Birth

During vaginal birth, a baby’s journey down the birth canal serves as its intimate introduction to its mother’s vaginal microbiome, the distinct combination of bacteria that go on to help the growing human deal with infection, train its immune system, and help it process food.

Birthing is a woman’s organic opportunity to become empowered through a challenging, physical encounter with the forces of life and death. A birthing woman actually stands on the edge of life and death, at the doorway between them, and (in service to the race) brings a new soul from there to here. What could be more shamanic than