It was a hot day like today when I was last at the famous Zen Rock Garden of the Ryoan-ji Temple  in Kyoto, Japan.   It was a very still and peaceful place, save for the other tourist moving about and inserting herself into my photo.

I sat at the edge and contemplated my breath while gazing  at the gently raked rock garden gleaming brightly in the heat of the day.

I am often reminded of this feeling when I am in the presence of a Conscious Breastfeeding mother and baby.  There is a stillness that descends upon the nursing couple.  A rhythmic sound of breathing and soft swallowing comes from the baby while it is feeding.  The mom looks serene and comfortable as she is very much in the moment.

In this fast paced world in which we live, each breastfeeding session offers an opportunity to become centered and quiet.  A mother can connect deeply with her baby, both literally and figuratively.  She is sharing her physical and emotional space, as well as her milk, with him or her during this time. 

The sales pitch for breastfeeding is that it can be done on the go- anytime, anywhere.  Although this may be true, I strongly encourage moms to explore the benefits of  a more zen experience.

A Conscious Breastfeeding mom creates a sacred space in her home where she is able to focus fully on breastfeeding her baby.  Ideally she will be using a high-backed chair.   Seated with both shoulders resting against the chair, she will draw her baby deeply onto her breast for a pain-free latch.  A secondary benefit of  her good  posture is that she will be facilitatating a sense of comfort and calm in both herself and her baby.  Feedings done this way become a form of zazen, or sitting meditation.  

In Zen Begin, Live Your Life the Zen Way, this Zen-Meditation is explained… 

Zen is all about focus. Meditation or zazen is an exercise in creating a one- pointedness of mind. The comparison with muddy water is often made. In calm water the mud sinks to the bottom and the water becomes clear.

A Conscious Breastfeeding mom puts her baby to her breast in an intentional manner; she maintains a calm pose and deep rhythmic breathing throughout each feeding session.   As a result, she and her baby come away feeling rested and fortified.  The baby will be in quiet alert and receptive to socialization and interaction with her and other family members; mom’s mind will be more clear and focused.

This mother and child statue was at the edge of hot spring in the Japanese Alps.   May she inspire you to embrace the the Zen of Conscious Breastfeeding.

What has been your experience of this special breastfeeding time with your baby?

Every four years I overdose on watching the ‘Beautiful Game’; it is called soccer here in the U.S. and football (futbol) in the rest of the world.  The  coverage of  the 2010 World Cup from South Africa has been amazing.  In the past, I had to watch most of the matches on my local Spanish language channel or at a bar with closed-circuit tv because they were not aired in English until the semi-finals.   

This year, I have watched it not only in pubs or my home, but also on my phone at Starbucks. Twitter and Facebook have allowed me to share the experience in real time with family, friends and fellow fans all over the world.  Social networking in its most pure form.

It has struck me on more than one occasion during this marathon of writing and sports watching that my two passions have things in common. 

• Global Reach
• Really beautiful use of human body
• Entry to experience is free or very low-cost
• Avid Fans
• Teamwork necessary for success

ESPN has developed a series of promotional videos on a variety of themes that are raised by this global sport.  A shorty funny one refers to the mini baby boom noted in Germany 9 months after the previous World Cup in 2006.  Since the Germans are not in the finals, it will be interesting to see what, if any, impact this has by the end of April 2011. 

Who knows maybe there will  be a mini baby boom the world over of passionate  new soccer fans who are breastfed!

FIFA , the international governing body of football, is supporting an important global initiative during this 2010 World Cup, Football For Hope.

The object of Football For Hope is to bring together, support, advise and strengthen sustainable social and human development programmes in the areas of peace, children’s rights and education, health, anti-discrimination and social integration as well as the environment…

Over the past 25 years, the profession of lactation consulting has worked hard to shine the spotlight on breastfeeding.  World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated each year from August 1-7.  It would be amazing if these two groups would unite forces and make some enduring connections for the good of our global community.

It is my fantasy that someday soon, breastfeeding will garnish some of the same economic clout and mass appeal that continues to grow for the ‘Beautiful Game’.

Viva España!  Breast is Best!

We live in a world that revolves around information; knowledge on any given subject appears to be just one google search or click away.  This may explain why an increasing number of students who come to my classes lately seem to be there merely to confirm what they think they already know versus wanting to actually learn something new.  

Adult learners, often find it difficult to be open to the richness of a learning experience when they fear judgement or criticism.  It is often more important to be right than to risk being wrong or feeling like a complete newbie.

I am reminded of my first day in Japanese class. 

The appearance of a diminutive teacher who immediately began speaking in a foreign tongue made me feel at loose ends.  I ultimately mastered enough spoken Japanese that I was able to spend several wondrous holidays travelling throughout Japan.  I immersed myself in the culture and made many new friends.  My language skills have gotten rusty, but rudimentary communication is still  possible for me with little effort. 

A love of learning has impacted my approach to teaching.  There are several learning styles auditory, visual, kinesthetic.  It is not uncommon for some of us to use more than one at any given time to learn and anchor an experience into our memory. 

When your brain is under the misimpression that it already knows something you tend to filter for new data or for things that do not fit your preconceived notions.  Often that filtering process impedes learning because the mind is only attentive to parts of the whole. 

When participants ask me questions using terms and words that I have not uttered and ascribe them to me, it becomes clear that they are at best only selectively listening during class.  When these queries come from their own internal dialogue and are not directly related to content delivered, I thank them and clarify what I had actually said.  Hopefully, this helps them to take in a piece of new information. 

It turns out that cultural differences, apart from language, can also have a bearing on how the students in my classroom may interpret and receive the information.  According to the article published in the Winter edition of Tufts Magazine, ‘The Brain in the World-A Burgeoning Science Explores the Deep Imprint of Culture’, the field of cultural neuroscience is only about two years old. 

Tufts psychology professor Nalini Ambady puts it this way: cultural neuroscience shows that “there is malleability in the neural structure depending on cultural exposure.” The brain, she says, is a “sponge that absorbs cultural information.” What she and other cultural neuroscientists have discovered is that although the brains of people from different cultures do not exhibit large structural differences, certain neural pathways do become more ingrained from immersion in a particular culture. They’ve also learned that those differences in brain function can influence our emotions, our behavior, and our attitudes toward people from cultures other than our own.

It goes on to describe a study done with American and Japanese subjects who were shown groups of photographs and asked to rate them according to the characteristics of dominance, maturity, likeability and trustworthiness.  The researcher, Rule, then broke those down into two sub-groups of power and warmth.  The Americans overwhelmingly favored the powerful faces and the Japanese the warm ones.  When fMRI scans were done it was noted that the Americans were using the analytical parts of their brains and the Japanese the emotional areas.

But what he discovered surprised him: both groups were using the same part of the brain—the amygdala. Sometimes called the “lizard brain,” the amygdala, which has been with us since the early days of our evolutionary journey, helps us detect threats, but it has a more general function as well, signifying increased attention to any object in the outside world. In this case, the amygdala was firing for both the American and the Japanese groups when they saw the picture of the leader they preferred.

It should be noted that the amygdala is also a prime area for the infant’s experience of breastfeeding.  

As a teacher, I am left to wonder how I might better engage these amygdalas, the cultural command central of the brains of these mothers-to-be? The answer may lie in the common thread of child-like wonder that is a constant in every culture while we are young. 

So it not just the words, visuals and the practice of positions, but a cultural sensitivity that may ensure breastfeeding instruction does not get lost in translation.

What do you think? What has worked for you?

Today is the first day of the feast of St. Fermin, the patron of the festival which runs annually from 7.7-7.14 in Pamplona, Spain.

Pamplona Memories flood back to me.  I vividly remember cheering for Holland with the legions of orange clad fans that followed their matches in the local pubs.  Now, 12 years later, the Dutch have made it into the finals of the World Cup.  Spain plays Germany in the semi-finals on this auspicious Spanish feast day for the other slot.  This 2010 World Cup will be an all Europe final falling within the week of ‘the Running of the Bulls’.

Leather wine flasks, Botas, were being used by many of the festival goers.  My teaching mind saw an immediate and workable analogy between the human breast and those popular items of the festival of St. Fermin.  It occurred to me that the breast also expands and contracts with the volume of milk within it.  Both a wine sack and the breast are never really empty, but will always have some residual left at the bottom once filled with liquid.  To new moms who might be tempted to think of their breasts in terms of being full or empty this new frame of reference makes much better sense and alleviates much unnecessary anxiety.

As you may have noticed in the video above, the assembled crowds all got the memo and were unified in wearing a garb of white and red.  It was difficult to distinguish ourselves among the sea of people dressed the same way.  People were assembled from all over the world.  We were all part of one big family, more alike than different.  A unity that should also apply to breastfeeding.

The notion of solidarity by costume or color is not new.  Pink is for Breast Cancer awareness.  Purple is worn by those who support research for Alzheimers.  The lactation consulting world has made efforts to make Gold be the color of breastfeeding promotion to represent the liquid gold of human milk as the gold standard of infant feeding.

I watched from the sidelines while my brothers joined the ranks of those actually running with the bulls. I may have been a mere observer for those runs, but the same thing cannot be said about my participation in breastfeeding promotion.  I am steadfast in my efforts to inspire, educate, support and empower mothers to revel in the grandeur of their bodies which are so perfectly designed to nurture their babies for 9 months and beyond through the miracle of breastfeeding.

I envision the day, in the not too distant future, when the same fervor I witnessed for the running of the bulls of Pamplona will be expended on being bullish for breastfeeding.

Won’t you join me?  Be part of the change we want to see…Be Bullish for Breastfeeding!

A  lifetime of painful experiences, including contracting polio, a near fatal bus accident, a tumultuous marriage and infidelities, multiple miscarriages, served as the inspiration for her paintings.  She continually pushed the envelope of social convention as she struggled to find her identity and come to terms with what it meant to be a Mexican woman.  

One of her more powerful paintings, ‘My Nurse and I’ gives us an idea of how this journey began for Frida.

Frida’s mother fell into a postpartum depression in the months following her birth and handed her over to a nanny.  There are reports that her wet nurse was drinking and offered little nurturing and care to her as an infant.  This lack of bonding is thought to have been the impetus for her perpetual attempts at giving birth to and mothering herself through her art.  

There are many layers to this painting.   The masked nurse hints at a shameful and victimized version of the Mexican mother, La Malinche.   Seemingly abandoned by her own mother, she was left to nurture her own development to adulthood.  On a more positive note, she connects to her Mexican homeland and indigenous culture symbolically through this act of breastfeeding.

As a breastfeeding advocate, I find it disturbing to see this impersonal depiction of what should be a primal bonding experience between a mother and her child or between a loving mother surrogate, wet nurse, and child. 

Frida Kahlo shared with us in this painting what she perceived to be the lack of the milk of human kindness that was offered to her while she was at the breast.  Although this had left a bad taste in her mouth, she still portrayed breastfeeding as the cultural norm for her time.

What feelings does this painting evoke in you?