Last year I spent some time at Warm Springs Reservation in northern Oregon. I met Shirley. She invited me to stay at her home for the time I was at the reservation. Shirley is 70 years old and Hopi.
Her plans were to return to north eastern Arizona to care for her elderly parents. She arrived home after 55 years this past November. I went to visit with her.
Besides the heat, dust storms and altitude ... causing a once in a lifetime asthma attack ... we had a great visit.
Being a trustee to Common Knowledge Trust is not my only role in life. I'm actually a natural health provider and have spent years working with people who are living in more traditional cultures. Whenever I go into such a community, I offer my services for health and wellness issues that aren't being addressed by their traditional health system nor the modern one. There's a gap and there are always health issues that reside there.
The Pink Kit childbirth and coaching skills fill in the gap that exists in childbirth today. What I've learned is this gap exists in both modern cultures and traditional ones.
Anyway, whenever I work with sore backs, shoulders, knees, hips or necks ... usually the first health issues people bring to me ... I'm asked 'what do you do?' I tell them about Common Knowledge Trust.
This gets us talking about 'What did your mother teach you about childbirth?'
The universal answer is astoundingly the same ... 'Nothing'.
Thirty-five years ago as these childbirth skills system were evolving, I actually believed (incorrectly) that only a few of us hadn't been told anything about how to birth. Certainly, within traditional communities pregnancy and childbirth is surrounded by strong cultural mores (ways of doing things). Pregnant women are told what to eat, what not to eat, where to sit, what to look at, whether to have sex or not ... and even what to wear.
Yet, over the years I've asked tens of thousands of women worldwide ... 'What did your mother tell you or teach you about coping with labour?' The answer is the same in all cultures ... 'nothing'.
Women have just not passed on any skills. Sometimes a woman will say 'my mother told me ... labour was easy, labour was terrible, try to relax, just breathe, you'll get through it.'
Modern women are often told 'you don't remember the pain.' Actually, women in traditional communities do remember the pain because they've never used any medical pain relief. In reality, we do remember pain but that's not the same as continuing to feel the pain just by thinking about it.
Often women will be told that 'birth pains are productive' but for many women who have experienced long, tiring labours the pains certainly didn't appear to be productive.
Over the years, I've then compared these statements with asking this question ... 'What did you mother teach you about ... making bread, planting, sewing etc?' (I've always asked about some simple task that is common to the culture). Women will go into extensive detail about every little step to complete the task without even realizing that each small step is a learned skill and all these little skill-steps have been taught to them often by their mother.
When I then share the Pink Kit skills, they realize that every single moment of childbirth can be infused with skill-steps. This certainly excites women who are living traditionally. They realize The Pink Kit skills can be easily passed on from mother to daughter. In our modern cultures where fathers are expected to be the 'support' for birth ... then fathers can pass on these skills to son.
Actually because The Pink Kit skills are based on our shared human body and behaviors, anyone can pass on these skills to any other person. We can all share this common language and that's exciting.
So, in Hopi the women with whom I worked, absolutely loved each Pink Kit skill I passed on to them while I was working on their stiff hip, knee, shoulder or neck. They have invited me to return next year and share more of these skills which I'll do.
We may seem like we are different from each other but when it comes to childbirth, we just need to know how to cope with the next contraction and it comes down to using your birth and coaching skills at each and every moment.
But why should that be so weird? After all whenever we do a specific task, it is composed of small steps that we have to perform at each and every moment.
We're just stopped by the 'nothing' that was passed down as though it meant:
- Birth is so insignificant that there is 'nothing' of importance to learn in how to cope with labour pain.
- Birth is so natural, there is 'nothing' we need to learn.
- Or there is 'nothing' to pass down because we don't know there is something.
- And we don't know what we did to get through labour so there is 'nothing' we can pass on to you.
- It's all in the Higher Power's hands and we can do 'nothing'.
Once childbirth is infused with common knowledge birth and coaching skills, our children will answer that question differently.
