The power of a mother's voice
In yoga classes we use mantra. Chanting. It’s one of the woo-woo bits.
When I first started going to yoga classes I would actually just move my lips and pretend to chant without making a sound. Too embarrassed to do it. Like being at school all over again.
Eventually I joined a yoga class that was so small it was obvious that I wasn’t making any sound so I started to actually chant and pretty soon it was fun – like singing in a group. The sound would build and fall naturally and it was lovely. But I didn’t think of it as healing.
Then I had an unexpected pregnancy quickly followed by an unexpected miscarriage. Being a midwife I took the pragmatic approach and focused on the fact that I hadn’t actually wanted to be pregnant and was very early on in the pregnancy when it ended. It was what we would call “an early miscarriage”.
It was accompanied by bleeding and cramping of course. Which was not too sore.
But then the real pain came – right in my heart. Or, rather – my heart centre. In yoga, the area in the centre of your chest just below your sternum is your heart chakra, or heart centre. And a few days after the bleeding began, a deep and painful grief lodged itself right there in my chest. And it wouldn’t move. I cried, I talked to people who love me, I was hugged a lot. But the pain did not budge.
So I went for a walk in the countryside with my headphones on listening to some soulful music turned as loud as it could go. And as I walked and the music played and my heart cried I began to sing along to the music. Quietly at first. And then more loudly once I was sure I was alone in the middle of that large field, with nobody to hear me. And then louder still. Eventually I took the headphones off, closed my eyes and sang as loud as I could. The same song over and over so that I could really learn it, and just concentrate on my voice. At some point the vibration in my chest from my voice began to soothe the pain nested there. In yoga class we say “vibrate the sound” when we chant, and I was vibrating the sound right in the sore bit and it felt so good. By the time I got home the pain was much lessened. It had been moved, shifted. Healed.
I remember a birth I once midwifed that took place in the hospital. The baby was born by forceps, the room was full of staff, the new mother was lying shocked and quiet on the hospital bed as the paediatricians worked to resuscitate her even-more-shocked baby. The baby wasn’t initially responding and with sudden inspiration I asked the mother to speak to her baby. As soon as she did the baby jerked – like he was really stimulated by her voice – and began to breathe. I’ve never forgotten that.
The power of the voice.
The power of a mother’s voice.
It really does heal.