Bonding with your Baby

Waiting to feel the soft rosy petal feet of the new born,to joyfully smile listening to the cry, to look for similarities with you in the baby, the enigmatic fragrance unique to the new born, to sense the gush of feed in your breast at the baby’s cry , all the pains undergone, the discomfort in the health, the anxiety, the labor pain, the excited waiting of 10 long months…. everything disappears at the very moment the new mom holds the bundle of joy in her arms. 

“Akka, I must share this with you” 

Kavya looked so thrilled and excited when she began narrating the event. 

“Yesterday, I was busy browsing in the net and totally forgot my stimulation exercises. All of a sudden baby kicked me so forcefully that I got up from my seat. Responding to the kick, I looked at the clock and felt awestruck…It is my every day talk time with the baby. It is amazing that baby kicked me to remind me of the same”. 

I vividly remember her thrill when she was telling me this the next day with her eyes wide open and a big smile adorning her beautiful face…


Looking at Laksya now reminds of me of her mom’s narration during Chaitanyam Classes. I cuddle the little bundle of joy wrapped in soft towel and when I call her “baby”, her smile and response is so instant making me feel goose bumps.

 “Akka, yesterday when we were rushing to the hospital at 1o’clock in the night, guess what was Mahi up to? She was quickly going through her notes of Chaitanyam. I was asking her if she wanted any bit papers to get into the labor room”. Kamesh greeted me with a big hearty laughter at the hospital.

“Though it was a prolonged labor, she was very strong and both are fine now”. Mahi’s mother welcomes me with a box full of chocolates.  In spite of the tiredness and excitement, Mahi looks extremely happy and I am moved to joyful tears when she holds my hands to say “Thank you Akka”.

It is four months now and What an enjoyment to see little Diya doodle, listen to her aah..ooh.. and see her trying to crawl.

“Thank you Akka, She is fine. We are blessed with a baby boy”. Praveen calls up from Bangalore.

“God bless Praveen and how did you” …Even before I complete my question, swift comes the reply. “ No, no, I did not accompany her to the labor room. She went all by herself “

He sounded happy and relieved. The very thought of Pooja brings a smile. She was arrogantly stubborn in insisting that her husband accompany her to the labor ward. 
Poor Praveen was hesitant, fearful and not in favor of the idea.

I am glad that she managed all by herself taking the belief she learnt in Chaitanyam that we have all the resources within us.

In this blog, I intended to brief on what I run through in my Chaitanyam program to support pregnant mothers. And I have shared a few wonderful experiences of my delegates as I feel these feedback speaks more on the program.

       to learn more....

Thank you God, it is bountiful blessing to support young mothers enjoy pregnancy, communicate with the baby to be born and manage delivery with grace.

            
Chaitanyam has made me fall in love again.  This is a bigger selfless love.

Thank you Ramesh.

My journey in NLP has made me find my deepest truth within and the result is Chaitanyam. 

I understand what inner happiness is and I am glad that I am falling in love 
with a new world of newborns and new mothers.

Glowing Sunflower

“Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. “

Those who understand this and practice it live in freedom. – Bhagavat Gita

I got acquainted to her as my friend’s wife. A simple lady of few words, beautiful smile, subtle sense of humor and cheerfulness. It is six years now and we have hardly spent times together. Most occasions we meet would be at Sai Bhajans, marriage functions and in the Baba Temple. Few minutes of conversation and we would depart.

Both husband and wife are ardent devotees of Shirdi Sainath and are dedicated volunteers at the local Baba temple. And whenever my friend shares some of his thoughts, I admire her strength, humility and child like ignorance.

Last week I was blessed to travel and be with her for five days. My admiration for her has grown in multifold. I realize she is a personification of humbleness, sincerity, total surrender  and unfathomable devotion. Each and every word she utters is a spell of gratitude and the most admirable thing in her is her living in the present.

Our journey was a wonderful spiritual experience to me. This is all the more special to me as I have been with her drowning in sheer faith and selfless devotion. There have been times when I have (most of us would have) resolved to situations gathering myself that this is what God has destined for me. Resilience comes later. The surrender, acceptance and grace with which she accepts things is just not amazing…

it is infectious.

So many thoughts, emotions, opinions and feelings got untangled mysteriously inside me. I realize what is Bakthi in the true sense.

Writing about her now, this very moment I visualize the incident at Dwarkamayi in Shirdi. She volunteers to join the queue awaiting to be invited to perform jadu (Sweeping ) It is almost 12.30am, long time after night arthi. She is standing there with folded arms and in a slightly stooping gesture. Her whole body exhibits devotion, humility, eagerness, longing, yearning, excitement and sincerity. She is at the far end of the queue. I am wondering when would she get her turn ?  The very next moment, the person overseeing the cleaning process points out at her and says “ Amma, Avvo”. She runs towards him like a child running towards mother. She cleans up the space allotted to her with so much of joy, fulfillment and devotion. Inexplicable.

She comes back with the same smile, humbleness and devotion. She silently sits by my side and starts reading Hanuman Chalisa from where she discontinued. I am wonderstruck.

She is a glowing Sunflower and her Sun in BABA.

Venkatamma to all her friends including me, Venkatalakshmi, You are a blessed soul.

BABA is living with you. 

The dim lighted Verandah (Thinnai) …

BGM played by the street dogs and cow from the cowshed…

The happiness I felt when all the pigeons flew away together in the net…

The anger to hit the tailor who hides the needle in the banana offered to the elephant…

Feeling Sorrow when the Rajakumari was caught by the villain and cheers as the hero comes for rescue…

Snuggling to each other…  our giggles…

I relive all the emotions whenever I recap my story telling (rather listening) times.

As I grew up, so did my world of stories. I am highly indebted to my English Teacher Mr.A. Gopal who generously gave permission to write own stories in English for our hand writing home work. From writing, narrating evolved. Most of my narrations would be the then famous movies. This was during the lunch hour and many times a movie would run for 2-3 days. That was absolute excitement.

When in college, initially language tried to bar my storytelling. When I realized it was easier to pick up Kannada than to try to make my friends understand Tamil, I learnt to speak in Kannada and lo!! storytelling again. Now it was Tamil novels which they never got to read - from Sujatha to Sivasankari, Balakumaran to Lakshmi.

Story telling has played a major role in my personal life. My marital relationship and the joy of mothering my children is a beautiful silk woven with stories of love, respect, understanding and happiness.

I stepped into NLP by choice to enrich my training abilities. And the beautiful outcome of my NLP journey with my masters Ramesh Prasad, Tulsi, Sue Knight , Colin Spencer and Arul Subramaniam was the magic of connecting to myself and realizing what is inner happiness.

I continue to enjoy my inner happiness in Chaitanyam, my NLP based training program for pregnant women and now I am happy to share Tejaswini with you, a story telling platform for women.

When it comes to relationship, art of storytelling is the art of communication. Storytelling is a natural way of learning about feelings and relationships. Most often misunderstandings in relationships occur because we stop communication and not because we mishear.

 “All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about them”. How true!! any  experiences of an accident, an illness, a death or any disturbing event is felt better after telling about it, the more times the better. Telling stories help adults deal with life’s challenges.

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you”  -Maya Angelou.

Unplug and share your story.