heroine, is not over yet. In a social context in which there is enormous pressure to return to our previous life – without a belly, to resume sexual relations, to return to work – the labyrinth instead reminds us that we are no longer the same person who before, that the huge transition of the puerperium cannot be precipitated.

It requires its time, little by little, to integrate the story of your delivery and how you lived it, to resituate within your changed body, hurt at the beginning, to meet your baby and trust you as a mother, to adapt to breastfeeding, to your new reality as a couple, or with friends before, to accept the lack of sleep, to real Feel the depths of perhaps bigger and unconditional love of your life …

How long can the return last? We ask pregnant couples. We are not talking here for months, but about the reality that it is needed between two and three years, after a first birth, to feel that the woman you were before and the mother you have made join and integrate into the nucleus of your being, in the woman-mother that you are now. Welcome!

Reference: «When the Labyrinth Becomes A Laborinth. Metaphor, Map, Meditations and Rituals for Labour and Postpartum.» PAM England www.birthingfromwithin.com

This article was originally published in the Cyclic Women’s Blog in May 2013.

___________________________________________________________