Over the last few years, I've grown increasingly devoted to my health. But it was really through planning pregnancy, carrying my son, and becoming a mother that I began to truly live inside my body and trust its quiet intelligence.
In recent months, my focus has been on rebalancing my hormones and inviting my body into a deeper state of relaxation. Realistically, I haven't had the time or space to think about "getting back into shape." This season has been about something else entirely. More on that soon.
What I have noticed is a persistent ache. Deep in my pelvis, spilling down into my legs. Something I don't remember experiencing before birth. Or perhaps something that was always there, but only now asking to be felt.
I've been receiving regular massages and returning again and again to my breath, trying to find that deep, nourishing breath everyone speaks about. Belly breathing. Letting the belly soften and expand on the inhale, then gently fall away on the exhale.
For the past month or so, I've been practicing this whenever I'm breastfeeding my son, or comforting him, which has been often. Each time, I come back to my breath. To steady myself. To calm my nervous system. And, I sense, to help him regulate his own.
Today, after a long night of broken sleep while my son tossed and turned, I finally had the chance to lie down and rest. I couldn't sleep, so I returned to my breath.
No matter what I tried, the ache wouldn't release. The discomfort sat deep, at the top of my pubic bone, spreading across my hips. My inner thighs felt tight, my toes tingled, especially on the left side. My body felt guarded, holding something.
I lay there breathing, my hands on my belly, feeling around, trying to manually undo the intense tightness that wouldn't shift. Eventually I just stopped, found stillness, widened my legs on the bed, letting my feet fall open until my body felt safe enough to soften.
As I breathed, I noticed something strange. Breathing felt like effort. Like work. And in that moment, a quiet knowing arose: what if the breath isn't meant to go into my belly right now?
I tried breathing down. Into my pelvis.
The first breath felt unfamiliar. Then, with each inhale, I felt the muscles of my pelvic floor gently expand. Like a tide, the breath rose upward through my body, opening my torso from the inside.
I stayed there, breathing into my pelvis, into my tailbone, feeling my hips widen, my body open, tension dissolving. I don't know how long I lay there. Time softened. The ache eased. Something released.
There was warmth. A quiet fire. Energy returning.
Later that day, I noticed the chronic tightness in my big toes, something that's lingered since pregnancy, had begun to fade.
That evening, as I settled my son for sleep, I returned to this new breath. It felt as though circulation and life were flowing back into my pelvis and down through my legs. Gentle. Restorative.
That night, and every night since, my sleep has been deeper than it's been in months. And somehow, miraculously, so has my son's.
I know this moment didn't happen in isolation. It was the result of many threads: time, care, listening, patience. But it's left me deeply curious.
What else is waiting to be unlocked within the body, not through force, but through breath, awareness, attention, and letting go?