Inside Community Podcast #024: Community Supported Birth with Monique Gauthier
Bringing new life into the world requires levels of support practically unheard of in modern, western culture... unless you've cultivated community that is up for the task! Seasoned midwife and communitarian Monique Gauthier joins us today to help us envision birth from a deeply held and conscious space that brings about the creation of new culture on the planet. We’ll cover the fascinating intersection of natural birth practices with the communities movement, how women and families can be supported through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum times, rites of passage around birth, and even how various types of loss can be held with tenderness and love.
Monique Gauthier has been a midwife in the U.S and Canada for 30 years. She has lived in intentional communities for most of her adult life. She currently lives in Auroville, in Southern India. She was faculty for Living Routes, which ran college-level programs in ecovillages such as Findhorn, Auroville and Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Plum Village, in France. She has produced the documentaries "Follow The Dirt Road; An Introduction To Intentional Communities in The 1990’s" and "Birthing Peace", about her mindful water births. She calls herself a “cultural midwife” who is tending to the birth of a conscious culture. She leads workshops and coaches for empowered birth, conscious families, mindfulness, and other mind-body-spirit topics. You can find her upcoming courses and offerings at
BOOKS mentioned:
The First Forty Days by Heng Ou
https://motherbees.com/pages/the-first-forty-days
The Fourth Trimester by Kimberly Ann Johnson
https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/the-fourth-trimester/
If you want to learn more about birthing in community or any aspect of community, check out the Inside Community Podcast sponsor, The Foundation for Intentional Community. FIC is an incredible resource center with weekly events, online courses, classified advertisements, and lots of free educational materials. Podcast listeners get 20% off in FIC Bookstore with code INSIDE20 and 30% off FIC courses with code INSIDE30. You can learn more about FIC and access transcripts at ic.org/podcast.
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