Hi, I'm Dorothy Gara, the creator of the Yoga Birth Method. Hopefully you've had an opportunity to read my book, Yoga Birth Thing, or you've had an opportunity to go watch my website, www.yogabirthmethod.com. We're going to be doing a series of YouTube videos for those of you out there that are either pregnant, that are do-as-looking for skills for their bags in order to help their clients have more yoga birth experience, for midwives that would like to offer more positions to their birthing mothers, and for partners looking for any kind of support, we'll be covering some childbirth education for those of you that are having your first baby. And most importantly, I'm going to be teaching you the Yoga Birth Method sequences over these series. The sequences for the Yoga Birth Method are very specific to labor. This is not a prenatal class or prenatal yoga class series. What this is, these videos are going to teach you how to go into labor to have the most amazing experience possible. How to work with your baby, how to connect with your partner, and how to deal with your contractions so that you can have the most natural birth experience as possible. So don't worry, if natural birth is something you were thinking about doing, my book, and hopefully through one of the series, you will pick up some education that understand the intervention, such as epidurals, pitosis and indowsions and things like that. So hopefully you'll tune into all the series and be more educated to having a more yoga birth experience. We're going to start our first series introducing the early flow. The early flow is what you would be using prior to starting labor. So you could use the early flow for your entire nine months of pregnancy. However, when the big day starts to happen and you start feeling those contractions, you would take the early flow and start applying that to your labor. Now what happens usually in labor is a woman will start to experience contractions for the first time and start to experience a little bit of panic and uneasiness in wondering, was that a contraction? Is that a contraction? And automatically she starts creating that anxiety of not understanding what's happening to her body. I'm going to do the best I can to sort of eliminate that anxiety and teach you what to expect in labor. So in early labor, you will start feeling these cramps and there will be no risk-pickled patterns. So it's very difficult to tell whether or not you're in labor because it's not like when contraction is coming on top of the other. They start to calm in a slow process and those contractions start to feel a little bit like more hills. I'm going to show you a picture from my book that explains to you what those contractions start to look like over time. In the first stage of early labor, this is what your contractions will start to feel like. It will start to come not so intense and then melt away. And this gap between the next contraction could be 20 minutes, could be 40 minutes, could be an hour. Everybody's labor is different and everybody's frequency in labor is different. Early labor can tend to last anywhere from 12 to 24 hours. So from here, and that's the first time mom, what we need to do is come into our first breathing pattern to help us to deal with these slight little mole hills. And what we do in the yoga birth method is introduce a giant raft. This is the breath I'm going to use over your nine months of pregnancy. And then once contrast to start, you're going to come into the early flow. The early flow is a set of about 12 poses that are designed to get the body to move consistently. Moving up and down, up and down. That movement is really important seeing that the baby has six carman movements that it needs to make in labor. And when mom is on her back, her mom is not moving. It makes it really difficult for baby to do its job in labor. So these poses in early labor do very important things. They encourage the baby to move into proper position. They help mom establish a breathing pattern right from the get go. They help mom to keep moving. Most importantly, these poses are going to help speed up contractions, bringing them closer together, hopefully making them a little longer, and then hopefully making them a little bit more tense. Sounds like something you don't want, but believe me, we want longer, stronger, and closer together contractions so that we have a quicker labor. So let me introduce Liz Borac, who will be doing our series with us as our model for our yoga birth method. Liz is seven months pregnant going into her 28th week. I agree with Liz, thanks. I want to point out that Liz has never done any yoga before. So this is a really important fact because anybody can do the yoga birth method. Anybody can use these sequences and breathing techniques in their labor. So let's get started. Let's start first with breath. Okay? Oogye breath. We call this deep ocean breathing. So what we want to do is get Liz to breathe in through the nose, out through the nose. And I can hear Liz breathing in through the nose, out through the nose. Liz has come into her first birthing pose in early labor flow. So once her contractions start, she rolls out her mat, and she comes to the mat to start this flow. This flow should take only about 15 minutes. You will see it in a series of different videos as we break it down. But to do the entire sequence is exactly about 10 to 15 minutes. So one more point I'm here is first technique. Is you need to be careful with your positioning when we're squatting and when we're doing anything on the floor with our hips. As you can see here, Liz, this hips are lower than her knees. And her belly is sort of squashed into her thighs. So what we want to do is in order to make sure that labor is efficient and baby is working properly positioned, we need to make sure that the hips actually rise higher than the knees. And this is why having a birth ball, such as one of the birth balls behind me, in labor is so important. So what I want to do is actually raise those hips for this. So she has more ability to breathe, and she has more ability to work with gravity here. And now baby gives you head down position over the next few days. So again, this is breathing in and out. So we call this butterfly pose. Parker's support aspect. Here's what your partner can do in this butterfly pose. Parker can come up behind you. And then back on the rest into his knees. So when he's sort of into the edge of her back, she should put her relax down and then bring your arms up. And then she's just going to release. So now your mom has no tension, stress on the neck. She's completely able to breathe. By opening up her arms like this, I'm also opening up her lungs, which encourages more breath to the placenta, to the uterus, and also help deepen the contractions. Her inner thighs are going to open up a little bit, and she can just soften those knees down. So as she's comfortable staying here, when she's ready, we're going to move her, or what I like to say, and then we'll move her to the next pose. Her next pose will be the child's pose. Big toes to touch, knees to part. And then here, she just relaxes down. Now over the next new series, be sure to join me, because I'm really incorporating birthing balls into these poses, but you learn a whole bunch of different methods to use with these poses. Now dad, a birthing partner, to come up from behind, and give her a fix a little push back, and then just allow her shoulders to completely release. And as I'm pressing down, this is going to help with any contraction pain that she might be feeling in her back. The more part is going to help soften up her hips, and opening up her inner thighs to help baby. Good. So she would stay here for as long as she needs, and then we're going to have her come into her cat towel. Good. So actually comes into her cat, just encouraging her to lift. Now remember, breathing deep when we see the back, and looking up. Good. So as you can see, this is going to work through her cat towel on her own pace here, and she would stay here for as long as possible. So far, we've started a butterfly, we've moved to a child's pose, and we're in a cat towel. Join us for the next series, and we continue one of the rest of these poses. Now if you have that opportunity, please make sure that you have an opportunity to order a book, you'll get birthing, and you can get that off of www.yookabirthmethod.com. We also offer trainings and certifications for do-less and yoga teachers looking to apply this into their practice. Join us for the next series.