A strong meditation practice is essential through all the stages of pregnancy, but inspiring creative visualizations will empower you to ride through the most intense and exciting trimester. It’s intense because the hormonal surges rise and fall every hour, your uterus is expanding almost every day and you can feel the life throbbing inside more than ever before. It’s exciting because soon you will be able to meet your baby eye-to-eye, heart to heart.

You are somewhat overwhelmed, more tired than usual, awkward in your movements, but convinced in your power to go through labor and welcome birth. Your baby is now sensitive to light, it has taste buds and can stretch its limbs, so you start to feel these tickly movements within – happy when you place your hands on your belly, but irritated when the baby squishes your internal organs. It’s a nice moment of “cradling” and constant rocking. You are cradling your baby with love and affection, but you are also cradling the child within.

As I entered the third trimester my meditation practice suddenly changed. I stuck with the belly and diaphragmatic breathing as it helped me bring energy into the lower abdomen and revitalize my and baby’s cells. But my creative visualizations took a sudden whimsical turn. I no longer set my mind on an image, the breath, a sound or a thought. I no longer needed to bring my senses in and shut my mind off. On the contrary, I traveled very much like Alice in my fascinating Wonderland.

Every day I let my body, mind and whole being improvise. I had no set meditation. I started with gentle abdominal breathing and then my arms would move freely around my body, sometimes coiling around the trunk, sometimes opening like rose buds, other times ribboning into infinity loops. Through this free play I gave full rise to my imagination and came up with dozens of new creative mudras for child-birth. But most intriguingly, I awakened the child within. All my anxiety around the coming labor disappeared and I knew that it would be a unique ride into my innocent nature. I somehow opened a creative lab in my body that experimented with sound, image, gesture, movement, color and scent – the whole vibrational palette came into being.

I could smell better and appreciate the diversity of scents and aromas around me. I could feel better and notice how tangible life was and how I could animate every object in my hands. I could taste better and savor all the different flavors that nature afforded. I definitely could hear better, as I even felt imperceptible vibrations coming from the earth more audibly. And I could see better – and capture the resonance of hues that healed, elevated and painted a more colorful picture of life. I even picked up pastel drawing – something I hadn’t done since I was a toddler. And all that led me to appreciate divine play.

In Sanskrit “Leela” is the concept used to emphasize the importance of uninhibited exploration. Once you allow yourself to enter this realm, you are no longer controlling the outcome. You are allowing the divine forces to ride you here, there and yonder, to reveal new vistas of limitless possibilities. You notice how everything seems random and incoherent at first. But as you immerse into this process consciously you recognize how every random play has an intrinsic pattern or order that is an expression of the universal flow. You begin to reflect back on your life and realize why things happened the way they did. You open up into the pool of abundance and know deep inside that everything will be provided for. You only need to relax in that inner knowing and avoid the useless drama around lack and fear.

When a baby is birthed, the mother is reborn. It is an amazing time of resurrection, a physical, creative and spiritual renaissance of the whole being. It brings out the most authentic nature in the mom and it allows her to cut on the non-essentials. It is a natural priority test that every mom undergoes to bring her life back into universal alignment. Then you will notice how some of the friends you thought you had will no longer be there for you. Your activities are exclusively centered around the baby, so you won’t have time to indulge into any bad habits that you had before. You become an efficiency machine as time is scarce and you need to organize your self better. You are a bundle of love and care and this reinforces the feeling of loving yourself more. Your relationships become more sincere and although you might be sleep deprived or physically fatigued, you are glowing more than ever before.

This is the time when the Mother Divine has entered your body and is working through you. It is also the best time for meditating, as you can utilize this unlocked femininity to breathe more compassion and peace into the world. As you rekindle the inner child you are sending a message to all mom-so-to-be to engage in the dance of “Leela” and marvel the ordinary wonders of divine orchestration and intelligent order.

Prenatal Yoga Meditation: Gift of Life (3^rd Trimester)

This Yogea mudra and meditation practice is intended to awaken the child within through the last stage of your pregnancy. A cradling of your pelvis drawn from ritual dance opens more space in the belly as it stretches the round ligament that wraps around the uterus. The chakras of the perineum, the navel, the solar plexus and the heart are connected through diaphragmatic chest breathing. A succession of mudras unlock the creative energy through the centers – Isis Wings mudra – opening your heart and allowing the baby to merge with your inner child; Infinity Loop mudra – tying your personality with the baby’s higher self together; Flowering Lotus mudra– awakening the creative force dormant within both of you; Descending Delta mudra –yielding to gravity for a safe and ecstatic delivery. A guided meditation ushers you on “the other side” like an Alice in wonderland as you reclaim the child within.