Pregnancy and Birth deserves to be honored as a Transformative and Sacred Rite Of Passage experience, not just a checklist on a medical chart.
As a home-birth midwife since 2012, I have had the honor of supporting countless couples preparing to welcome a new child into their lives.
My name is Rachael and I’m here to guide you in remembering the potent role of guiding couples through pregnancy and birth as a sacred rite of passage.
If the video and subsequent questions sparked something inside you, something powerful, then it’s time to join a community of like-minded birth workers who want to help parents get the most out of their childbirth experience.
And to make things even more challenging, our culture and healthcare system have failed to truly give pregnancy and birth the honor and reverence it deserves.
Unfortunately, our medical system has reduced the pregnancy experience to a mere collection of physical symptoms that you as a Care Provider tally on a chart. Meanwhile, our culture sugarcoats the joyousness of this event without even acknowledging the everyday struggles, and the nuances of what it takes to become a good parent…
In my 9 years of working with expecting parents, I cannot even tell you how many seemingly normal and healthy births resulted in traumatic experiences for the parents, who were facing unresolved parts of themselves during the intensity of labor and birth.
Now, had these people been emotionally and spiritually prepared during pregnancy, these challenges could have been completely avoided, giving them the confidence to step into the role of parent, and show up fully for their new child feeling resourced and ready.
After witnessing this frustrating story unfold time and again with so many expecting parents, and also seeing the immense empowerment available to parents who were given the proper tools, I can tell you the difference between the two is night and day…
And that’s exactly why I created the Sacred Birth Keeper Program. This program addresses the full-spectrum experience of pregnancy and birth as a sacred rites of passage, by exploring how our own inner-workings relate to how we experience the world around us. This training is a synthesis of transpersonal psychology, earth-based spirituality, ancestral healing, and mindfulness techniques that will reorient how you approach offering pregnancy and birth support and guidance.
Training more practitioners in offering this work will ensure that more couples have access to this beautiful reframe in their pregnancy care. If you are feeling the call to join this movement, this Sacred Birth Keeper Practitioner Training needs you!
Elemental Birth Rites invites you to experience your service to supporting pregnancy and birth as a vehicle for growth and self-development. As you become immersed in the medicine wheel yourself, you become embodied in the modules of the course and can then support your clients from a place of authenticity. You will gain the tools and experiences to coach others through the spiritual experience of creating life.
Together we journey through 10 modules that provide a roadmap for reclaiming pregnancy and birth as a rites of passage experience. Each module contains practitioner specific recommendations and tips to hold space for profound transformation in your clients. By honoring the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual layers of our experience, our whole being is invited to participate in reframing how we support others in preparing to meet a new child.
Welcome Wise Woman! You are entering a very unique portal of transformation as you place yourselves in this potent activator to transform how you do your work in the world. Be the change you want to see in the world. Honor the spirit in everything!
In this module, you will explore your relationship to your mother; what you want to leave behind, what you want to hold on to and embody as you step into the role of great mother. Birth Workers are the mothers to mothers, holding unconditional love and support through the process of pregnancy.
Here you will explore your relationship to your father, what you want to leave behind, what you want to hold on to and express and how your needs for support can be directly communicated and met through your relationships. When we support birth, we must develop our boundaries and learn how to communicate effectively to protect the sanctity of the process.
Explore your resistances and learn how to resource yourself. You will learn to connect to your needs and make space for the innocent, vulnerable aspects of yourself that only want to be heard and loved. Being in tune with your inner child opens up your availability to hold space for the unborn and to learn and listen from beyond the veil.
In this module, you will explore the element of Air through the breath. Learn to call upon the breath to ground you into your self awareness and support you when you are triggered. Being present during challenges is the work of the Sacred Initiation Guide and our ability to be grounded and embodied is directly communicated to those we serve through our being.
Call upon the emotions to inform you of your wounding, where it lives in your body and how you can learn to flow through your emotions with presence. As keeper of birth, we are also protectors of the waters, the emotions, and the sacred fluids that create life. Realizing our role as water women ignites our sacred contract to our wombs and the wombs of all women.
Call upon the physical body to show you where you are blocked, deliver the messages of the spirit manifested through physical symptoms, and inform you how you can treat your body as the living temple that it is. It is our work to reframe pregnancy symptoms as one piece of a larger picture. Learn how physical reality is taking cues from the emotions, mind, and spirit and how we can better support clients to maintain optimal body comfort and respond to physical messages before birth.
Aligning with the Fire as a tool to call your spirit into yourself. You are creating space and time for the inner fire of the spirit to be tended with fierceness and compassion. Learn preparatory tools to better support clients to prepare for the challenge of labor by facing fears, releasing resentments, and calling in forgiveness. Learn to sit in the discomfort and trust in birth on a whole new level!
Call upon the Ether to guide you in your thinking, help you make choices, and ultimately determine what you say and do when you are making true choices instead of reacting from unconsciousness. Learn tools to let go of perfectionism and embrace the innate gifts within you as you share your authentic self more freely in all areas of life. Reconnect your womb, heart and mind as you release shame and be a living channel of wisdom.
Tune in with your orientation to serving the altar of sacred birth. What is your unique medicine and how are you going to shine these gifts into your work in the world?
If you feel the immensity of guiding couples through this powerful personal experience and want to honor this potent time fully, this training will provide you with the perfect adjunct to support a deepening through pregnancy. The tools you will learn in this journey will also positively impact your personal sense of overall health and wellbeing which you can then model to your clients, preparing them to claim empowerment through their journey.
Guiding clients through this course will better prepare them to get the most out of the birth experience and feel more equipped for the sensitive and vulnerable time as a new parent, whether their first or subsequent child.
Don’t miss out on offering this powerful life changing opportunity for your clients to get the most possible personal growth and healing available to them as they prepare for their new child’s arrival. Sign up today and know that your efforts in creating a better future for all children begins with the work you do to prepare expecting couples fully for their role as a parent.
As a midwife working with families for years, I guarantee you that reframing your approach to pregnancy and birth as a sacred rites of passage will greatly enhance your offering. No matter how you support sacred birthing, this course offers you a deeper, more holistic lens to provide transformative and empowering care to expecting families.
Normally, my in-person clients pay $5500 to receive this type of support and guidance throughout their pregnancy and births.
For some, that is too much and this work is such an important option that I created an online course for couples to do on their own OR with the guidance of one of our certified practitioners.
The beauty of guiding clients through this work is that it expands our ability to support couples who are preparing for birth remotely. My remote clients pay $2000 to be guided through this work.
This course is the first step in becoming an Elemental Birth Rites practitioner. By first experiencing the work through this training and then from an embodied place, offering it out to others, you will greatly deepen your offering.
As a graduate of this practitioner training, you will gain access to offer your clients discounted access to the course material.
If you choose to continue growing with us, you can take further steps to become fully certified as one of our team practitioners so that clients from all over the world can choose to work with you remotely through the Elemental Birth Rites online community.
Along with lifetime access to the course content, I’d also like to invite you to participate in our community through a few key add-ons that come with your participation, at no extra cost.
BONUS #1: Private Community Chat
When you sign up for the course, you will join into a sacred container with a small group of like-minded conscious medicine women who are also devoted to changing birth culture through their service. You will be added to a private group chat where you can stay connected with this community throughout and beyond the course container.
BONUS #2: Downloadable Practitioner Handbook
After each module completes, you will gain access to download that section of the Practitioner Handbook. This resource will provide you with practice tips, spiritual tools for use in the field, as well as resource lists to reference and share with clients.
BONUS #3: 3 One on One Flower Essence Support Sessions
When you sign up for this course, you will be invited to schedule Three -1-hour long one on one sessions within the program start and end dates for personalized support through the medicine wheel. In these healing sessions you will receive emotional and spiritual support to breakthrough any resistances arising through you work during the program. You will receive a custom flower essence formula shipped to you following each session to further support your integration and reclamation of soul. These essences will support a complete vibratory shift in your awareness and ensure your continued healing and upliftment as you journey through the modules. This offering will deeply nourish your heart and being and help you get the most out of your time in this container.
BIPOC SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM:
In an effort to correct the systemic oppression that has been experienced by women and families in communities of color, particularly those practices that separate BIPOC person from culturally significant birth traditions, Elemental Birth Rites is leaning into truth and reconciliation through direct action in facilitating scholarship for BIPOC birth keepers.
This means that every woman who registers for the course at full price will provide SCHOLARSHIP for a BIPOC birth worker to take the course.
Please submit BIPOC scholarship inquiries to support@elementalbirthrites.com
Here’s what some of our alumni have to say about their experiences after completing the Sacred Birth Keeper Practitioner Training Program
“My journey through the Elemental Birth Rites Practitioner Training organized and fortified my midwifery practice, creating a channel for me to reach deeply into the experience of my clients and help them navigate the childbearing year. This program offered me engaging and meaningful, soul lifting work that I have integrated into my practice and has contributed to my clients experiencing empowered birthing and parenting “
It literally shines a light on the shadow of the birth experience”.
Aba Oyedi of Urban Bush Midwifery
Elemental Birth Rites is an experience every birth worker should enter on their journey through birth. We cannot be fully present to another, much less a family birthing a new life, if we are not first present to ourselves, and this is the gift of the practice of EBR. This is not another average “how to” birth worker course, this is self-exploration within the realms of birth work so you come out better equipped to shine the light on the path of pregnancy and birth for the families you support who want a meaningful experience. The gatherings, rituals and reflections of each module bring the learnings to life more like ceremonies than classes, and the beautiful souls who guide the journey create a safe and sacred container for deep and powerful growth. This is the true art and heart of birth work, the medicine I believe our great, great grandmothers would share with us. ~Tristin, Natural Birth Compass Program
~Tristin of Natural Birth Compass Program
“My experience through the Elemental Birth Rites Practitioner Training illuminated new and familiar aspects of myself whilst sharpening the tools I’ve cultivated throughout my life. The coursework invited me to dig deep underground and sit in the mysterious, black, cool soil of myself. On the other side of each module, I witnessed the seeds that were planted during the work pushing up through the darkness to finally receive the recognition, warmth and light of my awareness. As a homebirth midwife, with a practice devoted to healing and spirituality, this coursework offered me a structure and integration to support my work with clients who are seeking a deeper level of healing and understanding through their pregnancy and birth experiences. This work has created more spaciousness for me to have a solid framework to offer deeply impactful healing to women who choose my midwifery support. “
Valerie Patroni of Green Lily Midwifery
“The Elemental Birth Rites Training for Practitioners is transformative, supportive, and healing. The curriculum and platform are intuitive so your new tools will be accessible whenever you need them beyond the class. If you see yourself as your first client these tools will expand your practice of evolving for yourself and you will expand every time you share the work with your clients. Starting this program, I thought the concepts sound familiar, however, most concepts if not all were new to me. What a nice surprise. Going through this process has organized me in a way that supports me in being comfortable with charging clients appropriately. You, your family, and your community will benefit from this curriculum.”
Yaa Tanisha of Yaa’s Healing Lab
“The Elemental Birth Rites program was and continues to be amazing. I am interfacing with my midwifery clients at initial visits who are so aligned with the work I learned from this training and it feels so good to be carving out the space for this type of spiritual focus in my practice. I wholeheartedly recommend this course especially for birth-workers but can only imagine if hospital based providers and even therapists went through this material- the most amazing changes could happen in our world! I would love to take this course again- I think it would get even deeper. The container that was created along with the others in the group were so crucial to the beauty of my experience and continue to be so important to me.”
Kara of Kara Crawford Midwifery
Here’s what 3 mothers have to say about their experiences after completing the Holistic Pregnancy: Empowered Birth Course
“When someone asks me for recommendations of things that really helped me in my pregnancy and birth, the first thing I mention is the Elemental Birth Rites Holistic Pregnancy: Empowered Birth Course journey. I can’t even begin to articulate all of the ways this experience assisted me in my pregnancy, birth and postpartum experience. From the first module, I found myself entering such a potent guided exploration of all aspects of the journey ahead. I experienced deep healing through the different modules, working with my own inner child, the mother and father archetypes within and without, and each of the elements. As each module came along, I would notice that my life was serendipitously providing me experiences to work with the material on many levels. “
Melissa
“Moving through the Elemental Birth Rites Holistic Pregnancy: Empowered Birth Course journey became a deeply powerful tool for coming to terms with my previous birth and preparing the way for my new child. I believe that I was able to stand by myself in the birthing process (and since), find my voice, and deal with pain differently because of this work. When my labor became intense I was able to use air and sound to shift the pain. When I needed support I was able to connect with (for me) water to relax and have a break. Finding places where I was stuck, raw, or powerful and acknowledging those states, gave me resources to call on. When I was tired and in pain I was able to ask for help, and I was able to be with myself the whole time.”
Morgan
“One of the biggest challenges during my pregnancy was the fear of birth and safety of my child. The fear at times felt overwhelming and although I wanted a home birth experience, I was worried that my own anxieties about my daughter’s safety would create a block during my labor. I used The Fire Transforms Fear tool I learned in the Holistic Pregnancy: Empowered Birth Course daily at the end of pregnancy to help work through that fear, confronting the thoughts and focusing on redirecting my energy to the experience I wanted to have. Learning to sit with the fear instead of ignoring it and letting it fester prior to my labor helped me face the challenges that inevitably reappeared during my delivery. Throughout my daughter’s birth, I revisited the positive affirmations I had formed through art and journaling and was able to surrender and find peace with the birthing process. Although my pregnancy is over, the work learned in this course never stops as my husband and I both continue healing with the tools we received from this course. I can’t thank Elemental Birth Rites enough for creating this course and I am forever grateful for it’s part in my daughters earth side journey. “
Rachael is the creatrix of the Elemental Birth Rites Holistic Pregnancy: Empowered Birth Course journey, and has been nurturing and caring for the seeds of this project for several years. Having come to midwifery with a background in Alternative Healing through her study of massage therapy, sound healing, herbal medicine, flower essence therapy, and many other modalities, she always felt a deep call to fuse these passions.
She created a synthesis based on her personal study of ancestral healing, transpersonal psychology, and earth based spirituality, that became the basis of the Elemental Birth Rites course journey. She is so excited to have a space to share her passion for exploring shadow work for healing, personal transformation, and her deep reverence for the sacredness of birth and her role in service to the ones who are choosing to be born at this time along with the families welcoming these new spirits.
The team at EBR has grown to include alumni from this program as its impact and potency has magnetized other wise and willing women to join Rachael in her commitment to reclaim the sacredness of birth work. Both Aba Oyedi of Urban Bush and Valerie Patroni of Green Lily Midwifery bring so much magic and passion for healing and transformation to the table.
Final Thoughts from Rachael & Team
This beautiful gift of life that we have been given is such an amazing opportunity to tune in and really give our full attention to our experience. The blessing of creating life and living towards your birth is so profound and can crack your heart open in all the right ways. We here at Elemental Birth Rites are so devoted to supporting these incoming new souls choosing to be born at this time to enter into families that are intact and healthy. We hope this course offering will prepare parents to see their role as more than a biological imperative and to awaken to the task of ushering in a new time starting with healing our relationship to self. Our mission to train more birth workers in this modality comes directly from our wish that more families will have access to this deeply spiritual support offered through our medicine wheel. Our prayer for this offering is that it may support the evolution of consciousness on this planet and contribute to creating beauty and wholeness for the future generations.