YOGAS CITTA VRITTI NIRODAH  "The restraint of the modifications of the mind stuff is Yoga."

The wording may be simple but the practice is difficult. It's about sitting with your mind and getting to admit it isn't quite what it thinks of itself. The problem is that the conscious mind thinks that it is real and quite simply it is not. Yoga and Neuroscience have proven this over and over again.

The nonstop monologue featuring you as the "star" of the world is instead simply a by-product of brain function. It is the job of the neocortex to think, analyze, categorize, and judge so that the body knows how to react to any given set of stimuli. It is more complicated, as your hand will likely pull away from a flame whether you think about it or not, but let's leave it here for now.

Let's think of this like you would think of walking...you are walking and then you sit down...where did the walking go...it didn't go anywhere. Walking is a bodily function that gets your legs from here to there. Thoughts...your mind "minding"...you are thinking about grocery shopping and then you are not...where did the "minding" go...it didn't go anywhere. Minding is a bodily function that ruminates on the fact that you are out of milk.

Say you used the last of the milk on your cereal, this triggers an electrical reaction in your brain, if I am to survive I need more milk, must buy milk, where..when..how...last time...etc. Your brain sends electric impulses to your legs and they walk to the milk aisle in the grocery store. Your brain (gray matter) is real, your legs are real but the walking and thinking are by-products of electric impulses fired between the neurons in your body. 

In fact your body is building infrastructure around what it is experiencing right now...thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Getting stuck in the rumination about needing more milk can ruin your whole experience. It is all about attitude, things outside neither catch you up or set you free, only your attitude towards them does that. The need for milk is a fact, that you will have many contractions during labor is a fact- rumination on either of these two things will cause coping to turn towards suffering, especially if you can't go to the store until after work; especially when no one can give you an exact number, time frame, etc for your labor and delivery.

Again, the wording may be simple but the practice is difficult. But, if you want to know what is going on inside of your body then you have to be able to sit still enough to listen, to respond rather then react. First with your pregnant body, then during Labor and Delivery you will need your body and especially your mind to sit still enough to listen.

Yoga requires you to reshape some of your behaviors, the ones you have control over, the ones that are entirely appropriate for labor pain management--reshaping these behaviors will help you master your pain and relieve your own suffering. Never underestimate your own power--YOU CHOOSE HOW TO RESPOND--

I am with JuJu Sundin on this one: "Simply put to master labor pain you need to move from a state of fear, ignorance and anxiety towards focusing on activities to apply to contractions and it is important to note that you will not only apply these pain relieving activities you will also concentrate only on the actions necessary to complete them. Concentrate only on the actions necessary to complete them. It is the concentrating that makes all the difference."

Solid piece of Jedi wisdom: "Always remember that your focus is your reality."

Solid piece of Yogic wisdom: "As the mind, so the (wo)man: bondage or liberation are in your own mind.

Simply put if you feel afraid, you are afraid but if you feel calm you are calm. It is the concentrating, your focus, that makes all the difference.