When a woman gives birth, she can have the best support people around her: a loving devoted partner, a friend, a sister, a mother, a midwife and doula, beautiful ambience, best medical support. All of these things are nurturing and supportive and definitely create the most optimal conditions for bringing life into the world. It is certainly my passion to help women attain the highest ideal birth environment, creating these conditions by education and example.

Beyond all those things being in place, whether they are in existence or not (and having them is definitely better than not), in the end, it is only the woman alone who can deliver the baby.

Once a baby knows to be born, there is nothing you can do to stop the progression of birth.

During birth, there will always be a time when the mother reaches her absolute limits, of feeling that she just cannot take anymore, where all the support around her means absolutely nil in her mind. It is in that place, in that moment, that a mother must dig deeper than she has ever known in her life. So she digs. She goes even more inwardly focused than she thought possible, she searches and reaches into herself and finds strengths she didn’t know she had. In doing so she reaches a place of knowing and this knowing can be terrifying: “I am beyond the point of no return, I cannot deep any digger, there is nothing else to give, nothing else I can do”.

So she does the only thing she can … she surrenders. Because that is all she can do – all knowing, all formulas, all options, all thought, all plans – all of it disappears.

Then life, life that knows it’s own timing, it’s own pace, it’s own magical mystery, takes over. And life births the baby through that transition. Then once again, life gives control back to the mother and says ‘Push!’ – but the mother knows now it is just an illusion. She has no control over pushing, she can only follow the urge and ride the wave, maximising it’s potential.

“Aaah”, but you say, “you are wrong, a mother doesn’t need to do it all alone, she can choose to have someone else deliver her baby, she can have a medicalised, scientific approach to life and have the baby excised from her”.

Why would I, as woman, choose that? When life gives me the opportunity to embrace all that it is to be feminine, all that it is to feel the absolute power of life course through my body, to feel it in it’s rawest, most magnificent, most divine and scary form, why would I allow myself to be deprived of that by choosing something cold, harsh and clinical? Why choose man-made instruments over the natural wonder of our bodies?

Giving birth is not just a physical act. Being present to the symbology of birth, to have the opportunity to dig deeper into yourself than you ever have before, to feel at one with the very creative force of life, to work with nature, prepares us for everything in life – not just birth.

I find it in myself to get up in the middle of the night, when I am so tired I feel disoriented and distraught, because I have already learnt from the experience of giving birth the amazing capabilities of my human body and spirit.

I find it possible to keep my heart open, to embrace all of life, even the painful harshness of the door to love sometimes being slammed shut in my face, because I have learnt through birth that pain and fear often walks hand-in-hand with magnificent triumph.

I have no problem with science and the marvellous creations of man, of the fantastic ability to problem solve and find helpful solutions to the misfortunes of life. A caesarian has it’s place if it saves lives – but too many people choose it over the naturalness of birth, of being this beautiful flesh and body machine we already perfectly are.

I am grateful for what science has given us – it expands our thinking, our way of being, it enables us to know ourselves as creators and masters – but it should never be mistaken for reality, for life itself. Science may help a woman and baby from potential death, but it should never be used to clinically remove us from what it means to be human, to deprive a mother from the initiation into that which will sustain her as she raises a child. When a woman gives birth naturally, with the support of loved and trusted family, friends and mentors surrounding her – we all become aware of the fact it takes a village to raise a child, that everyone has a purpose and investment in the sacred life of that child. When a woman gives birth in a cold, sterile environment, willingly handing over all responsibility of welcoming her child into the world to a stranger, a dangerous detachment happens across all levels of consciousness and physical reality.

Medicalised science has done much, well intentionally, to ease mankind of pain. Yet time and time again I observe how science has taken what should be used as a tool to assist – and made it an across the board ‘one size fits all’ solution. In this regard, science has been no better or worse than religion. People speak of religious horrors and atrocities, of countless deaths and injustices. Yet the same people will forget the millions of deaths that still happen every day across the world from mistakes and mis-managment by science. Hospitals have become a very stark reality of this.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to anything, even the Journey process is only one of many tools that can help people to freedom. Yet if one knows the Journey as a way of life, then it becomes, just like birth, a pattern for being present to the flow of life.

There is always a better way. Giving birth can be orgasmic, can be ecstatic and intoxicating. Living life is orgasmic, ecstatic and intoxicating. Not by trying to avoid pain, but by embracing pain and going so deep within pain, so deep into the inner landscape of our human body and psyche, that pain is transcended and liberated.

Women in birth are at their most vulnerable … and most powerful. A woman in birth cannot run away from danger and all her senses are heightened to everything around her and within her. Simultaneously, woman in birth knows herself as part of the most powerful expression of life force, the energy coursing through her body to deliver this new life into the world. Women know how to embrace both the spiritual and our humanness, to embody the dichotomy of what it is to be human, through their experience – not through concept.

Science has it’s place. Just like having all the best support people around a woman at birth, like having the most beautiful music and soft environment – having medical support nearby is prudent. But to think that science could replace all of that is to take away a basic human right, that of the women’s ability to do it alone.