HEALTH & YOGA
How to Best Prepare for Pregnancy and Motherhood?
Sadhguru shines a light on the level of care expecting mothers were given in Indian tradition, and how we can create a conducive atmosphere for mother and child, even today.
Sadhguru shines a light on the level of care expecting mothers were given in Indian tradition, and how we can create a conducive atmosphere for mother and child, even today.
Questioner: We try so hard to shape our minds throughout our lives. Is there any way to shape the human mind when the child is still in the womb?
Sadhguru: From before conception to conception, from various stages of pregnancy to delivery, and as long as the mother is breastfeeding the child, there used to be an entire process in India as to how a woman should eat, what she should do, the kind of people she should interact with, the kind of forms she should look at, and the kind of sounds she should hear. All this was very much established, but life has changed.
Today, most women are going to work. She may be exposed to all kinds of things. In some way, we are doing that to the unborn child also.
There is hardly any job where you can take off for one and a half years and get back to it again. For various reasons, we are not taking the process of manufacturing the next generation seriously. We are not paying enough attention to it, for which we will pay an immense price over a period of time. Our social situations mostly do not allow that space for a woman to dedicate the necessary time and attention to this process.
Being pregnant is not just about reproduction – it means manufacturing the next generation. Of all the products we produce on this planet, is it not most important to produce wonderful human beings? But we have created a social and economic situation that makes it almost impossible to take care of it the way we should. Individual women or families may be able to do it to some extent; but for the larger society, it is out of the question.
The intelligence of the human body is such that depending on the infant’s gender, the quality of the milk the mother produces is different. This body is not some crude machinery – it is the finest piece of technology on the planet. So we have to treat it with a lot of care. On the evolutionary scale, nature took millions of years to perfect the design of the human system. But in our desperation for economic wellbeing, we are not paying the kind of attention it needs to function at the highest level, and to produce human beings who are of a certain kind.
So, how to develop the brain when the child is still in the womb? It is very important that the atmosphere in which the child is growing is with the least amount of disturbance, the right kinds of reverberations, the right kinds of sounds, the right kind of food, and so forth. Today, when pregnant women are undernourished in many parts of the world, where is the question of creating the right kind of vibrations and atmospheres?
One thing that could be done for this is to have a consecrated space in every home and, if possible, every workplace. We could also create consecrated objects that she can carry upon her body. It is not the best solution; but to some extent, it neutralizes the impact of outside situations. If she lives and sleeps in a space that is consecrated, there will be some respite for the new life that is blossoming within the womb.
