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Late Summer Newsletter by Jeannine Parvati Baker August 2002 "Some like it hot" takes on new meaning late this summer. From the personal to the political, the heat is full on. This newsletter is dedicated to the fire of freedom and the truth that will set us free. As Starhawk's song declares, "Freedom is the fire burning through our veins."
You see Gloria was arrested for practicing midwifery without a license. In Canada, through the Midwifery Act, all midwives must register with the State. Yet Gloria believes as I do: "Let's keep the State out of our bedrooms." We worked together for many moons (via email) to set up workshops to bring the message of Hygieia College, "Every mother is a midwife," to B.C. However, just before Halley and I left from Utah, I got an email from Gloria that sent my heart to the ground. The Vancouver midwife had her arraignment just before we were scheduled to arrive. "Small fly in the ointment," she said in her email. "I may go to jail."
Each day she let us know how she was doing. She raised bail and would be released the first day of the Midwifery Workshop. Gloria phoned me several times from prison and we talked as long as we could before she was either called to play first baseman in the ball game or it was time for the sweat lodge. (Not exactly cruel and unusual punishment.) She said it was actually "lovely" in prison. She had her meals prepared For her and could use a work-out room. Compared to the responsibilities at home, it was like a health spa. My dear midwife friend Abby had a similar experience some years ago. She served over a two-year term in prison for practicing midwifery illegally. When she got out, she looked healthier than I had ever seen her! Gloria was denied her release pending appeal because while she was in prison, she palpated a cellmate's pregnant belly. When the authorities found out, she was mandated to stay. In 40 days or so, if she is a "good girl," she can serve out the rest of her five-month term by spending nights in prison and going home during the day. Although she couldn't attend the workshop, Gloria was with us in spirit as we raffled off donations to raise money for her legal fees. I was sad that I missed getting to know Gloria in person while I was there. I had met her only once at a Waterbirth Conference in Oregon a few years ago. Already we have decided to bring me back to Vancouver in 2003. Perhaps we will have a Wild Woman Vision Camp and Hygieia College Reunion on Vancouver Island next summer? I can hardly wait! 
Back to the tour in
Canada, like many tourists, I had some hassle with entering the country. Gloria
had bought our tickets with my name, "Jeannine Parvati Baker."
Unfortunately, my passport bears my middle name, Ann. They wouldn't let me in
with this discrepancy. I spent plenty
of time on the
phone digging up the papers that would prove I was the
same person. I even
rang my ex-husband to ask him if he recalls the month and year of our divorce
when the judge awarded me the
legal middle name
of "Parvati" instead of "Ann." He laughed and we had a fun
talk together. We even made a date to "do lunch - a power lunch," as
he suggested (my ex-husband is a doctor), the next time I visit Sonoma County.But no, my ex had none of the divorce documents. My daughter Cheyenne, who still lives in the county where we divorced, went to the courthouse and obtained the document. Looking through the papers, she happened on the results of my IQ test, since the court required that test when I requested joint custody. It was no fun taking that test under duress, and I remember coming to the math section and praying, then guessing at the answers. I scored in the very top percentile on that section, much to my surprise! (Thank you, Great Spirit.) The psychologist administering the test told me he would advise the lawyer to suppress that test score. Why? Because judges hate it when mothers are more "intelligent" than they. Cheyenne then told me that my IQ was 191. So my mother was right all along; I am a lot smarter than I thought! With the divorce documents in hand, we finally got through customs. Sohrab, the partner of our hostess Nicole Seeds, picked us up at the Vancouver Airport as Halley & I sat beneath the totem pole in the sunshine. Lots of people enjoyed the sun rays, which as it turns out, was unusual for this area. Immediately I liked this place. When we got off the plane, we were ushered through a high-ceilinged area with flowing water, lush plants and the ubiquitous totem poles of the first people of Vancouver. How healthy Canadians are to design an international airport like this, refreshingly beautiful. The sculptures and art were inspiring and everyone was kind and helpful.  The first day in
B.C., we did the only sight-seeing of our trip - to the
ocean! We went to
Jericho, a favorite beach access with Hope, Nicole and her prenate, and her
exuberant 4 year old son Zubin. Here I lost my neck band that
keeps my camera
from misplacement as well as my timepiece. Already I was
unconsciously
losing the "safety cord" and "time" in preparation of the
Prenatal Yoga Teacher's Training and Midwifery Workshops. Years ago it came to
me that time was an imposition on the birth experience when I realized that
labor starts at conception. Hence, no tracking of time (except the moment of
the first perceptible breath).Indeed, during the first days, I had no external way to measure the time for breaks and the lunch hour for the workshop. It was a real-life experience of my long-held belief that measuring time invades our real sense of how time passes. The workshop went well, and on the last night of July, I gave a talk at the Bahai Centre to a full and generous Canadian audience. The three hours flew by as I talked. Now that I am a progressed Leo, I find that the bigger the audience, the more articulate I am. The word medicine speaks to the souls of families. From the ensuing dialogue, I learned a lot about the current state of affairs regarding birth in B.C. and how many Canadians still are under-educated about circumcision and episiotomy, the two most prevalent forms of routine genital mutilation that are birth related. From that talk, we began to book private consultations for the last two days of our stay in Vancouver, an important step in educating people about intactness. The first day of August, we began the Workshops at the Vancouver YWCA. I welcomed any government agents (Gloria was caught in a "sting" operation by undercover agents in her midwifery study group) and announced that after the yoga workshop, they were going to feel so good! 
Prenatal Yoga
turned out to be fashionable in Vancouver and indeed, all over Canada. Women
come from across the continent to the Teacher's Training. Even Americans show
up and we had a very full house. I had no idea that my book of the same title
was so popular in Canada. Out came the threadbare copies, even first editions
of PNY (which are now rare and over 25 years old), for me to sign.I met yoginis whose mothers had practiced PNY from my book and they showed the benefits of beginning a yoga practice from even before their own births. As one attendee said, "You young women are so beautiful!" I agreed; if only the women doing yoga could see themselves as I did, they would need sunglasses, for their radiance was indeed brilliant. Most of the attendees in the workshop were yoga teachers and the rest were childbirth educators, doulas and midwives. I learned so much from my students, which is my main motive for being a teacher. Years ago when I wrote PNY and met my yoga teacher, Baba Hari Dass, I began the very first PNY classes in Santa Cruz. Already I had been sharing prenatal yoga with students in Sonoma County yet I was making it up as I went along. When I met an authentic yogi, I asked Babaji for advice and he wrote on his little chalkboard, "Teach to learn." This has stayed with me ever since.  Thank the God-Us for Halley. She had learned, for one example, how to do hand mudras from the pratyahara practice in Ashtanga Yoga. When I would
forget a sequence, I could glance at her and get right back on track. Indeed, some women remarked upon our relationship in this way, "See, if we take care of children when they are young, they will take care of us when we get older." This is the truth; Halley does take care of me when we tour. She handles much of the business aspect now, and she makes sure that I am on time at airport gates as well as in the workshops. When I give private consultations, her strong Virgo really comes out and she will make sure that I end at the agreed-upon time. In one sense, she midwifes the midwife as only a daughter can. I love having Halley with me all of the time so sharing my life as a workshop leader is part of the whole package. A few years ago I went to Australia first and later Switzerland without Halley (only once each time - Halley and Quinn have since toured both Australia and Europe with me). I spent almost as much on long distance calls as I would have on airfare so I figured that if I just bought her an accompanying ticket, it could be justified to my "inner accountant." Around that time, Halley then extracted a promise from me that she could come on any tour that she wanted. 
I have kept my
promise, though financially it may not be the wisest, yet when all is said and
done, she is only 15 years old and my lastborn child. That she wants to travel
with me is an honor. As long as she's willing to go with me, I'm grateful to
have her along.Back to the Yoga Workshop. Looking at the attendees during the workshop, I found only one woman who seemed to be dissatisfied so I asked the group at the close of the first day how I might be able to serve them better. She spoke right up. I also surprised myself in asking for us all to be aware of our dreams and that my intuition was that someone would have a dream for the group. The woman who had the scowl on her face did ask me to do more asana (yoga poses) the next day. That night and the following morning before the workshop I thought a lot about her: Not only about what postures we might do the next day, but also I sent her love. The second day of the PNY Workshops, she approached me right at the very beginning informing me that she did have a dream that she wanted to share with the group. Her countenance had transformed overnight. This morning she was happy and smiling. When she shared her dream, and her process inspired by this dream, we saw why. Her dream was simple. It took place in her home, a yoga studio. There were lots of hypodermic needles lying about the floor. She was frantically trying to clear them away before the pregnant yoga students arrived. Her feeling was anxious, confused and embarrassed. The dreamer explained to us that all day yesterday, long buried and deep feelings about her own births came up. She had originally signed on for the workshop to learn how to teach prenatal yoga as a "good business move." She was surprised to learn that not only was this true, but that she would heal her own birth dis-appointment. Primal health trans-lates as sound business, too. In only one of three births did she stay with her newborn after birth and this child, now a grown-up, is the one with whom she has the most intimate relationship to this day. By listening to me speak, she understood the primal reasons why this closeness with only one child exists. At long last, she could let herself off of the hook of mother guilt from the past. The Midwifery Workshop was likewise healing for the participants. As in the Prenatal Yoga Workshop, I learned an immense amount from the Canadians. For some doulas, birth educators and midwives, this was the first time they had ever sat in a circle or participated in any ceremony or song in a workshop. For the earth- based midwives, they felt right at home and longed for this format in their own meetings. For two days we studied the mysteries of midwifery; how to be more effective in healing the Earth by healing Birth, and cultivated our intuition as well as widened our knowledge base to serve families. We also laughed and cried with abandon and even danced to the song Grandmother Spider gave me many years ago to share with "Wild Women, Mothers, Midwives and Healers". Throughout the workshop, I showed excerpts from the documentary on freebirth, "A Clear Road to Birth" by Judy Seaman. This has proven to be the most potent way to express my vision of orgasmic birth at home. As the Canadian laws have made it difficult for midwives to attend homebirths, as it is in the USA, freebirth may yet be a viable option. It certainly is for a healthy population of possible families who have already birthed their babies at home without the paid paranoid or other interference from the State or medical monopoly, not only in Canada, as I discovered when I met them in person, but all over the world.  The two-day
workshop explored the curriculum of Hygieia's Mystery
School: conscious
conception, freebirth, herbs, dreams, politics, Lotus Birth, astrology and
Psyche's Midwife (psycho-sexuality). It was such a success that a tour for 2003
is already in the works. Many herbalists came to the workshops and we were
treated each day to a sumptuous feast courtesy of Erin,
Mojave, Hope and
many others. Purslane salads, nori rolls, tofu curries, and other fresh fruits
and veggies in season from their organic gardens and as the Goddess Cornucopia
invites, the daily pot-lucks had an abundance of exquisite food.We have invitations to hold a Hygieia College Reunion or Wild Woman Vision Camp (Family Vision Camp?) on Vancouver Island (and other venues in B.C.) next summer. If you are interested, please contact me, for it takes about a year to co-create one of these gatherings. Hygieia student Amy Labadie of Sooke, B.C. has offered to coordinate a 2003 Canadian Gathering 250.642.74575 earthboundcreations@shaw.ca The last two days of our Vancouver visit, I consulted with 13 charts in private sessions with the new families I had met the previous 5 days. I offer almost instant astrology with my handy laptop and then send the charts to print via email when I get home. Whenever I give private sessions, I make room for a barter. This time, it was with Elizabeth Perry, masseuse extraordinaire. I watched how she touched things and she was consistently gentle. As Halley hadn't ever had a massage from anyone but me and her father, or shoulder or foot rubs from her brothers and sisters, I traded Elizabeth massages for Halley and I for her astrology reading. All parties were blissed by the exchange. If ever in Vancouver, I recommend her aroma therapy based massage - Liz_Perry@hotmail.com or 604.879.0059. 
Over and again, the
theme for doulas is strong Cancerian, 4th house and/or lunar influences - for
midwives, what else? Scorpio, and the 8th house are unusually powerful. I love
seeing the family themes and assist parents to
understand their
children better, as well as their partners. Many Canadian couples had incredibly
high compatibility between their horoscopes, as well as family harmony with
their naturally born children.As astrology charts were the only ones I kept as a midwife all of those years, I could draw upon the horoscopes of the parents and transits of the babies to see what was going on beneath the surface. The astrology chart is a map of consciousness and can provide a great deal of "anecdotal evidence" for a midwifery practice and all of us in general. I am fond of saying that just as a geneticist can read a DNA printout and describe the organism from the data, so can an astrologer read a horoscope and describe the psychology of the individual. Finally, I got to read the horoscope of a geneticist on this tour, the man of the house, Sohrab, where we were staying in Vancouver. He teaches biomedicine at the University and directly works with DNA charts. He instantly "got it" and granted the reading for he had summarily dismissed astrology before (as most western scientists initially do). I was honored to be his first astrologer. Indeed, he immediately understood the connections when he saw his firstborn son's Moon on his Ascendant, and his son's Ascendant on his wife's Sun, then calculated the probabilities. This is precisely one indicator that I have noted for the birth time of a baby, in order to place the Sun, Moon and Ascendant in combinations on the parents' horoscopes. In a spontaneous birth, the baby and parents have compatibility between the luminaries (Sun-present-spirit, Moon-past-soul) and their Ascendants (identity-destiny-future). Now we are home again until the next tour to Colorado, the first Rocky Mountain Herbal Gathering Aug. 31 - Sept. 2nd near Boulder. A couple of weeks after the Herbal Gathering, Halley and I travel to NY for the Green Nations Gathering Sept. 
13-15th. We have been doing this event since Halley was a baby, every other
year, alternating with the Women's Herb Conference in New Hampshire. It is a
wonderful celebration with as much serious study of plants as you want for
three days at the YMCA Camp in
Claryville. Please
see our Tour Schedule for more information (on our web site - www.freestone.org).As much as we love traveling, there is no place like home. The web and home businesses were deftly handled by Quinn, Gannon tended to the house and gardens with his green thumb, and Rico joined us for the weekend reunion. We gardened, set up the guest room, investigated how to refinance our house, and discussed the on-going drama with North Atlantic Books / Frog, Ltd., the distributors of two of our Freestone Books, Prenatal Yoga and Conscious Conception. A longer account of how the National Writers Union (www.nwu.org) is organizing a grievance against NAB / Frog with other authors who, like our small self publishing house, have been disadvantaged by this Berkeley publishing house, is forthcoming. For the time being, discourage any author or artist from working with North Atlantic / Frog Ltd. 
Just as the menfolk
leave for Moab, Verena Schmidt arrives via Boston
and The Farm in
Tennessee, all the way from Italy for a visit. She is a
Hygieia student in
Florence who founded Il Marsupio and edits Dona e Dona. Her work is cited in
Michel Odent's new book, The Farmer and The Obstetrician. She is an ideal house guest and we share
birth stories to discover how kindred Italian mamas and North American moms are
when birth turns a mother inside out.This was the weekend that Halley and I could have been at the 65th birthday celebration of my cousin, Kip King. However, he was hospitalized on his (re)birthday and the party was postponed. Kip is now home again and our family is grateful for his speedy recovery. We were close to skipping the last flight from L.A. to Salt Lake City, yet lucky that we decided to come straight home from Canada on intuition, rather than stay over in Los Angeles. There was a tremendous amount of Freestone Innerprizes work awaiting my return that commanded immediate attention. Phone consultations, astrology readings, Hygieia Lessons, and Six Directions work (writing for the mosquito abatement program - West Nile River virus) keeps me 
at desk a lot of the day. We also needed to get a building permit to have a
meter installed for the natural gas stove now installed in our Joseph
General Store.Yet the gorgeous garden calls and this is the perfect season in central Utah to be outdoors. The ferocious heat let up while we were in Canada and the long days have a hint of autumn now. The birds are intently flocking, just like teens do before school begins. The mornings are crisp and the air smells like pumpkin pie in the oven. Color everywhere as the flowers parade their glory and I stand still, watching the flow of beauty around me. In the stillness, I remember that I am like a plant with portable roots and off I dance, for the mums are blooming. Yet the echinacea and motherwort tinctures are about to be put up for the year. The pantry is filling and the ants help to clear away the summer's crumbs from nature's picnic. Feasted we are, on all levels. What I love about August is the daytime is so bright and at night there are meteor showers. Over 28 years ago, I gave birth to Leo twins, who were like stars falling from Night's breasts. This is the season of the Sun's favorite sign to be, Leo, and the most radiant one, so far, of my life. May it be yours, as well. 
Let the light
shower upon us all as we gather, with the heart of the lion, for the inward
fall of our planet.With Love, Jeannine Parvati Baker 13 August 2002 Joseph, Utah
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