My neighbour is an avid windsurfer, a sport she says is more about skill than strength.  I have a tendency –– with stubborn lids, pesky locks or hard-to-open packaging –– to use brute force with zero patience and no technique. Minus bashing a door down or breaking a piñata, few things are accomplished that way. When I was in the pushing stages of childbirth with Antimo, I remember the nurse, Irina, encouraging me not to push with such wild abandon. “Stop sending your energy to your fists and your wrists and your toes. Send it to the right place.” Her advice helped, and minutes later, out flew my beautiful, 9 lbs baby boy. Luma was my longest and most physically challenging labour of the three, but my body must have learned something along the way, because I have never felt as controlled, confident and in sync with another human being as as I did pushing her tiny body into the world.