Creating Sacred Space

 

Creating Sacred Space for the
Birthing Mother
By Genevieve Simperingham     www.celticshaman.org

(We welcome your feedback and questions in response to the material you read on this website. Also, see our Healing our Birth Residential Retreats.)

Creating a Sacred Sanctuary where Spirit and Nature are honored

Whenever somebody creates a sacred space, they actually transform the energy of a room or space to be one of light, peace and healing energy.  The space becomes a Sacred Sanctuary where Spirit and Nature are honored.  A woman’s journey of giving birth transforms from a physical process to an amazing, sacred, special and miraculous multidimensional journey.  The difference is a tangible one in which the atmosphere becomes filled with magic.  In connecting and communicating from our heart with the Divine, we bring divinity into the space.  When a Sacred Space is created, those within it, who open to it, become magically woven into the fabric of oneness, of love, of the perfection of nature and of interconnectedness.  We join forces with Spirit, with Mother Earth, with the spirits of nature and all the invisible benevolent helping Spirits and Deities that we choose to open to. 

Calming the mind and connecting with your place of inner peace

Transforming a space is primarily an internal journey.  To create a sacred space, you need to first journey into the sacred space of your own internal world.  You need to move into your centre, into your body consciousness.  Simple ways of doing this are to become aware of the breath and enjoy the release of stress and gentle movement of energy in the body with each breath.  Meditating first will invariably take you through the transition from the busy mind and external focus to a calmer, more peaceful inner state. In creating Sacred Space, we move into an altered state of consciousness.  This will be a journey of deepening over a period of time as you take the internal and external steps towards creating your beautiful magical Sacred Space and then spending time in this space.

Choosing the mediums, sounds, smells and objects that represent the Divine to you

Everybody has their own individual ways of making the transition to feeling connected with themselves, nature and spirit.  What takes you into your deeper space?  Other than meditation, maybe you can use toning, singing, dancing, communicating with nature, praying, writing.  What are the sounds, smells, oils, candles, crystals, plants or flowers and other objects that represent the divine to you?  If you’re creating a sacred space with another or for another, you can bring in the objects that are meaningful to you both and perhaps create a beautiful alter.  An alter can be set up on a table, a sideboard or in the middle of the floor.  It may include objects like small statues, pictures of spiritual teachers or archangels.  You may like to represent all the elements, fire, earth, water and earth.

Some ways to cleanse to maintain lighter energies

Another important factor in creating Sacred Space, rituals or ceremonies in most native traditions has been to cleanse or fast.  Smudging with dried sage is one way of cleansing the heavier energies from the auric field.  This simply involves the burning of dried sage and fanning the smoke around the body to clear the aura.  Although fasting may not work in many circumstances, you can hold the awareness that the energies you bring in to the space all contribute to the overall feeling of lightness or heaviness that’s created in any situation.  Choosing foods and drinks that are alive and full of nutrition as opposed to dead processed foods makes a difference in maintaining energy levels for those involved.  Drinking healthy alive water is important.  Calming and medicinal herbal teas can help enormously.  Ideally, doing a day of fruits, vegetable juices or raw foods is a great way to cleanse the body and mind. 

Once the intention is clear and sincere, all else will follow easily

Bear in mind that these are all just suggestions and the process will be intimate and individual to each person.  It’s important not to feel restricted by the do’s and don’t of creating Sacred Space.  Because many religions create ceremony in a very formal way in environments that are not always relaxed and friendly, some people can feel intimidated by this and consequently fear getting it wrong.  Even though it’s important to create Sacred Space with sincerity, it’s important to be relaxed, to let yourself be creative and to fully enjoy the process, remembering that the main factor is the internal feeling that you create.  The feelings you choose to emanate throughout your space is much more important that the objects you choose or any other factor.

Let your imagination run wild

Let yourself be imaginative.  Transform the space into a temple of peace, into an ancient indigenous hut; maybe even create a stone circle.  Bring forward the pure, raw, wild, primal earth mother within you.  Bring forth your wise medicine woman of the tribe aspect, the healer within you.  Bring forth the intuitive, psychic, priestess, the oracle that you are.  Seeing yourself in these ways will cultivate powerful feelings.  Own these aspects of yourself, initially use your imagination and then choose for it to be true.  Many of us can forget that we don’t need for somebody else to give us permission to be the wise healer.  It’s one of the aspects that, we as humans, are when we allow ourselves to connect with and move from the energy of our true selves.  It is your desire to be a channel of the divine that determines whether this is a part of your path or not. 

A journey into the Other Worlds

For a woman giving birth, because the process takes a woman so strongly into the sensations within her physical body, she is taken into her body consciousness, which takes her into a deeper (or altered) state of consciousness.  This state is a very different energy, and in fact a different world, from the ordinary state of consciousness.  Whenever somebody moves into a deeper state of consciousness, they embark on a journey.  It is a very deep and rich process for a woman, but it can be very difficult for her to express herself from this place.  She may largely loose the ability to define her feelings, needs and experiences in a logical way, making it hard for her to understand and express her needs adequately.

The potential for old wounds to become triggered during the birthing process

For a woman giving birth, this journey can lead to heaven or hell or both and anywhere in between.  It’s a journey that can bring to the surface repressed pain from many levels.  As part of the physiological and emotional changes that take place, many stagnant old energy blocks become opened up.  Often when wounds from earlier years become opened up, the mother can suddenly feel like a little girl again, for instance.  For this journey to be a healthy, empowering and healing journey, there also needs to be a deep connection to the higher states of consciousness and consequently the higher emotions of love, trust, faith and the desire for transformation and divine intervention.  For the mother’s relationship to her internal world, her body and her baby to be positive, most women need to feel seen and connected with in this other world that she has found herself in.  This happens naturally when the carer is deeply attuned to the mother and using active listening skills.

What determines whether a woman’s vulnerability leads her to the bliss of being held in a peaceful energy or the pain of emotional isolation?

If the midwife, partner, friend or another close person is also in a deepened state of consciousness and is energetically connected to their own inner reality, to mother nature and divinity, they can then connect to the energies of the labouring woman, becoming a bridge for the mother.  They provide a container for the woman, which will keep the mother feeling grounded, safe, held, seen and understood.  Ironically, the process of labour can often take a mother into a world that’s very similar to that of a newborn baby in terms of the rawness and openness of energies and emotions that's experienced. 

The birthing mother potentially goes through an initiation, a birthing process on many levels. It’s an inner space that holds the dichotomy of being a raw state of pure feeling, and also there’s a certain fragility and potential powerlessness that can come with being in such a deep and illogical space, again largely depending on whether she feels emotional safety or not. As we understand the importance of being attuned to a baby so as to respond to their needs and subtle communication, the same is often true for the needs of the labouring mother. Like the newborn baby, whether the mother’s vulnerability leads to the bliss of being held in a loving, peaceful energy or the pain of emotional isolation to a large extent depends on whether there is somebody who can truly and deeply connect with them in their world of pure energies and feelings. 

Painful emotions only become “negative” when their expression is blocked

The labouring woman will journey through many intense emotions, many that she may not be able to understand or express.  It’s important that she genuinely feels that all of her feelings are allowed and validated.  The midwife or other helper can stay firmly centred in a positive, calm, peaceful and spiritually connected state and bring these feelings to the mother while allowing the mother to go wherever she needs to go in her journey.  If the labouring mother senses other people’s fear, confusion and disapproval, like the newborn baby, she can loose her sense of safety.  The mother should be allowed to journey through her fears, confusion, grief or anger in the trust that the feeling and expression of all the feelings that arise are all a beautiful part of the cleansing and opening process of birth. 

Whether or not the labouring mother feels safe plays a huge part in the outcome of the birth

When a person is in an emotional, energetic altered state, they become very open and sensitive to the energies around them.  If those energies are cold, analytical, impatient or controlling, this can actually be very painful for the birthing mother and she may go through the conflict of attempting to close down her feelings in an attempt to protect herself.  Likewise, if the mother is not being connected to by another who is themselves in a deeper more feeling (and less analytical) state, she probably won’t get the understanding and validating communication she needs and may be forced to keep trying to come back to her normal ordinary logical state.  Both these defensive actions on behalf of the mother cause a huge amount of internal conflict and take the woman away from where her emotions and physiology are naturally attempting to take her to facilitate the process of giving birth.  Birth simply can’t be treating as if it’s a physical process independent of the mother’s emotions.  It’s a complex process affected, not just by the mother’s mental and emotional state, but potentially by the whole atmosphere surrounding the birthing mother.

Spiritual Midwifery

On the other hand, when Sacred Space is created and held for the birthing mother and her need for active listening and emotional validation is met, the whole journey can be extremely transformative.  The person holding the role of maintaining a deep connection with both the Sacred and with the mother’s internal world takes on the role of holding the energies for the mother that will give her nourishment and energetic protection, the person becomes a spiritual midwife in the truest sense of the word, creating a bridge between the worlds for both the mother and the new baby.  Traditionally the shamans or medicine women played this role as they were recognized as being experts in bridging the ordinary and non-ordinary worlds.  Today, many homebirth midwives are recognizing the value of learning these skills and hence developing their own spiritual practice alongside their midwifery practice.

Returning Back to Health and Wholeness

When we consider how essential it is for a mother to give birth in a space that is truly sacred and honoring, energetically clean and light, we can begin to see how far off course modern medicine, despite all it’s benefits, has taken us.  There is so much for us to re-member and re-learn from our ancestors.  All over the world, for hundreds of thousands of years, all evidence suggests that our ancestors have instinctively understood the importance of creating beautiful Sacred Spaces and beautiful honoring rituals for mother and baby.  Looking back over human history, it has only been a blip in time since we have fallen off the path of treating the process of birth in the holistic, sacred manner that it needs and deserves.

 

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Shamanic Healing Drum In the centre, Genevieve's hand painted Medicine Wheel, drawing in the energies of the eight directions

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