Midwives: the Art of Being Here When a New Soul Arrives
“Hello. Just say hello to the new being,” Roy Capellaro reminds us of the the simplicity of greeting a new soul in his workshop on Neonatal Craniosacral Intervention for Midwives.
The room was usually still. I don’t mean the bodies standing in a circle with their hands on the heads of their sisters. I mean the quality of listening we were bringing to the circle had a rare caliber. This was a circle of women who were living their calling. Their souls were more at peace in their bodies than many circles of women I have had the honor of teaching. Passionate, funny, oh so loving, and really grounded… I LOVE teaching birthing dances to the midwives at the New York State Association of Licensed Midwives annual conference.
This is my second year coming to guide the circle at the sacred Powell House, a Quaker Retreat Center with a labyrinth, a neighboring farm for rescued animals, Dreaming Tree Farm and Full Belly Farm. We gather in a circle on the Earth to join in the lineage of women dancing the loving sensual and communal artistry of belly dance.
We sing through our mouths and the mouths of our hip sockets. In one moment our bodies come to stillness together with one hand on the heart and one on the womb, the two energy centers of womanly love. “Imagine that you are in your heart looking down into the basin of your pelvis,” I say. In this exact moment we hear, “Wow, it’s huge in here. It’s like a mansion!” I realize that the two women making their way to join our circle have become the voice of our hearts.Dancing is the art of embodying our soul, listening to our deepest instincts while feeling the space, time, and presence of those around us and embodying the relationship between the inner and outer worlds. I found a profound similarity between how Roy instructed us to listen to the new soul and the state of receptivity we enter when we dance.
To my delight one of the midwives hosted me at her home, the Quaker Intentional Village in Canaan. Here I met 4 day old lambs and had a 5 year old lead me to the “magical mystical waterfall!” I had the satisfying opportunity to discover some mutual visions for the future of humanity with Eric Harris-Braun, co-founder of the Meta Currency Project creating the next economy to facilitate healthy flows of resources and information that support people, society and the Earth. I trust those of us who are deeply devoted to the new paradigm will continue to find each other. The Art of Being Here When a New Soul Arrives took on a new context as we are arriving at a new consciousness for humanity. The Here we are co-creating is becoming more and more regenerative as we midwife our own birthing of consciousness. Hello. Welcome, this is our new life together.