The Business of Being Born

Birth is big business in the USA. So many of the policies & procedures set up in hospitals are for the convenience and smooth functioning of the institution and NOT about what is best for mother and baby. I know because a work in one...

This new film produced by Ricki Lake which examines American birthing practices is opening in a very few US cites in January. If you are lucky enough to live near one of them, why not check it out and educate yourself?

http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/screenings.htm

You can take a peek at the trailer for the film here:
http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/trailer.htm

But do not despair, there are groups who are working to improve maternity care in the US and world-wide. The movement to make maternity care Mother-friendly is the agenda of the following organizations:

Childbirth Connection: 212.777.5000 - www.childbirthconnection.org
Choices In Childbirth: 212.983.4122 - www.choicesinchildbirth.org
Citizens for Midwifery: 888.CFM.4880 - www.cfmidwifery.org
Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS) - www.motherfriendly.org

Women of the world - take back your power!! Learn about birth practices so you can make informed choices about what you want for yourself and your babies!

Lovely Venus

I was driving in to work this morning in the pre-dawn hour and I got to witness the lovely morning star venus shining so brightly in the eastern sky! She will be there for the rest of September and into October if you want to have a look.

Interesting response to WSJ article

If you have followed this blog, you no doubt are aware of the article about belly dancing during labor & birth that appeared in the Wall Street Journal in August. Just in case you are not, here is the link:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB118618710665287942-lMyQjAxMDE3ODA2NTEwODU3Wj.html

Anyway, the article generated a small flurry of interest. It was picked up by quite a few bloggers, but the most interesting was one posted at "Improvisations: Arab Woman Progressive Voice" in her August 5th posting. (click on the archives and scroll down...). Be sure to click on and read my comments!

What do you think?

BOLD

My company and I will be participating in BOLD Boston on September 29th.

BOLD (Birth on Labor Day) is a global movement whose mission is to bring attention to making maternity care mother-friendly and safe, and to raise awareness and funds to support mother initiated dialogue and solutions to maternity care. In a nutshell, mother-friendly care puts the woman at the center when considering any policies regarding her maternity care. It trusts the woman to know what is right for own care.

Local communities produce Karen Brody's play "Birth" which has been called "the vagina monologues" of birth. In the play, various birth vignettes are presented. The vignettes come from actual interviews that Karen Brody conducted with women about their own experiences of giving birth. One of my favorites is the one where the woman's mantra through-out her labor is "My body rocks!"

The Boston BOLD will also host a Red Tent event - and that is where we will be performing our dance MotherBirth. The dance tells the story of an empowered pregnancy and birth in which the mother is supported by a community of women including the midwife, the grandmother, and the ancestors.

Learn more about the BOLD movement!! Join us in Cambridge on September 29th!

Flip flops?

I am walking around my house this morning wearing a pair of "flip-flops" and I got thinking about how they got their name...

I am assuming the name comes from the sound they make as they slap against your feet when walking, and in that case unless you walk with a decided limp, I think they are better called "flip-flips" or "flop-flops". I know when I walk in them, both feet make the same sound and I would describe it as definite FLIP!

What do you think?

Wikepedia was no help at all in this investigation, by the way.

Front page of the Wall Street Journal!

Get this - I got a call on Saturday morning from one of my midwife colleagues who told me that she was sitting down with the WSJ and having her morning tea, when to her great surprise she saw my picture on the front page! Yes, really, I was on the front page of the Saturday August 4, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal - below the fold, but none-the-less! The article titled New Labor Moves:Belly Dancing Hits Delivery Room is about using belly dance in the birth room - or as the article puts it "the delivery room".

Here is the story...

I presented "Belly Dance for Pregnancy and Birth" at the Partners in Perinatal Health conference this past May. This was a presentation geared toward birth professionals to introduce the idea that belly dance is a birth dance, and to teach the participants about how it can be used during pregnancy, labor and birth.

Rachel Zimmerman - the author of the WSJ article - was among the attendees that day, and approached me because she thought there might be a "story". And I guess she was right!

So after dozens of emails exchanges and phone calls with her, this is what she came up with. Here is a link to the article. (I am told that this link may have a limited life-span. If so, you can look up the article in the paper's archives, but you have to be a subscriber to read the whole thing...)

I think she did a pretty good job of distilling all the information I gave her, and she did a really good job researching the "phenomenon" across the country. Unfortunately, journalists being under the constraints of their editors, she was forced to cut a lot of material...

Pretty cool, huh?

Can I start calling myself the Belly Dance and Birth pundit?

My Whirlwind Belly Dance Weekend!

I just finished a fun weekend filled with belly dance.

It started out on Friday night in Connecticut with a perfomance gig at Shalimar's Belly Dance Connection. This is a sweet, once-a-month performance venue hosted by Shalimar at the Marco Polo Restaurant in East Hartford. This had to be one of the most appreciative and attentive audiences I have ever danced for. You should check it out if you have the chance!

From CT, I headed out to Northampton, MA to take a workshop on Saturday with the lovely Leyla Jouvana and her drumming husband Roland. I really enjoyed the workshops about beautiful arms - I had no idea there were so many variations of snake arms - and understanding the drum solo. Leyla is so lucky to have a wonderful drummer in Roland, and the two of them demonstrate how the dancer and drummer work together to create a satisfying performance. Special thanks to Whitney for bringing this wonderful artist to our area!

And finally on Sunday I was off to Brattleboro, VT to teach a workshop at the Empowerment Arts Goddess Camp. This was a wonderful experience to share The Sacred Shapes of Belly Dance and The Dance of the Sea Anemone with a small group of fabulous women! We had a nice space in a finished barn on the banks of a lovely brook where we danced, and shared and participated in ritual together.

All in all a very satisfying weekend!

Towards Balance: The Story of the World According to Yin & Yang

My dance company - The Goddess Dancing - just held our annual show this past June.

In the show, we debuted our latest choreography "Towards Balance: The Story of the World According to Yin & Yang"

I was inspired to create this dance after taking a class in Delsarte technique with Joe Paul Williams.

Delsarte technique is a method of expression which among its attributes, describes universally understood body postures and gestures that express Body, Mind and Spirit. As a very simplified example, an uplifted head and outward palms express Body, a forward tilted head and edges of the hands express Mind, and the steady level head position and backs of the hands express Spirit. Joe shared with us that while Body and Mind represent opposites in varying degrees along a continuum, Spirit is always the perfect balance point between the two.

This got me thinking about balance and YinYang and how out of balance our world is right now...
And so, this 3-part dance was created.

Part I takes place in the earliest civilizations - a "body" time - when survival depended on lots of physical work such as hunting, gathering, planting and birthing. Movements used in this section were primarily circular. The "Yang" dancers perform with their backs to the audience.



In part II we see the rise of the Patriarchy - a "mind" time - with it's great exchanges of ideas, formation of governments and male-deity religions, the building of structure and infra-structure, and struggles for power. The dance movements in this section are primarily linear and staccatto in quality, and this time it is the "Yin" dancers who face away from the audience.



And finally, part III takes us to a future time where we have come back to Spirit - to balance. This part of the dance opens with a short Tai Chi sequence and continues with dance movements comprised primarily of undulations. We see the Yin and Yang dancers relating to each other, moving in and out, toward and away, in a continuous motion of give and take...