Mothering as a Spiritual Path
by by Tami Lynn Kent • Portland, OR

Mothering is a true spiritual path in that it will expand your spirit, make painfully visible your personal limitations, and bring some of the greatest heart-opening moments of bliss – sometimes all in one day.

When you bring forth something new from the center of your being – giving life to a child or a creative manifestation such as a work of art – there is an intensity in this process, like the heat of a kiln as it fires clay. This creative intensity is generated by the immense task of nurturing a new soul while simultaneously becoming aware of one’s inadequacies to do so.

I stepped into motherhood after a full-tilt decade of driving ambition that took me through my professional education and into my career as a physical therapist. This all came to a screeching halt with the infant pace of my first son. Instead of the high velocity I had become accustomed to, each day in the first year of tending my son stretched out in long swaths of time, with little structure and the infinite nonlinear caregiving tasks. Like many mothers who find themselves in this position, I was both amazed by my son’s beauty and confounded by my lack of preparation for this shift in how I lived. My body pulsed with the current of the external world and the rapid pace of its culture; yet now my focus was my home and my baby, who began quite literally with tiny movements that barely reached outside his parents’ arms or the bed where we lay.

To mother my first son, and eventually three, from a more whole place, I went to the deeper currents of the spirit realm. I learned how to care for my wild feminine energy, to supply the stores needed for bringing my children forth and tending them as well as my women’s health practice and writing. My guidance for mothering and creative direction came from being present in my own center. In my work and my life, I have found that if a woman attunes to her center, her body contains vast information for cultivating all she tends. By developing my family life and work practice from the organic flow of spirit energy that moves from within, I hope to teach my children to attune to their own creative centers as well. I want my sons to witness that by opening ourselves to the possibility in each moment, we are most likely to encounter the sacred in the midst of living an awakened life. By meeting spirit in this way, we tend to its presence in our lives naturally, finding a deep satisfaction as we do so.

The Mother Place

The uterus is our direct connection to the Great Mother, drawing in the raw potential to manifest and tend our creations. In Wild Feminine, I shared my experiences of working with the pelvic bowl and the surprising realization that women are typically lacking presence in their creative core. Modern women are generally unaware of how to access their own powerful root source of creative and feminine energies, and this contributes to a general ambivalence about mothering. Yet mothering calls us directly back to the home and the center of ourselves. Learning to access these root energies for our mothering enables us to harness this core creative essence for making a soulful life with our children.

The womb is a sacred place, whether we carry children there or cultivate our best creative work. Forming a relationship with the womb and realigning with this place of mothering are essential to activating the creative potential in all that we do. Ponder your own relationship with your womb and mothering essence with the following exercise.

Exercise: Creative Essence Meditation

1. Imagine your creative essence, your mothering capacity. What does it look like? How does it feel? Where do you access it within your body?
   
   
2. Reflect upon how you are presently using your female energy to create or sustain something in your daily life. What inner rhythms or guidance are you following? Are you nourishing yourself as a part of your mothering? Is this how you desire to use your creative essence?
   
   
3. Ponder your creative desires. What do you love? How does your creative essence seek expression? How can this connect to your mothering?
   
   
4. Imagine a sacred place in the wild, or find a place to sit where you are directly in contact with the earth. Let your center respond to this vision or earth connection. What makes your creative energy come alive? How does your body feel when you access this potential?
   
   
5. Remind yourself to connect regularly with your own creative wellspring. Garden, sing, or take an art or movement class. You can even shape your whole day from this inner creative current. Let your mothering come from within and take note of the beauty that arises.

Excerpted from Mothering from Your Center. Reprinted with permission from Atria Books/Beyond Words Publishing © 2012

Tami Kent, MSPT, is a holistic women’s health care provider who guides women in interpreting the wisdom of their bodies and reclaiming the wild within themselves. With a master’s degree in physical therapy and the ability to read energetic patterns of the body, Tami acts as a bridge between the realms of modern medicine and traditional women’s wisdom. The founder of Holistic Pelvic Care, Tami has advanced training in multiple bodywork techniques, including certification in Maya Abdominal Massage and Infant Body Psychotherapy/Birth Trauma Resolution. She received her Masters in Physical Therapy from Pacific University and her Bachelor of Arts in Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. Tami is the mother of three boys and maintains a women’s health private practice.