How my baby helped me get rid of my back pain

I really love it when several things can be combined in a good way. Recently I´ve found myself spending some time every morning training to get rid of my back problems AND playing with my baby AND practicing my german - all at the same time. AND as a bonus result getting a really god start of the day, feeling energized and optimistic. I´ve realised that babies can be great fitness coaches, if we just change the way we look at them: Their built-in program for muscle training is actually just as useful for their mothers!

As a mother of a seven months old boy and not being a fitness freak I’ve been struggling with back pain more ore less constantly after the delivery. I’ve been trying to do my yoga program (which usually works perfect to reduce back tensions) at least a couple of times a week, but even though my baby is a very nice and easy boy I found it hard to get time and peace long enough for the program, and anyhow I didn’t feel that it helped me much this time.

My sister, who studied physiotherapy among other things, explained to me that post-pregnancy-related back problems often have to do with the loss off muscles in the stomach. This inspired me to try to learn Pilates instead of yoga, since it seemed to focus on building strength in the “core” region (the stomach, pelvic floor and back muscles). I bought some books on the subject and checked out some inspiring videos on You tube, but learning how to do the movements turned out to be far too complicated for me right now, since they are supposed to be done very precise and also combined with the breathing. Also I discovered that my stomach muscles REALLY where in a poor condition, so many of the exercises where totally impossible to perform anyhow.

Somewhere I’d heard that some training forms, like Yoga, Feldenkrais and Pilates, partly are inspired by movements that babies naturally do, but not until some weeks ago, after seeing this video:

did I get the idea to actually try to imitate the movements my little boy was doing. Laying down on my belly on the floor together with my baby I started out by lifting my head as much as I could and look around in different directions the way he used to do some months ago (before he learned to raise himself on his arms) – and gosh, did THIS get my back- and neck muscles working! )

Upon dragonflies and diaries

Last summer I had breakfast with a dragonfly. I was drinking tea in the morning sun outside my cottage in Sweden when the dragonfly parked itself on my shoulder. It was sitting there for several minutes, totally motionless, looking like a brooch. All of a sudden, it took off, but returned just as fast, now with a fly or whatever bug it had caught. And so we where sitting there together again, me drinking my tea and eating my toast, the dragonfly crunching its prey. The sun was shining, birds where singing, and it all felt very peaceful. I didn’t want to interrupt our meeting, but I really had a lot of things I needed to do, so after a while I stood up to get going. Just before entering the house, the dragonfly reluctantly left my shoulder

At the time, my sister was very much into a book called “The language of the animals”. It’s kind of a shamanic dictionary, claiming that when one’s having a special experience with an animal (in real life or in a dream) the animal brings you a message. There are hundreds of animals in the book, for each explained with a few sentences what they’re “saying”. I asked my sister what the dragonfly wanted to tell me, and she said the message was that I have a great spiritual gift that I should use, and that I have a strong intuition. I never considered myself being “spiritual” – in fact, I find the word kind of scary – but my intuition often does speak strongly to me. Most of my life I’ve been trying not to listen to it, but after that breakfast I decided to try not to turn it down again.