Although Mae was very fit, young and healthy, having maintained a strict practice of daily Ashtanga yoga for over seven years prior to her first pregnancy, like any woman, she was faced with many unknowns. For her first birth, she chose to give birth in a small birthing center outside of Fukuoka, in the southwestern region of Japan, where she was living at the time. This was because she wanted to choose “the hand that would touch her baby’s head first”. She was able to have a natural, unmedicated birth with her then-husband, but the experience left her screaming at the top of her lungs in PAIN and left her feeling torn – mentally, emotionally and physically – for weeks afterwards. Her sense of disconnection left an idea of a thought in her mind that said, “If I do it again, I think I can do it much better next time.”
Mae went through a difficult divorce from her first husband only six months after the birth, leaving her to be a single parent to her first born son. In her mid-thirties, Mae met and remarried a wonderful man. They came together as a family and decided they wanted another child.
Eight years after her first birth experience, thanks in large part to her husband’s keen intuition, for her second birth, Mae switched from a clinic birth plan to a home birth at 28 weeks. In preparing for the home birth, May spent a lot of time deliberately redrawing her mindscape from seeing childbirth as a painful process to a possibly painless one. Her teachers were: yoga, meditation, guided relaxation practices, and a bunch of wild animals on YouTube that she watched and learned from.
In the end, Mae was able to give birth completely naturally and almost painlessly in the bathtub at home in Tokyo, with the help of her midwife and husband. Why “almost”? Wait until you hear her full story!
Five months after the birth of her second son, Mae lost the love of her life and the father of her children in a sudden car accident. The terrible grief plunged her into the depths of sorrow and isolation for some years. However, Mae says, “Everything she needs to know about dealing with pain in life, she learned from childbirth,” referring not only to her wisdom from all her years as a yoga practitioner, but ultimately to the liberating birth experience that taught her this: If you can change your mind, you can change your experience.
Mae Yoshikawa Bio
Mae is a writer, yoga and meditation practitioner, teacher and mother. In 2006, Mae became the first Japanese woman to be authorized by the founding school of Ashtanga Yoga in India. Having graced 42 consecutive covers and written a widely popular column for Japan’s Yogini magazine from 2003 to 2013, Mae helped lead a cultural shift in Japan—ensuring that yoga is seen not just as physical exercise, but rather as a holistic practice and lifestyle that will restore health and balance to the busy lives of modern people. Currently, she is known as the face of adidas yoga. Her third book (her first in English) is a poignant and moving memoir titled Kizuki, which chronicles her experience of finding herself again through grief, metaphorically weaving in her experiences of childbirth and parenting. (shortly).
Connect with Mae on Instagram @maeyoshikawa or Instagram.
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