Imagining birth as the baby experiences it was an entirely new way of looking at it.

This tragic brow, these closed eyes, eyebrows raised and knotted.

Yes, hell exists. It is not a fairy tale. One indeed burns there. This hell is not at the end of life. It is here. At the beginning. Hell is what the infant must experience before he gets to us.

Being touched and caressed, being massaged, is food for the infant; food as necessary as minerals, vitamins, and proteins. Deprived of this food, the name of which is love, Babies would rather die. And often they do.

Learn to respect this sacred moment of birth, as fragile, as fleeting, as elusive as dawn.

The one you confront in Yoga is yourself. All that is rigid and stiff in you, all that says 'No.

Birth may be a matter of a moment, but it is a unique one.