Sublime

Leboyer birth,*

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

In

And while midwifery—female midwifery—is still a thriving occupation in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands,

Marija Gimbutas chronicles many customs from Lithuania that demonstrate this unbroken thread from the past, including the use of saunas for birthing right up into the twentieth century.

It’s not how you give birth, it’s how you’re cared for that really matters,”