Episode 264 Ali Levine’s HBAC + The Practice of Breathwork
“Feel it to heal it.” Ali Levine is back with us today sharing her HBAC story! Ali was first with us on Episode 166 where she shared the details of her transformational VBAC. Ali and Meagan reflect on the growth they both have experienced since they last chatted. Ali is now a certified breathwork practitioner and intuitive stylist. She talks about how through regulating the breath, we can better surrender and allow our true selves to shine through. Ali experienced this firsthand as focused breath helped her stay calm through her baby’s shoulder dystocia and allowed her to surrender to the guidance of her midwife. She was able to achieve the home birth she knew she could have! Ali shares how important breathwork is in allowing us to release fear, anxiety, trauma, stress, or any other negativity that our bodies hold. And it’s a process! By giving our bodies lots of opportunities to breathe, relax, and release, we allow beautiful healing to take place. Additional LinksThe VBAC Link Podcast Episode 166Ali’s Website Awakening with Ali PodcastAli’s Breathwork AppThe Lactation NetworkHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, hello everybody. You guys, it’s December. How are we at the end of 2023? I cannot believe it, but I am so excited to be kicking the month off with our friend, Ali. She has been with us before, so welcome, Ali. Ali: Thank you. Meagan: Yes, I’m so excited to have you on the show again. She shared her C-section and VBAC journey a while ago because she is Episode 166 and we are now at 264 so almost 100 episodes ago. Ali: Wow. Meagan: So crazy. She’s back today to share her HBAC story, but not just that amazing part, she’s also going to talk to us about breathwork and her journey to become certified as a breathwork practitioner. She is a breathwork practitioner, intuitive stylist, and transformation expert. What exactly is a breathwork practitioner and transformation expert? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Ali: Yeah. Well, I’m just so excited to be back here with you. Can I just say when you said about 100 episodes, I had such a reflective moment as we were sitting here? I’m like, “Wow. 100 episodes.” Thinking about how much both of us have evolved and grown and shifted, I feel like that’s so important to start with because as mothers, I feel like we don’t necessarily get that time to reflect and look at our growth and look at our evolution. So much of doing that allows us to continue to move forward. I’ve learned so much in my journey. It’s not only the healing work around it but the true reflection and celebration of, “Wow. Look how far I’ve come.” Yeah. I first came to you guys. I was listening to the VBAC podcast. I was pregnant with Amelia almost five and a half years, almost six years ago. She’s five and a half. It’s crazy. I was listening to your podcast and I had my C-section with her. I started listening to The VBAC Podcast to start to understand what was possible and what I could do, then 2020 came and I had Arlee, my second daughter. I had my VBAC in the hospital and then as you said, moving forward into 2022 and having my son and my first HBAC which is a home birth. It’s so cool. You said about 100 episodes and it’s so cool. It’s like, “Wow.” Think about that and the time and evolution even with your podcast and what you guys were doing what you are doing now and when I met you guys and when we first connected, getting to share my story then and then coming here. So I just think it’s really cool to start with that first, right? The journey before we talk about what are these “titles” that we all have. I feel like it’s so much more important and so much juicer. You just feel it so much more when you hear, “Hey, yeah. Okay. This is what people call me, but really at the end of the day, what’s the journey? What’s the story?” That’s how we are going to support each other, help each other, and be of service. So hi, everyone. I’m Ali Levine. If you don’t know me, go back and listen to, of course, my other stories. I’m so excited to be here. A certified breathwork practitioner is someone who, of course, is certified in the work of breathwork. Breathwork is regulating your nervous system through different types of exercises. When people hear regulating their nervous system, some people don’t even know what that means. To break it down really simply, basically think about visually that you have almost this computer in the bottom of your body that is sitting like this hard drive. Think of your whole body as a computer and the hard drive is sitting basically at the bottom, kind of near your womb space and kind of near your stomach in the lower area, okay? It’s sitting there. It gets filled up consistently with files and junk and stories and limiting beliefs and people around us, family, friends, all of the things and our own things. It all fills up. Meagan: As it does every day. Ali: Every single day, every single moment. It’s just the way that life is. What happens is that system basically moves into a disregulated system. Speaking of birth, when we talk about having a baby and when our baby is first born, of course, they take their first breath when they actually enter this world earthside. If you look at your baby and you watch how they breathe, they breathe from their stomach to their chest deeply and out. That is a sign of a parasympathetic nervous system which is the true homeostasis of how we enter into this world. It is a rest and digest place. Most of us are not in that state anymore. We are in a sympathetic nervous system. So when we speak to breathwork, we are moving ourselves back from that reactionary state of that fight, flight, or freeze, that triggered state that happens continuously and moves us back into the flow of how we came into this world which is so perfect of course speaking to birth and what you talk about on the podcast. When you think about that and you think about that flow and how that feels in the body, and you start to come back to that rest, that’s what breathwork does at a very basic level. That’s what is means to regulate your nervous system. The basic benefits of breathwork are just allowing the nervousness to fall off– anxiety, depression, sadness, and stress. It gives you better sleep. It builds up your immune system. It builds up your gut health and all of these things because you are bringing more oxygen into the body and then you do it on a normal basis. We are all breathing, of course, because we have to breathe to be here on the planet, but we are not actually consciously breathing so what breathwork does and what it means is that not only regulating your nervous system, but you are allowing different types of breathwork exercises which is what I guide you in being certified in this work and trauma-informed. I take you through different exercises through your nose and through your mouth. Maybe if we have time, we will do a quick one so that people can experience it. Meagan: Yay!There are different ways of doing it and there are all different types of breaths that will lead you. It can be anywhere from literally two minutes to an hour getting into a full meditation. When you do this practice over and over again, you start to notice that not only do you start to release everything that you are holding consciously or unconsciously, but you do start to notice the benefits that I spoke to. What I like to say is that I help people, especially mothers and women, shift from lower states of consciousness to higher states of consciousness. You go from that triggered state, that reactionary state into actual authenticity of who you are as a soul, more peace, more love, and more calm and you are able to show up better as a mother, as a partner, and all of the things that you do in your job or whatever it may be. That is where my heart is. When we say “practitioner”, some say “facilitator”. Some say “practitioner”. Practitioner for me speaks more to my soul because it is more about the practice, the art, and the modality, versus facilitating the space. Of course, I do both, but I feel like I allow and open that up. It’s where I shine and help my clients. The intuitive peace of styling as you know, when we first met, I had been a celebrity wardrobe stylist for many years and I rebranded after my motherhood journey and postpartum depression and all of the things I went through. The intuitive is more tapping into what I learned from my own journey of what really feels good on you versus the trends. What really feels good on the body because it’s all connected– mind, body, and soul. Even when we start the day, even if we are in our sweats as a busy mother, it’s being conscious of, “Maybe I don’t want to wear that gray t-shirt because I’m going to notice that my mood actually shifts.” Helping people get conscious in their closet and understand that there is a frequency to everything. Everything is energy so what you put on in and out is so important. Hence, intuitive stylist. And then of course, that brings us to transformation. The more you do this and embody this work and allow that surrender, you can move into actual transformation which is what I love to help people with because I’ve gone through my own transformations over and over again. Meagan: Yes. I love that so, so, so much. You had written in your bio, “You help your clients breathe through their closet to tap into the design of their soul and come home to themselves through the wardrobe of their dreams”. That’s so cool. Ali: Thank you. Meagan: I just love it. I just love it. I love it so much. Thank you so much for breaking it down and explaining because it’s like, “Okay, breathwork practitioner. What is that?” You know? Just hearing you, I can hear your energy and I can just feel it. Oh, I could just feel it from you. I can see it. I mean, they can’t see you but I can see you. I can just see it and feel it. Oh, I’m so excited to dive into this episode. Review of the WeekMeagan: But of course, we have a Review of the Week, so I’m going to hurry and do that before we jump right in. Okay, it’s not a super long one, but it is by kchidster. It says, “Amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This podcast was my saving grace. Could not have had my VBAC without these ladies and their stories of encouragement and wisdom. A must-listen to anyone wanting to TOLAC.” If you are new to this podcast, that is a trial of labor after a Cesarean. It says, “Keep up the great work. I thoroughly enjoy listening. Ladies, we can do hard things.” I could not agree more. Women of Strength, you can do hard things. There are sometimes things that sound impossible or feel impossible and like Ali was saying, maybe our compartment is on overdrive. We’ve got too much going on and we need to get things going and start working through our breathwork and finding ourselves again, but it is possible. It is 100% possible. Ali’s stories Meagan: Okay, darling. Oh my gosh, I mean, you just spoke for three minutes maybe and I’m like, “Ahh, let’s just keep hearing from you,” so I’m going to turn the time over. Ali: All right, cool. Well, thank you. I’m so excited to get to share this journey. So where do we want to begin? Should we start going back? Meagan: Your HBAC, yeah.Ali: Okay, my HBAC. Yeah, okay. Meagan: Well, and if you want to re-highlight a little bit, if you want to hear the full story, episode 166 is the full episode, but why don’t you talk about like we were saying at the beginning, the journey through 100 episodes, but there was a journey before that too, so touch on all of the journey. Ali: Okay, cool. All right, well thank you. Yeah. I mean like you said, I love that review that came in of how you can do hard things. I think so much, especially as mothers or mothers-to-be, we can get so in our minds. We can get so in the limiting beliefs and like, “Oh, I can’t do that or I won’t be able to,” or we are told by someone that it won’t happen. It can’t happen. But guess what the most amazing thing is? We are divinely created this way so when we can get out of those limiting beliefs, when we can get out of the mind which is why breathwork is so, so powerful, we get into the wisdom of the body and we can actually listen and receive our body.Then we recognize, “Oh, actually, I can do this and more,” which is why obviously, people who are listening to The VBAC Podcast are having these amazing VBACs. Same with my story, it was like, hey. I had a C-section five and a half years ago back in 2018 with my first daughter. It was quite a traumatic birth. 42 hours led to a C-section. I wanted to have a natural birth with a midwife at a birth center. It didn’t work out that way. She didn’t progress. You can go back and hear the whole story, but I didn’t progress. Didn’t happen. Fast forward and I had the C-section. Then after that happened, I went through a pretty heavy postpartum depression journey. After finding myself all over again, or a new version of Ali, and reinventing myself and finding that empowerment and that freedom and all of the work I had to do, meditation, affirmations, prayer, and all of that led me to breathwork. That was where my next journey began. Breathwork really started to change my life in how I showed up, how I viewed my body, how I viewed my story, my baby, and my motherhood journey. It went from being a very dark place to a very bright place and seeing that there was healing within that. There were lessons within that first birth. There were all of these things to learn. I think that’s important to say, Meagan, because I feel like I personally, and I’m sure many other mothers can agree, shamed myself and they guilt themselves through what I could have done, what I should have done. They play the victim mode.I was blaming everybody around me– my parent, my friends, this person, that person. We can blame all we want and we can have all of this shame and this guilt, but it doesn’t actually do anything for us. It actually debilitates us from moving forward. So the more we heal that space and then also see it as, “I had lessons to learn here. There was growth here. There was evolution,” which is what I had to do in my own healing work and really move myself out of the victim to the victor in my life. Move myself out of the victim mode in saying, “I’m going to blame you. I’m going to blame you,” and take full responsibility because, at the end of the day, we have to be responsible for ourselves and say, “Okay. I chose to listen to stories. I chose to take on the noise that came to me,” instead of creating sacred boundaries and understanding that I do have the wisdom. I do have the knowing. So that’s what led me to you guys and listening to your podcast and then finding a chiropractor for my second pregnancy with my daughter to finding a doula who helped me advocate for myself and understand that I could ask those hard questions to help me fire my doctor who told me I couldn’t have my VBAC. I’m putting quotes because they love to tell you that you can’t do this. And then, of course, this is not medical advice, but advocate for yourself. Ask the question, “Why can’t I? What is it?” For me, it was literally just someone who saw me as “You had the C-section, you’re always going to be a C-section.” I wasn’t willing to say yes to that. I wanted a VBAC. I wanted to advocate for myself and luckily, in having those sacred boundaries and having the empowerment and healing I had done, I was then able to move into 2020 and have my second daughter and have a VBAC. During that time, obviously, we all know what went on in the world during 2020. It was a crazy, crazy, traumatic time to say the least. I was also living in California at the time so it was extra crazy. I now live in Tennessee, but I was living in California at the time. The fear, the limiting beliefs, and everything started coming back up for me. I thought all of the healing work I had done was handled. It wasn’t. It all bubbled back up when 2020 came. I say that because I think the healing journey also is an evolution of the continuous peeling back of the onion. We have to understand. We have to be willing to peel back the layers to continue to heal and feel and move through. So long story short, it was crazy at that time and everything was coming up. That’s where breathwork really, profoundly showed up in my life. I was struggling with meditation, my affirmations, and my mindfulness work because there was so much going on. I couldn’t get out of my head no matter what I did. It was really frustrating to me. I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’ve done so much work. Why is this not working?” I surrendered to breathwork and I allowed myself to start to let my body show me what it needs to release. So when we speak to that, again, regulating the nervous system, I always tell my clients and anyone I come in contact with that I believe the nervous system doesn’t lie. The mind, the ego, and our personality love to tell us stories and give us different junk and the monkey mind will go on and on, but the body doesn’t lie. The body will tell you if you have a pain that comes up. The body will tell you if there is a sensation that is coming up. Something is going on. It’s speaking to you. The same thing with breathwork. When we regulate the nervous system, things come up whether it be emotions, breakdowns, feeling more intensity in the body, or whatever it is, it’s meant to be released. We’re not meant to hold it. Everything like you said before, gets junked up and it is meant to come up. The more I recognized when I was doing the breathwork when I was pregnant in 2020 and I would do it, I would have a breakdown, but I would move into another breakthrough. It kept happening and happening. Fast forward to having Arlee in the hospital and basically, she got stuck at the end during my VBAC after labor had gone well. All the things had gone well. She got stuck. I looked at my husband and I said, “I need my earbuds.” I put them in my ears and I basically started doing a whole fear release, breathwork, and meditation, and there she came. There is a lot more to it but of course, you guys can go back and listen. I bring that up because that was the beginning of the journey for me in understanding how much the body has that wisdom and that we can get so stuck in a moment and get triggered or freeze or fight and flight instead of just allowing and surrendering to what’s actually happening. That’s what then led to having my son at home in 2022. After having my daughter in such a crazy time and a world being told that a VBAC wouldn’t happen and it did, and then moving into more of my healing journey and becoming certified in breathwork because that moment solidified it for me to decide to get certified and learn the work and why it was so powerful and transformational. So then I continued on that journey. I started helping people breathe and then I got pregnant with my son. In 2022, I went to my husband and said, “I really want to have a home birth.” He was a little like, “Are you sure? Are you sure?” I was like, “Yes. I am sure. I had my VBAC. I know I can do it. I really want to.” It was something I always envisioned myself having, but again, I had many people come up in my life who did not want to see that going on or different things happening. I honestly had to make really sacred boundaries to the point where I didn’t share most of my birth and what I was doing with many people, even those very close to me. I had to decide this time was sacred for my immediate family– my daughters, my husband, and I– to go through this journey together whether someone respected it or understood it or not because it is our journey. I think it’s really important to understand that whether you’re newly pregnant or going to be pregnant or are in this journey of a VBAC, it really is your sacred space. Just like the sacred womb has your babe or babies, you need to also protect what’s coming in and out. Breathwork helped me to do that over and over again. Every time something would come up that would maybe trigger me or upset me, I’d allow myself to feel it so I could heal it and move through it, but then I’d also recognize, “Okay, but I can also create sacred boundaries around this and make sure that it doesn’t come up again because I’ve healed this and maybe it’s something else that someone else isn’t willing to heal or see the way I see.” We all have different journeys and of course, it’s out of love. It’s out of protection, but sometimes, again, the ego and that protection want to tell us you can’t do these things and then you don’t do the hard things. You don’t push through. You don’t move over to the next level and the next evolution which, for me, was allowing myself to go for this home birth at home. It was pretty wild because when I did go into labor with my son, I had two false starts at home. It was that prodromal labor that came in. I had that with Arlee, but not as intense as I had it with Abel here at home. It was so much so that my team came over both times because we were really, really sure and then it didn’t happen. I felt like even that, Meagan, was a true surrender for me. I started getting in my mind and in my head of, “Oh, am I really going to be able to do this? Why is this happening?” I really had to go back to the breath and go back to my practices and say, “Release that. Release what you think. Release what’s coming up from the other births. Release what you’re scared of. Release the fear. Trust in that you can do this. There is a reason that you have felt you wanted to do this from the beginning. Go back to your knowing. Go back to your intuition.” I had to really work on that space when he wasn’t actually coming and it was these false starts. And then I, of course, had my acupuncturist come the next day because I was like, “Okay. I need help to be relaxed.” Something I’ve learned so much in my journey too is that we are meant to have support, especially as mothers and especially when we’re pregnant. We’re meant to have a village around us who can see our vision and who can support our vision as safe and as best as possible. You find the people around you who can help you in these modalities and support you in healing and in relaxation, so I had my massage therapist come and really relax my body. I had my acupuncturist come to work on me and give me the needles not only to help stimulate natural labor, but just to relax the body so I could get deeper in my breath and deeper in my visualization and allow myself to be at peace versus in the monkey mind that was coming up because it was. I tell my clients all the time that just because I’m certified in this work, I’m still human. Meagan: Absolutely. Yeah. Really. I mean, I was a doula with my VBAC after two C-sections, but I didn’t think, “Oh. I’m having all of this back labor. I bet my baby is posterior.” It literally just went over my head. I was in my space and that’s why you have a team. Ali: Yeah. That’s why you have a team. That’s why you find the extra support and you invest in yourself and you say, “This is important” to be able to help me be able to go through what I’m going through because you’re not meant to do it alone. You’re really not. I know as mothers, we know we can do it all and we absolutely can, but it’s usually to our detriment. I say that over and over again. I can, but why should I if I can actually have support and I can actually lean into that and allow that to have more space for myself and to be able to show up better for my husband and for my kids, for my work, for my clients, and for all of the things that I do versus exhausting myself and then having nothing left and not being able to show up at all? Because then I’m not serving anyone nor serving myself. Right? Meagan: Right. Ali: I say that because I needed to reach out and say that I needed to help my acupuncturist come and help me relax. I need to get the massage to let my body just chill. I need to go back to my chiropractor again during the week and let her work on my hips again. She was so funny. She was feeling me. She was like, “Oh my god.” We didn’t know what I was having this time. It was a surprise gender. She said, “The baby is so low. I just don’t know how the baby is not here.” I was like, “I don’t know.” She was like, “Seriously. Let go. Whatever you are holding, let go.” I didn’t know what that was until I had the different people that I worked with help me move through and my doula sit with me and be like, “Okay, what is it?” A lot of it was birth processing. It was going back to Arlee’s birth and understanding that there was a journey there and that last moment where she did get stuck and what that felt like and what that looked like and that out-of-body experience that happened. Processing that and, “Okay, if this happens again in a different way, will you be able to move through this?” All of these things came up that needed to be seen. I think it’s important where we understand the difference between getting locked into the fear of what could happen versus the reality of the different things that can happen and seeing them so we can see them and release that fear. There is a big difference between creating the story and making it your own. It’s actually seeing something and allowing it to go because I think a lot of times between the motherhood community and then also, I see in the spiritual community from being in breathwork, there is a lot of bypassing that happens. It’s like, “Okay, now I see it but I’m just going to shift it.” It’s like, “No, no, no, no, no.” We still have to experience a piece of it. We still have to heal it and realize what’s coming up. We don’t have to get stuck in it. It’s like I tell everybody. You are not your feelings. Feelings come up. They are meant to move through. They are meant to be felt and they are meant to be released. We are not meant to become them. When we become them and embody them, then it’s, “I have this issue. I have this diagnosis. I have this.” Meagan: Versus, “I feel.”Ali: Exactly. It’s, “I feel this. I feel that. This is how I’m going to work to move through that or fix that or whatever it may be.” Of course, there are different extremes in that, but I think so many times where we get stuck whether it’s a basic issue or an extreme issue, we do add on to that because we are such good storytellers and we create these stories over and over again and then we start to believe them. I know in my postpartum depression journey, I kept telling myself so many things about my body that were wrong with it, and the next thing I knew, I had massive cystic acne. My body was inflaming and everybody was like, “It’s been months since you had your baby. What is going on?” Nobody could figure it out on the medical side. Then on the holistic side, it was like, “Let’s get to the root of the trauma that’s happening. What’s going on?” When we started doing that, my face started to heal. My body stopped inflaming and it was like, “Holy crap. I did this. I told myself all of these stories.” Your body and your cells are always listening and it literally manifested it which is why again, breathwork is so powerful because it is in the body and you release it out. You release the trauma. You release the emotions, the feelings, and everything that is stuck so you can move through. It’s a real understanding that it’s not about bypassing, but it’s also not about becoming it and embodying it. You want to embody what you actually want to have in versus what you’re afraid of. Meagan: Yeah. So many people in our community are afraid. We are afraid. I was afraid. Ali: So was I. Meagan: Right? Especially when I did have people saying. I had some big naysayers. Then to what you were saying when your doula was like, “Well, what’s going on? What do you need? What’s going on in there?” and your chiropractor. All I could think when I was in labor is what my provider had said to me years ago in the OR but I wasn’t saying that. Ali: Sure. Meagan: I was holding it down. Yeah. Ali: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes we can’t communicate what we’re holding. We just feel that we are holding which is why again, breathwork has been so transformational in my life and so many clients that I have worked with. They’ll say that to me. They’re like, “But I’m not holding anything.” We’ll do a breathwork session and they’re hysterical. They’re like, “I don’t even know why I’m crying.” Meagan: You released it. Ali: Right. You don’t have to put a story to it. You released it. Guess what? Later on, the mind is going to catch up and you will know why you are crying. But right now, it’s about the fact that you just allowed the release. You let it go so now you can flow and you can receive more. This is in every area of our lives, not just motherhood. It’s so obviously important when it comes to birth and the work and everything that we do because we do hold so much. Fear is something that does come up through all of this. I experienced it with my VBAC through my daughter, Arlee. Obviously, she got stuck. Now we’re going to go into the story of Abel. I said that I had the two false starts that were happening. I did a lot of work around that and then finally, I went into labor the next morning. This was something funny. I went into labor on September 11th and– this sounds terrible but it is just so true. I woke up in the morning and I looked at my husband and I said, “There’s no way I’m having a baby on September 11th. I’m not in labor.” Right? I mean. Meagan: Yeah. You’re like, “I don’t want to have a baby on September 11th. That’s not a great day that people remember.” Ali: Right, so I was like, “No way. It’s got to be false.” He was like, “What?” I was like, “I’m going back to sleep.” I put my heating pad literally up to a 10 and went back to sleep. I jumped up not even 20 minutes later bouncing like I was on a trampoline, but I wasn’t. I was like, “Oh, this is not a false start. This is not false.” I was really, really, feeling it. I was really in my mind. I was really in the adrenaline. Immediately, I had to take deep breaths and calm myself down. I got in the tub. I started doing my deep breathing. I started regulating myself and I started noticing, “Okay, yeah. No. This is the real deal. This is my third rodeo in this.” I knew my body. This was definitely it. My husband called. He was like, “Do you want me to call the midwife? Do you want me to call your doula?” I, of course, was hesitant because I was fearful that it wasn’t real even though I knew it was. I was still fearful because they had come twice already. I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Then when I was really feeling it, I was like, “No, no, no. You need to call. Yeah, no, no. You need to call.” I was clenching and doing the breaths like, “Okay. It’s getting intense.” She came over and she checked me. She was like, “This is the real deal. Baby is coming.” I was like, “Okay.” It was funny. She was so smart because she knew me and how I got in my head. I was like, “How far along am I?” She was like, “I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to Dustin and I’m going to tell the team,” but because I had the false starts before and I hadn’t gotten very far, she recognized. I was very grateful for that because that was a fear and a lock that kept happening. She was like, “I’m not going to tell you. I just want you to know that baby is on its way. You’re doing great and we’re going to just keep going.” Now, it’s funny because she told me, of course, weeks later when we processed our birth, “By the way, you were at a 10 right from the beginning.” Meagan: What?!Ali: So I had apparently, from going back to sleep and the whole thing and everything, I had progressed so quickly but because I had psyched myself out and I say this because this is how powerful our minds are, ladies. We can psych ourselves out of something happening good or bad or indifferent and don’t know it until it’s actually happening. When she told me that weeks later, I was like, “Wait, what do you mean, Kelsey?” She was like, “No, you were at a full-blown at a 10, but you weren’t ready mind-wise. You were still up there and you hadn’t fully surrendered to your body yet. I wasn’t going to tell you because I didn’t want you to get stuck again.” I was like, “Wow.”That was a whole other mind-blowing emoji. It was like, “Wait. This mind/body/soul connection. I already knew this was real, but this was a whole other level of connection like, “Wow. This is happening.” So then it honestly was several hours that I still had to go through deep labor to allow him to come down and come through even though I was fully progressed. He still had to make his way through. I was in my tub for quite some time. I moved into the birth tub after doing a lot of walking and birth ball work and a lot of holding myself in the hallway just stretching and trying to let myself let baby come down. We did some walks around the backyard and just more and more movement. We did a little bit on my bed of the side-lying because it was really about just letting him move down and move through. Then when he was getting closer, she was like, “All right. I think it’s time that we get into the birthtub. We can start getting ready to push when you’re ready.” You feel it naturally which also was a mind thing for me. I had to keep deep breathing and getting into my breath exercises because I started getting into the mind of, “Oh, do I feel the push? Do I push? Do I not push?” I feel like that’s all just something with the VBAC is that you’ve had a C-section so you don’t really know how to push and that was the thing I learned with Arlee, but then I still had to learn with Abel. It was like, “Oh. Okay. There’s more pushing here but it’s natural.” It’s when you feel it, not just push to push. That was also something that when I got more and more of the deep breathing and more and more of the surrender in the tub, I started feeling it. I was like, “Okay. I feel him.” She was like, “Okay. Whenever you feel him, go and push.” Or actually feel the baby because I didn’t know what I was having. She was like, “Push.” I kept pushing. She was like, “Push.” So I kept pushing and pushing. Then I guess at that point, she had the mirror in the tub and she could see he was coming, but she said that she knew something was going on because there was a little bit of turtling that was happening which is when the head starts to go back. Something was going on, so she said very calmly, “All right. We’re going to get you out of the tub. I know you want to be in the tub, but we’re going to get out of the tub.” They put me on the couch in my living room that was there in the room because that’s where I was giving birth. She was like, “Okay. I’m going to put you on all fours and move you around. I need you to just let me move your body.” That was a whole other surrender for me of not being in control of what I should do and literally just allowing myself to be loose and let myself be moved and maneuvered how they needed to to help me bring the baby forward. Fast forward, we did that for a little bit and then he crowned. That was at 7:30 that night. I had gone into labor at 10:00 AM that morning. It was a long time. It was a long progression. When he crowned, she saw more of the turtling, so I guess she then let my husband and my doula and everyone know, “Hey, if things become a little bit more intense, we may have to transfer. We’re not there yet, but I just want to make everybody aware of what’s happening.” Of course, without letting me know and keeping me calm which I very much appreciated. She said, “Okay. We’re going to move you more and we’re going to readjust your legs.” They had put my left leg up on the couch to one side and my right leg down a little bit more kind of in a funky position. But I mean to spread me. She said that she needed to use her fingers almost like finger forceps to push down to let him push down further. So she was like, “Okay, we’re going to spread you so I can push down and put pressure.” You tell me, of course, if you’re comfortable, but I need to push down to give you more space to push through. I just remembered in that moment, I started feeling the fear like you spoke to coming back up. It was like, “Oh my gosh. What’s going on? Why is he not here? His head is here. Holy crap. What’s happening?” I had to immediately let that go and say, “Okay.” I started praying. I started surrendering and I just started breathing so deeply and so loudly into my body and just saying, “Allow me to further surrender. Whatever this is, allow me to release it.” As I did, then she said, “Okay. One more push.” I pushed and there he came. She said when I was doing that, and I couldn’t see because my head was down, she said that my other midwife was actually unlocking his shoulder that had gotten stuck with a dystocia. She moved and unlocked on the left side and then he came right through. Meagan: Wow. Ali: Yeah. It was quite surreal when all that had played out and then there he was. She brought him over to me and even in that moment, I noticed how powerful the breath was then too because of course, for anyone who has had a home birth, knows that it’s all about them naturally taking their first breath. Of course, they have everything they need to help them, but they want them to do it naturally. That was another trusting moment for me too. He was lying there and he was like, “Just start talking to him. Just start letting him know you are here. By the way, it was a boy. It was like, “Oh my god. It’s a boy.” I had two girls, you know. I was like, “Hi, baby. I’m your mama. I’m here. Come to me earthside,” and just speaking to him. He took his first breath, but even in that moment, it was remaining in that surrender and that trust of, “He’s here. He’s fine. He’s well and he’s going to naturally take his first breath and be here with you.” So all of it was such a transformational experience. I recognize too, Meagan, when after having the reflection and meeting back up with my midwife, Kelsey, that wow. There was work, obviously, that I still needed to heal from, and the fact that he got stuck again. It wasn’t the same way that Arlee did, but still, there was that moment of getting stuck. Thank God I had a great team which is why you obviously check who your team is, who was able to recognize everything that was going on, make sure everything was safe, and there wasn’t an emergency, but I even think about that now and reflect telling you this story. I’m like, “Wow.” It makes me wonder what I was holding because I still am processing that. Meagan: Yeah. That’s what is so crazy. You were talking about how you released, but then there is still stuff you hold onto, but you released. Sometimes you don’t know or you don’t recognize that you’re holding onto anything until you’re in the moment. Ali: Oh yes. Oh yes. Meagan: Right? Ali: That’s where it all comes up. That’s the final test, am I really going to trust and go through it? The only way through is in and through. It’s like, am I really going to go in to allow this or am I going to come back to that comfort of like, “Oh, but I was fine here.” It’s like, no, you’ve got to take that next step. It’s really having faith and not seeing it but believing it. Meagan: Absolutely. I feel like having faith and taking those steps is what brought your baby there. Ali: Absolutely. Meagan: At home, in the manner that he came. It’s hard. It’s really hard. We’re so vulnerable. Ali: We’re so vulnerable. Meagan: It’s really hard. What tips could you maybe give someone who tends to pull back maybe and not take the dive in? Ali: Definitely. Absolutely. I think first off just really becoming clear with yourself. Knowing your own why of why you want something and what that looks like to you and understanding that of course, things can change, but overall, what is the why, and how are you going to allow yourself to move into that? You don’t have to figure out the how because really, once you figure out your why and your true heart-set like, “This is what I want to do,” and you trust it and you let the body receive that, the how figures itself out. Everything else will show up. I really believe that. But you have to first understand why it is so important for me to do this. And then also, the trust. The trust is such an important piece moving from what you want because everything is based around that trust. If you don’t have that trust and that faith, then you are going to get stuck in the fear. You are going to get stuck in the stories and the limited beliefs and the people and the things that are said to you is going to combine onto you. If you are someone who does that naturally, then create sacred boundaries from the get-go. Immediately, as soon as you are pregnant, and even me, I didn’t tell people my due date because I'm like, "It's a due date.” I’m so sick of people asking me, “When are you due?” I’ll let you know when the baby is here. Stop asking. People don’t realize that makes you so crazy because you are already like, “Why isn’t the baby here? What’s going on?” Then you go back and start tightening in your body. If you need to create sacred boundaries and not give your due date to people that you know are going to continuously ask, then give them, “Okay. It’s around this month and it’s around this time.” Make sure they honor that and understand that. If you need to put certain people on mute, if you need to block certain people, you really need to think about your sacred space of how you’re going to set this up that you feel good going into it, and then as things come up, you see them. You see what triggers come up and you allow yourself to heal them, but you don’t white-knuckle your way through and get tense. You allow yourself to surrender more. You allow yourself to have more faith and more trust. There’s a reason why this vision is on your heart. You, of course, understand that things can change and you need to be open to that as best as possible, but I just think that it’s such an important piece. That’s how we embody this. That’s what I speak to in breathwork is embodying the work. Understanding that it’s not just saying it, but it’s truly feeling it in your body and then doing everything from how the body feels. Like I said before, your body always knows. We feel everything, so if your body feels that something is off because somebody tells you something and it doesn’t feel true to you that you’re projecting a limiting belief on you or a fear, but your body is saying, “No, that doesn’t feel good to me,” then listen to your body and trust yourself. Don’t listen to what somebody else is saying. Ask your body. Ask your soul. Is this still a yes from me? Is this still what I want or is this someone else’s projection? Listen to your body. Your body knows. It’s a divine channel. It is the messenger. Meagan: Yes. I feel like so many times, okay. VBAC. Your heart—actually, I’m going to give you an example of a client of mine. She just called me the other day. She was like, “I had a baby.” She had a traumatic Cesarean. She was like, “From the get-go. I knew I wanted an out-of-hospital birth. That’s what I wanted.” She was like, “But now, all of a sudden, everything is making me question. I don’t know if I can commit to an out-of-hospital. Should I? Is it too dangerous?” She was spiraling and getting the monkey brain. Ali: We do. We spiral. Meagan: We go from branch to branch to branch. We just hop all over. That’s really, really difficult. I love that you said that. Something that you said earlier and you just said it again. I don’t know why, but it made me think of Frozen, the movie. “Conceal, don’t feel.” When we’re concealing things, we’re not feeling things. You said, “Feel so you can heal.” I just love that so much. Don’t conceal and not feel. Feel so that you can heal. Ali: Feel it to heal it. That’s how you can shift it. I tell people when my clients will say to me, “Oh, this trigger came up so I guess I’m not healed.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. This healing is an ever-evolving journey. This trigger came up to see what isn’t healed still, so now let’s work through that and move through that. Don’t shame yourself because that came up. We’re all human. We’re going to have things come up that are going to do that, but let’s feel it so we can heal it. Let’s not get stuck in it. Let’s not conceal it. Let’s not hide it. Let’s not pretend it’s there.” We’ve been doing it for centuries and it’s not working by the way. Actually feel it so that we can heal it and trust our body. This is where then when we regulate our nervous system and we allow ourselves to actually feel to heal, then we actually recognize, “Oh, the body is telling me something. Oh, the body is saying, ‘I do want to do this at home.’ Oh, the body is saying, ‘I don’t believe what you are telling me. That’s your limiting belief. I know what I believe. I know what I feel.’” I had tons of that. So many people say, “Oh, do you think you could do a VBAC? You had that crazy C-section. Oh, do you think you could do a home birth because you had a vacuum assist at the hospital?” All of the things, but it’s like, yes. You can. If you feel the wisdom in your body and you know, listen to your body. I ask my body everything now. Literally, when someone reaches out to do a podcast, I ask myself, “What does that feel like in the body? Do I want to do this? Do I not?” These are the sacred boundaries I speak to of you understanding your own wisdom. We all have it divinely within us, especially as mothers and mothers-to-be. We are divinely created not only to create but we are designed to feel in order to create. So understand that it is something within you and no one can take it from you unless you give it away, so don’t give away your power. Meagan: Don’t give away your power. I love that. Yes. It’s so weird how this sometimes on the podcast where they all connect, but the story last week where it was like, everybody was saying no. No, no, no, but she was like, “No. I feel this. I know I can do this.” Ali: I know. I know. Meagan: I know. Even in a very similar way, I felt it when I went to all of these providers. “No, but I deeply feel this. I do.” Ali: That’s your inner wisdom. You know your intuition is saying, “Yes, yes, yes,” and you have to trust that over when someone tells you, “No,” because they don’t know what you’re feeling. Only you know what you’re feeling in your body and this is when we have to get out of the mind because the mind will tell us tricks all day long. The mind will tell us to conceal. It will try to protect us. It will give us all of these stories. Like you said, the monkey mind of moving around. We have to get into the body and understand that is where we find the wisdom. So anyone, whether you do breathwork or not, find what works for you in your body that’s going to allow you to move into that space of being in the spiral and in the constant dysregulated system into a regulated system where I can receive the divine wisdom that is within me and I can have the faith and the trust to surrender to this process because guess what? If I can do it, you can do it. Meagan: Right. Something else that you had said earlier and again, just touched on now that stands out to me is that it’s okay to serve ourselves with the people that we feel safe with and sometimes I feel like in our community, we put restrictions on ourselves like, “I don’t need to have a chiropractor. I don’t need to do that or I can’t do that.” I’ve heard people say, “I don’t want to be too selfish. I don’t want to have all of the people because I don’t want to be selfish,” especially because it’s financially daunting. Ali: Sure. Of course. Meagan: This is okay for you to do. Women of Strength, it’s okay for you to bring your village in. Ali: Yes, and also too, that’s another limiting belief. “I can’t do this. I can’t afford this. I can’t.” That was such a shift for me even in the entrepreneur workspace of getting out of the “I can’t” and being like, “No, I can. I am worthy of this. I am abundant. I am creative.” When you move into that, you start to feel it and then your body starts to receive it. What’s really cool too is that everything is energy so if we think about our emotions as energy that’s always flowing, then your mind doesn’t actually know the difference between if something is actually happening or it’s happened because this is how our mind gets so crazy which is why limiting beliefs come into play. I say this because if you keep saying things like, “I am worthy. I am going to have this VBAC,” and you keep telling yourself it, your mind will start to believe it and then you already know it in the body, and guess what? Mind, body, and soul all start to sync up, and then now, things have shifted. It’s like, again, going back to the beginning of what we said, Meagan, don’t embody what you’re feeling. Embody what you want and what you already have that you know you are walking into. Make the shift. Trust in it and everything else will show up behind it, but you have to take the leap of faith. Meagan: You have to. You have to. Oh my gosh. I feel like we could talk for hours. We probably just need to do another whole episode. But oh my gosh, okay. So a couple of exciting things. One, obviously you have some social media that everyone needs to check out, and then two, you have an app. Ali: I do. I have my own app. Meagan: You have an app! Ali: I do. Thank you. Yes, I wanted everyone, especially mothers and women and even kids—I have a whole kids section. I wanted everyone to be able to use breathwork whether they go on a deep journey or they use it just for the basics in their lives to help them destress and get back to regulation. It’s called Breathe and Be. B-R-E-A-T-H-E and then you can either type in and or the & and the letter B because it’s all about breathing and being in your being because I really believe that when we allow ourselves to get into our being and our knowing, we come home to ourselves through the breath and that is what I want for everyone, especially mothers. So yeah. Download it on Google Play or the App Store. You’ll find it and you’ll see it right there. Meagan: It has a beautiful logo. It’s white and blue with a B. Ali: It’s very calm. Meagan: Yep. Yep. Ali: It’s got everything. When you download it, there are a few free exercises that you can do just when you get into it and then I highly recommend subscribing for all access. I drop in all new intentions, all of my events I do online as well as in person if you are in Tennessee, affirmations, and all of the tools that I have used that have helped me on this wellness and this spiritual journey I’ve been on. I’m always dropping in new content to different breathwork exercises so like, the power of you, gratitude, helping you sleep, releasing anxiety, just all of the different ways of breathing that are going to help you regulate and shift out of these different states that we get into. So please join me. I have a community. There are two where I can talk to you. We can connect and message. Meagan: That’s what I was going to say. There’s a community. That’s something I love. You go on and it says, “Begin, breathe, community.” It’s like, sometimes we need that community. We need to have those people because sometimes, we may not have people in our circle who are our safe place. Ali: Right. Right, and that is supportive and the safe place and the sacred place is so needed. If you need that and this episode gave you a tug on your heart and you want to check it out or you want to get deeper in the journey, please subscribe and join me. I would love to have you and help you. And of course, you can work with me one-on-one. I do online sessions as well as virtual events, but I tell everyone that if you want to have Ali in your pocket, then download my app and check it out. Meagan: Absolutely. We will make sure to have the links for social media, your app, and all of that in the show notes. If you guys want to make it really easy on yourselves, just scroll to the show notes. Click the link and you will have Ali in your pocket in a snap. Ali: Awesome.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Episode 264 Ali Levine’s HBAC + The Practice of Breathwork