Episode 81: Effortless Belonging within the Circle with Françoise Freedman

“The root of all the nurturing is in the women's self and as she nurtures others she nurtures herself”

Françoise Barbira Freedman is the founder of Birthlight, a UK registered Charity that uses yoga foundations to enhance wellbeing for ‘pregnancy, birth and beyond’, in the lives of women and new families. She’s an expert and innovator in the areas of prenatal and postnatal yoga, yoga with babies, well woman yoga, and in aquatic adaptations of yoga in water parenting, aquanatal yoga and aqua yoga for women’s health. She coordinates Birthlight (www.birthlight.com) with the help of colleagues and trustees and she organises regular research conferences (www.wombtoworld.org).

Françoise was born and raised in central France before being fast-tracked to the elite state education system in Paris. She did her PhD in Social Anthropology at Cambridge, where she developed her research and teaching career. Long periods of fieldwork in the Upper Amazon impacted her transition to motherhood and inspired her to use her yoga and swimming skills towards the creation of embodied practices for maternity and early parenting.

Over four decades, Françoise has continued to interlace her academic and Birthlight activities, that are inseparable in her life. She has deepened her skills as a yoga therapist to promote women’s wellness through the life cycle. As a mother of four grown up children and a now a grandmother, caring for her family has been a constant main inspiration. She is still involved with Amazonian indigenous people. Whether directly or indirectly, all her books promote greater respect of their wisdom and the environment that sustain their lives.

In this episode, we talked about:

The circle creates an intimate, supportive space

The quality of listening in a circle rather than row is easier- from centre to periphery and back to centre
Circles need to be used more in gatherings - and are an antidote to working on screens
Multi-generational and multi-professional circles
The lacunae in society in not having enough mixing of different generations
Françoise lived in the Amazon for two years when doing her anthropological fieldwork
Françoise gets older children to help babies in swimming classes
“Embodied movement is more than mindful, it’s truly experienced through the body”
“Effortless is beautiful”
There’s been a surge of interest in the bodies in medical anthropology in the 1990s’
Annemarie Mol- Dutch ethnographer and philosopher. She’s studied atherosclerotic and diabetic patients using plant medicine
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
The water as ‘another mother’, a matrix and filter for movements. Using water as a different realm of experience. In aqua classes, grounding is through the navel. Working with rotation and floatation practices, with the feet up- pure experience of the hara/ dantien/ life centre. Water stretches are freer. The relationship between the core and extremity is experienced in a different way. Frontal, lateral and diagonal stretches. Moving from one to another in a more blended, dancelike way, led by the body. Prone poses are possible in pregnancy in the water and are enjoyable
Land practices dialogue with gravity, using the ground
The osteopathic approach to the umbilicus and the corresponding approach to the fluidity in the body
Plant medicine such as ayahuasca is less taboo- and sometimes being used in trials
Being initiated by a shaman and having to live with the scientific and less rational ways
Françoise shared how the shaman had had a vision that she would take her knowledge forwards to her people. She described the passing on of the phlegm of the shaman, which is said to contain the physical counterpart of their knowledge
Françoise has since been guided by the shaman, even at times when she resisted or tried to stop doing the work
Learning to work with the plants, and realising the energy that comes from being an observer
Dreams as a way of connecting with plants and spirits
Françoise experienced living and being as a collective when she was pregnant in the Amazon and it’s informed how supports new mothers in her work. She talked about how much the women taught her, nurtured her, massaged her and prepared her nipples for breastfeeding
The river as a place for bathing, washing clothes, grooming, a sexual place, and where you could connect with spirits if you were menstruating or pregnant
The belief is that the man and woman feed the baby to create the soul together
Prioritising the intimacy of the couple during pregnancy and the postnatal period. Men aren’t allowed to do anything violent such as hunt or use an axe after birth, to protect and cocoon the new soul
Specific gendered offerings to make a bracelet for baby boys and girls
Deer is a taboo meat because it is said to take the souls of the ancestors. Deer is killed for the skin, which provides a seat for the baby (similar to a tiger skin in the yogic tradition), a boundary between the physical and spirit world
The baby carrier is ‘the baby’s world for the first month’ and then becomes its hammock
Françoise has noticed how much more Amazonian babies cling/ hold on to their mothers when being carried/ worn than Western babies
The men have a rituals and ceremonies around birth too
Birthlight’s collective mission: ‘offering the best of tradition with the best of innovation to nurture new life’
Simple knowledge on how to sit, stand and walk for pregnancy and early motherhood makes all the difference for feeling confident and at ease
Françoise credits becoming a keen observer from her time in the Amazon
Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf, who managed to observe and explain their methodologies