Cradling the womb: What is garbh sanskar and why is it practiced by women during pregnancy

Integrated nutrition health coach and yoga evaluator Vartika Mehta seen taking a pre-natal yoga class at the Adi Srijan Foundation in Opera House. Pic/Atul Kamble

In one of the more moving stories in the Mahabharata, we learn that Abhimanyu - the warrior son of Subhadra and Arjuna, and Krishna's nephew - was in his mother's womb when he first heard his uncle (in some versions, his father), tell Subhadra about the secret of the impenetrable military formation known as the Chakravyuha. At some point, she dozed off while listening to the story, and so while her unborn child learnt the secret of how to enter the Chakravyuha, he didn't know how to come out of it. Several years later, this would play out tragically in the Kurukshetra war, as young Abhimanyu, having committed that secret to memory, braves his way inside the dreaded Chakravyuha and fights with all his might, but dies while trying to get out.

For practitioners of garbh sanskar, an ancient Vedic science that encourages women to adopt a positive lifestyle before and during pregnancy, this is one of the earliest illustrations of why the womb plays such a vital | role in the development and growth of a child.

Dr Lalita Sancheti training pregnant women at the Jodhpur centre of Adi Srijan Foundation, an integrative nutrition and yoga centre

The practice found itself in the midst of a controversy last week, when Samvardhinee Nyas, a wing of Rashtra Sevika Samiti, the women's section of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), during a workshop organised at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, claimed that garbh sanskar could be used to raise patriotic children. A convener's claim at the workshop that gender expectations during pregnancy was the reason why children were coming out to the world as homosexual, also drew sharp criticism.

Prashant Agrawal is the co-founder of Ahmedabad-based Majestic Garbh Sanskar, an app-based service that promotes physical and mental wellbeing of pregnant mothers. They have been providing the service for the last 15 years. "Our work began out of this plain curiosity to know when a child actually begins to start learning," he says. While there were references in the shastras which spoke about how the child learns in their mother's womb, Agrawal says that it was important for them to draw from medical science research as well. And the studies, he said, didn't reveal anything different. For instance, a study from 2013, by Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, showed that unborn babies were listening to their mothers talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and at birth could demonstrate what they'd heard. Need any proof of how Abhimanyu entered the Chakravyuha?

Parents seen participating in a garbh samvad workshop by Majestic Garbh Sanskar. The guided meditation session has parents talk to the unborn child

Their own research involved interviewing mothers of several successful people, including PM Narendra Modi's late mother Heeraben. "She told us that when she was expecting her other children, her husband would read the Ramayana and Bhagwad Gita to her. But when she was pregnant with Narendrabhai, he also read aloud the Mahabharata, which is a political text. This perhaps explains his interest in politics," feels Agrawal. He, however, counters the recent claims of being able to infuse patriotism and influence the gender of the child through garbh sanskar. "It's just a primary lesson in parenting, which begins in the womb."

Agrawal, who is a development communications professional, says the goal of garbh sanskar is to raise healthy, loving and kindred children. Their curriculum involves a range of activities - meditation, yoga, chants, art and puzzle activities for the left and right brain development, storytelling from across religious texts where moral values are at the core, tips to keep the mother positive and happy, and positive affirmations that mums can say aloud to the child in the womb. "There are two crucial periods in a baby's development... the first six months in the womb and the last three months. Our activities are aimed at helping the mother ease through the entire nine months. Since most women do not reveal they are pregnant until three months, it's not always possible for us to start the courses from the beginning," he says. While Majestic Garbh Sanskar conducts daily Zoom workshops for free - around 20 lakh parents have registered for them - those registered with the app, a paid subscription, are given activities for the day.

Founders of Majestic Garbh Sanskar (from left) Prashant and Daya Agrawal, Jayshree and Hardik Upadhyay with their children

Ahmedabad-resident Krupali Arjun, who registered on the Majestic Garbh Sanskar app after her first trimester, continued practising garbh sanskar till the day she went into labour. She feels this helped her daughter, a pandemic baby, achieve her milestones earlier than usual. "By the time she was four months old, she had already started rolling over. When we got her a walker in her sixth month, she would run around the home, so much so that we needed to constantly be around her. Even now, she is quite active. She also has great memory and has learnt rhymes, the alphabet and numbers without too much prodding on our part."

According to the Vedic tradition, the human life is divided into 16 sanskara. Of these, three occur in the womb - garbhadhan sanskar (conception), punsavan (three to five months), and semantonayan (seven months). For the founders and directors of Adi Srijan Foundation, an integrative nutrition and yoga centre specialising in garbh sanskar, which runs out of Mumbai and Jodhpur, this is the premise guiding their work. Mumbai-based Vartika Mehta, who is director and co-founder, started practising garbh sanskar over nine years ago, when she was expecting. "I had had a miscarriage before my daughter was born... so she was a precious pregnancy," recalls Mehta, adding, "I wanted to enter this phase [of pregnancy] with the right intention." Mehta, a practising Jain, started researching garbh sanskar, adopting a few exercises into her daily routine. "For starters, I read the Bhaktamara stotra [a powerful Jain Sanskrit prayer] daily... I also did a lot of musical therapy, listening to everything from the Gayatri Mantra to Bach and Beethoven, and did pre-natal yoga," shares the integrated nutrition health and yoga coach. The results, she saw with her daughter, now nine and whom she describes as "very calm and a natural problem-solver", compelled her to curate a garbh sanskar plan along with Dr Lalita Sancheti, also co-founder-director of Adi Srijan for other pregnant mothers. Mehta says that work stress and poor lifestyle have contributed to a rise in cases of PCOS and infertility. "What we are doing is helping them fix their lifestyle and resetting the system... not just during pregnancy, but even before they plan to have a child."

Krupali Arjun

Sancheti says that "garbh sanskar begins with garbh shuddhi, which means cleansing the uterus". Nutrition (ahar), rest and recreation (vihaar) and emotional health (vichaar) by practising yoga and meditation helps achieve this. They believe that genes can be altered by nutrition, and the way you sleep and act, and this helps in the quality of eggs and sperms that are produced. While pregnant, women are encouraged to meditate and chant from texts that they are comfortable with; this is supplemented with medical nutrition therapy and pre-natal yoga. "Your lifestyle and your thoughts while pregnant, will impact the child. They learn the same things," says Sancheti.

Sancheti, who is a certified pre-natal yoga instructor, employs Gayatri Anushthan, a technique that finds mentions in the Vedas, that invokes Gayatri Devi, the mother of child birth, through prayer, mantra and meditation. "Mantras have the same beneficial effects as sound therapy... the vibrations can have a direct impact on the child." "But garbh sanskar is not religious in nature," Mehta and Sancheti insist, saying it is for anyone and everyone. "In fact, for my Muslim clients, I suggest they offer namaaz [which involves repeating a few Quranic verses]," says Mehta.

Vartika Mehta, Dr Sonal Kumta and Gayatri Anushthan

Dr Sonal Kumta, senior consultant obstetrics and gynaecology at Fortis Hospital in Mulund, doesn't see a problem with garbh sanskar. "We gynaecologists look at patients in the pre-conception period, during pregnancy as well as sometime after the birth. During this time, we advice patients on eating right, following an exercise routine and yoga, deep breathing and even resting well."

According to her, holistic wellbeing is something doctors have always emphasised. "So we don't dissuade our patients from practising any kind of sanskar, as long as they feel it's benefiting them. Pregnant mothers thrive in a comfortable environment - anything positive that is reinforced is always good for both the mother and the child," she says.