This book tells the story of how Janet Meek, a US Diplomat, entered a deep, and ultimately very spiritual, journey when she gave birth to her own sons (two of them at home) and then went on to become a Certified Professional Midwife and helped several hundred women give birth in their own homes and in birth centers in Texas in the 1990s. Along the way she discovered some secrets of the Ancient Feminine Wisdom, the most key one of which is the need for women to go into non-ordinary states of consciousness in order to give birth. In the late 1990s she wanted to familiarize birthing women with non-ordinary states of consciousness before the birth, so she partnered with The Monroe Institute to develop a pioneering childbirth educational series (Opening the Way - Support for Pregnancy and Childbirth - 1996) that utilizes the Hemi-Sync patented sound technology. Birth Wild and Sacred tells the story about how the guided meditation series and the author's insight about the importance on altered states of consciousness to the birth process came about. This book also points out how medicalized birth often inadvertently interferes with the birth process and how caregivers and families - with or without Opening the Way and in accordance with their own spiritual and religious traditions - can create an environment that protects the mother's need for undisturbed, darkened, safe and secure space when she is giving birth. It is also a guide to how women can embrace unmedicated natural birth as a rite of passage into full empowerment, healing injured instinct, restoring intuition, exploring sexuality, and returning the sacred to birth.
About the Author: Janet Meek BioJanet Meek has blazed a few trails for women during her surprising career path from US Diplomat to White House staff member to stay-at-home mom, to Midwife. She entered the US Foreign Service straight from her Master's degree in Public Administration from George Washington University and served as a Projects Officer in the State Department's Secretariat at the time of Henry Kissinger. She then took an assignment in Seoul, Korea at the time of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, returning to Washington, D.C. for further training in Economics and an assignment in Latin American Affairs that eventually led her to be detailed to the National Security Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski.Her desire to raise her own son led her to make the wrenching decision to leave her high profile and promising career and head in a surprising new direction: joining the homebirth movement herself and then helping women throw off the rules and limitations imposed on them by medicalized childbirth. As a Certified Professional Midwife, she helped over 200 women give birth naturally in homes, clinics and hospitals in Texas in the 1990s, a deep and ultimately very spiritual journey. This led to the co-creation of a guided meditation series called Opening the Way - Support for Pregnancy and Childbirth with The Monroe Institute utilizing their patented sound technology - Hemi-Sync - to teach birthing mothers how to gently and confidently enter non-ordinary states of consciousness during their births. The series has been used by birthing mothers since 1996.After raising her three sons, the author returned to the Foreign Service in 1999 where she witnessed the tumultuous events of 9/11 on assignment in London. Her final assignment was in the Political-Military Bureau of the State Department (2003-2005) where she received a Superior Honor Award for her service during the security crises in Liberia, Sudan and Haiti.With her high-level window on world events, one would imagine the book that would come out of the author's experience would be about US Foreign Policy and her service as a Diplomat. However, the author feels that the ancient knowledge of the Feminine Mystery found in Birth Wild and Sacred is more important to the future of the world. For far too long women's wisdom has not been taken seriously and Nature has been considered a chaotic force that must be contained and improved upon by modern science and medicine. The book seeks to show that it is actually interference with the natural birth process that inadvertently causes the very complications that our modern obstetrical system seeks to avoid. She also wishes to inspire young women to restore their injured instinct, awaken their intuition, and embrace the rite of passage and empowerment of truly natural, unmedicated birth. The book offers quite a few secrets about how to do this by reducing fear, releasing inhibitions, exploring the sexuality of birth, and returning the sacred and ecstatic to birth.After retiring from the U.S. State Department in 2005, the author created Yanaguana, an experiment in sustainable living near Hunt, Texas. Built of cob and stone on the banks of the Guadalupe River, Yanaguana demonstrates principles of natural living. Ms. Meek is still promoting alternatives to medicalized birth and educating women about personal empowerment through the birth process. She is helping others apply the power of altered states of consciousness to personal healing and creativity as well as conscious birthing.