Ingrid Lewis

Ingrid Lewis

“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has”, Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC). Working with people of all ages made me understand the importance of Hippocrates’ observation and inspired me to study and practice a range of different approaches to treatment. I began my professional life as a physiotherapist in 1987. One striking experience happened whilst I was working in a hospital specialising in neurology. I cared for a young violinist in a ‘wake-coma’.  The hospital had kindly given her desperate parents permission to invite an unusual healer to help treat her. He not only succeeded in waking her from coma but also managed to walk up and down stairs with her long before we, her medical team, could replicate the same using physiotherapy techniques. Witnessing how important it is to address the whole person rather than just the symptoms for effective healing led me to also study unconventional medical approaches. Firstly I trained as a Reflexologist and Bach Flower Remedies Practitioner. The longer I worked with people the deeper my search for solutions to the health problems they presented with became. Over the years I have studied Shamanism, Crystal Healing, Reiki, Channeling, Regression Therapy and Spirit Healing with renowned therapists, shamans and healers.

When I became a mother for the first time in 1990 I was astonished to learn that I was one of only four women in a group of twelve that had experienced a beautiful, natural and straightforward birth. I also became aware that this was the norm. The knowledge that much illness and human suffering has its root-cause at the beginning of life started my enquiry into what enables women to birth well.

In 1994 I spent three years living in the rainforest in Congo with Yaka Pygmy hunter-gatherers. Whilst carrying out medical research into the incidence and prevalence of current, endemic and epidemic diseases among the Yaka I also studied their traditional healing practices as a pupil of two healers. Besides major physical and logistical obstacles such as inaccessibility and nomadic movement, the second most important reason for the failure of delivery of health care to the Yaka is discrimination. In order to provide the Yaka with a health service which neither resulted in the deterioration of their health status, nor in the destruction of their culture and right to a distinctive way of life, the healers and I set up a mobile clinic combining traditional medicines as well as western ones. Living and working with these extraordinary people allowed me to see the possibilities and limitations of traditional medicine, as well as its strengths.

Yaka women do not have access to emergency obstetric care. Their vast knowledge of female reproduction and birthing, their extensive knowledge of healing plants and the unique egalitarian society they live in is what they rely on. Yaka women have just the same feelings and thoughts about birth as western women do. What differs is the support they are given during this very important time. Yaka mothers are celebrated and cherished by their community for their unique ability and contribution to the continuity of life. Western women in contrast are frequently led to believe that they cannot give birth without medical intervention and are endlessly assessed for risk factors saturating the birthing environment with potential danger and consequent fears. Sheila Kitzinger’s birth-crisis network is living proof to the rising number of women feeling traumatized by the care they received during their pregnancy and birth experience. The Yaka women kindly permitted me to share their wisdom with women in the West to help them birth well.

After my return to the UK in 1997 I started to work as a birth doula. During this time I met the renowned obstetrician, Dr. Michel Odent whose lifelong research about the correlation between the primal period and health and behaviour in later life clearly documents the negative long-term effects medical interventions such as deep forceps and C-section births can have on a person’s life. Research shows that statistically less than 10% of women genuinely need a C-section during the birth of their baby.  However, the actual proportion of women receiving this type of surgery is 25% in UK, 29.1% in US and as much as 60% in rural China. The World Health Organisation recommends that no more than 10% of birthing women should have a C-section. Although they are life-saving events and a blessing when necessary, unnecessary interventions need to be prevented.
Despite Dr. Odent’s and other eminent authors’ well-researched and detailed books published about the significance of pregnancy and mode of birth on the future health and mental well-being of a child as they go through life, our public health system seems hardly to have registered this.

This and my experiences in Africa prompted me to study for an MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries in 1999 at the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where I had studied Tropical Medicine three years earlier.

In 2001 Dr Odent and his partner Liliana Lammers inspired a group of mothers to found a network of mothers to help other women to birth well. I helped to set up what is now called Doula UK, drafting and implementing the training and accreditation programme for new doulas. Organising the training courses for new doulas and working as a doula gave me an even deeper insight into ways to empower pregnant women, and thus help prevent the excessive amount of medical intervention they are too often subjected to.

At that time I reconnected with Dr. Francoise Barbira-Freedman whom I had known since the birth of my son in her capacity as a medical anthropologist. She had been instrumental in backing my decision to have a water-birth in 1990. In 2006 I was blessed to have her by my side during the birth of my daughter. Here, at Birthlight, I found a wonderful tool to change the common trend that medicalises birth and women’s birthing bodies. My love for yoga had started many years earlier in Varanasi, India, in 1989 where I took initiation into the teachings of Kriya Yoga from Shibendu Lahiri. As outlined by the sage Patanjali, Yoga is NOW - in the energy of the presence of life and not in the past or future. These are the residences of mind. It is the settling of the mind into the original silence that is the real aim of yoga.

Birthlight successfully enables women and their partners to reach a point of inner calm and knowing through connecting with the intuitive and instinctive self. I learnt from tribal societies such as the Yaka that the transition from woman to mother is an initiation into a different way of being in the world. The success of this initiation depends on the safety of the environment provided to do so. Between 2001 and 2004 I studied Francoise’s inspiring approach to yoga for the reproductive years followed by training as a Sivananda Yoga teacher in 2005 and further training with Donna Farhi in 2008.

Francoise’s deep understanding of pregnancy and birth, her multidisciplinary approach of combining indigenous knowledge about reproduction and birth and the yogic wisdom of the ancient sages with up to date scientific research makes her approach unique. After seven years of teaching Birthlight Perinatal and Mother & Baby Yoga I feel qualified to say that Birthlight does achieve what it set out to do: to build a sound, positive and healthy foundation for life that nourishes individuals and families.

 

 

Already in the 1930’s Omraam Aivanhov, French Philosopher and Pedagogue, wrote that human society can be changed in a few generations if mothers are given adequate support and access to environments that are nurturing. Dr. Joseph Chilton-Pearce developed this in his enquiry why children that are loved and nurtured have a larger neocortex, capable of more complex loving, thinking and feeling, than children that are unwanted or born into violent environments. Yaka people reproduce a non-violent society of equals who live in mutual respect and support of one-another and nature. It is vital to reconsider this ancient knowledge about female reproduction and birth if we are to change the birthing environment, and as Dr. Odent puts it:  develop our capacity to love.

I aim to help women to be in charge of their bodies, to create the environment most conducive for them to birth in dignity and to rejoice in their femininity and motherhood.

I teach Birthlight yoga classes and hold workshops on ‘intensive birth preparation’ and ‘vaginal delivery after C-section’ (VBAC) for pregnant women and couples and offer private therapy sessions. Francoise’s gentle, consistent encouragement to make my work available to other yoga teachers and health professionals working in the perinatal realm made me decide to offer specialized courses. The course: ‘Preparing for Vaginal Birth after C-section (VBAC)’ can be booked as a CPD with Birthlight. Together with Francoise I run Birthlight Family Yoga holidays with the aim to provide newborn families with the support and nurture they deserve to have.

As a Public Health Professional and Birthlight tutor I hope to bring the Diploma Courses to other countries including ones in Africa. Since our obstetric model is being implemented in the developing world it is important to share the lessons learned.

I am happy to be part of the growing Birthlight family and grateful to Francoise for sharing her profound insights with the world.