Born Free Method: The Podcast

Joni Edelman is a registered nurse who began attending births when she was 18, then lived out a career in hospital birth, transitioned to hospice care, and then eventually found her way to traditional midwifery. She calls herself a “holistic attendant” due to the reality that terms like “midwife” and “birth attendant” are now the property of the state. That seems like a bold statement, but in effect it means that the state can dictate what a “midwife” can or can’t do, without any consideration perhaps for what birthing families in that state desire out of their care team. This is where the ongoing licensure debate has some teeth. On the one hand, proponents for licensure might argue that licensure offers an avenue by means of which a person trained in the skills of midwifery can practice without fear of being jailed for practice of a profession without a license. On the other hand, opponents of licensure may argue that licensure often comes with unreasonable restrictions to the practice of midwifery, which may be the oldest “profession” in the world alongside prostitution. Way back when, there was no need for labels, licensure, and regulatory influence. A woman doing what is now called “midwifery” would be doing so out of necessity in service to her clan, community, or tribe. She may not have even been charging money (not that that’s a problem), because the tribe was small enough for her to serve this function and have her needs met. She learned her skills through other elders in her community, and, whether she wished it or not, would ultimately become the most experienced living caretaker of birthing women over her lifetime. But nowadays, with human society being as complex as it must be to serve hundreds of millions of people through equality and equity, and with economics of inequality, a midwife must find their place through the myriad regulations and other red tape that would otherwise have been vested to a woman with a calling to this “vocation” through lived experience alone. This has led us to an impasse in our current state of affairs, where high-quality midwives are being prosecuted for deaths for which they aren’t responsible and other credential holders are walking away from tragedies hiding behind the protections of their credentials. My conversation today with Joni attempts to provide some grounding to the challenges of birthwork which are paralleled by the challenging to birthing families who wish to proceed with childbirth with any degree of autonomy. And if we truly believe in autonomy, how does abortion fit into this conversation? We touch on that, too…Find Joni at her website or on Instagram

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

My guest on this episode of Born Free Method: The Podcast is Robin Lanier, pedagogical director at the Waldorf School of Louisville. Robin has been teaching children for over 20 years, meaning he’s been working on his own spiritual growth for at least that long. In this conversation we discuss Archangel Michael through the lens of Rudolf Steiner, the story of Parzival the knight, and even tie in some J.R.R. Tolkien to keep things interesting. This is a fascinating and beautiful conversation that is especially important for the work that I bring to the world through childbirth and as a father, husband, and friend during especially trying times.

Here is some important background context…

Archangel Michael has played a prominent role in a variety of the abrahamic and esoteric traditions for ages. Michael can be seen as Christ’s second-hand man. He carries “cosmic intelligence”. As human beings moved toward more independent, earthly thinking, Michael “released” this intelligence to be developed by humans themselves, through free will and reason rather than divine revelation.

Michael is also the adversary of Ahriman, one of the “devils” in Steiner’s cosmology. Ahriman is not “Satan”, per say. Ahriman embodies the reductive materialistic ways of the modern world, with its mechanization and reduction of the spirit to pure calculation and technology. Michael doesn’t reject the material or intellectual world, but wants it infused with spiritual awareness rather than dominated by soulless rationalism.

As a small aside…let’s review some basics of esotericism:

* Lucifer = too much spirit, too little earth (illusion, escapism)

* Ahriman = too much earth, too little spirit (materialism, mechanization)

* Christ = the balance point between them

* Michael = Christ’s “regent” or forerunner in the present age, specifically tasked with keeping Ahrimanic forces in check so humans can find that balance through free, conscious thinking rather than old-style mysticism or cold rationalism

This is important today because Steiner taught that we are living in the “Age of Michael”, a period (he said starting in the last quarter of the 19th century) where Michael’s influence makes it possible — and necessary — for humans to consciously choose spiritual knowledge rather than have it given to them. This is tied to Steiner’s broader idea of anthroposophy as a path of free, thinking cognition of spiritual reality.

If you are new to the idea of materialism and are already doubtful about what has been said about Ahriman, consider what has happened in technology and artificial intelligence over just the past decade, and you’ll begin to see what Steiner alluded to when he spoke to the “Ahrimanic forces” of the world. These are the forces that Archangel Michael is actively working against in order that the spirit of each human is not consumed by earthly forces but rather balanced between earth and spirit, like a cosmic antenna.

We are now entering the season of Michaelmas, which is punctuated - even in medieval times - by a great feast around September 29th, marking the re-embodiment of the ego consciousness into our earthly, vital bodies. This time of year is associated with themes of courage, willpower, and confronting fear (symbolized by Michael slaying the dragon) as inner qualities needed for this age, which explains the deeper meaning of the Dragon Faire for Waldorf children around ages 6-7.

The essence of Archangel Michael also comes through in the Middle High German poem: Parzival, written by Wolfram von Eschenbach between roughly 1200 and 1210, running to about 24,800 lines across sixteen books. The story follows a naive young knight raised in isolation by his widowed mother, who eventually leaves home, is inducted into King Arthur’s court, and stumbles into the mysterious Grail castle — where his failure to ask a simple question of compassion condemns him to years of wandering and further trials before he can return, mature and enlightened, to finally heal the wounded Fisher King and receive the Grail. It is ultimately Michaelic influence through which Parzival finds strength and will within himself to “do the right thing” which brings that which he is seeking within reach.

This theme is relevant to our work as people living within a community, and it’s especially relevant to birthwork, where the birth attendant must support a family sometimes out of impropriety for the rules and procedures of society. This work is a sacred calling, but fully expressing your unique human genius is also a sacred calling, and it is this time of the year that we are impressed with the importance of exercising our will to find our heart center and answer the call.

References from this conversation:

* Parzival: A Romance of the Middle Ages, by Wolfram Von Eschenbach (author), Helen M. Mustard (translator) (Best translation for prose)

* Parzival, by Wolfram Von Eschenbach (author), Jessie L. Weston (translator) (Best translation for poetry)

* The Hobbit And The Lord Of The Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & Free

Medical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Egg meets sperm.

This is what we are told happens for a baby to be born. On closer examination, you will notice that the egg, when rushed by not one but tens of thousands of strong sperm begins to spin. Counter clockwise. Or perhaps it is spiraling, like a whirling dervish, like an ammonite fossil, like the Lakota Sun Dancers around a sacred cottonwood, like the horns of the Ekoi dance mask. The great song of creation is played out through myth, storytelling, and dance across many cultures, from subatomic particles all the way up through the cosmos.

Spirals appear everywhere in nature, including in the human heart, which when boiled and teased apart unravels into a single strip of muscle tissue that coils around itself into a four-chambered structure, the structure of which creates a vortex of blood passing through.

Is your heart merely a pump? There has been sufficient curiosity evoked by the team at the HeartMath Institute, Branko Furst and his colleagues, “Paco” Torrent-Guasp and his contemporaries, and even the brilliant Leonardo da Vinci that the heart has more elegant roles than merely pushing and pulling blood.

You might be thinking: “This is ridiculous. Of course it is one egg and one sperm. Of course the heart is a pump.”

And maybe that is the problem. Maybe there is a problem with the mind (thoughts/emotions).

It is your mind that has led to your partner is dissatisfaction in your marriage or in your bedroom. It is your mind that gets you in trouble when birth politics arise on social media. It is your mind that makes you react impulsively during periods of heartbreak or when a piece of media enrages you.

Do not get me wrong. The mind is valid and important, and the only people without an intact mind are either dead or in an insane asylum.

It is your mind that has taught you to be afraid of the world. Somebody - or some thing - has impressed upon you to be afraid of this or that thing, idea, feeling. Fear must be sometimes turned ON to stay alive. This is not the issue. The issue is that we were never taught to turn fear OFF.

By doing things that scare us, we can learn to relate to fear more effectively. The antidote is embodiment. Embodiment is the consequence of connecting to our feelings in addition to our mind.

Your mind interfaces with your will, with your choices, and with your words, but I suspect that we are far too consumed with “thinking” and far too out of touch with the pull of our hearts. If you were to imagine existing solely through your thoughts and emotions, you would be left with the reach of the artificial intelligence (AI) movement. This abstraction of the human experience should make you feel something, and the notion that we can be human in our reach for mind without heart sounds like living hell on Earth.

The Great Song of Creation

Most of my time is spent advocating for maternity care system reformation, fueled by passion to restore traditional midwifery care to its rightful place as the default care offered to birthing families in the United States.

Birth has long been seen through the lens of Western medicine as a medical procedure, and yet for even longer than our written history permits, females have been giving birth as a biologic imperative. It is true that some babies of the past would have been saved through induction of labor, antibiotics, c-section, and other medical technologies, but that is not my point.

The Sioux nation did not need to rely on a story of immaculate conception to believe in miracles. The beauty of the natural landscape around them was enough. They felt this deeply. Ohiyesa, author, physician, and member of the Sioux, or Dakota, nation wrote about the ways in which the women of his tribe gave birth.

He shares that the mind of the woman does play a role in this process, but it is limited and may surprise you. When she falls pregnant, she meditates daily on a great individual in her tribe who embodies the ideal qualities of the creative impulse of nature, like reciprocity, courage, and patience, in order to impress upon the unborn child the attributes of this great individual. That is where the mind ends. She does not think her way into growing a baby or birthing her baby any more than she thought her way into making love to conceive her baby.

In order to disturb this impression, she avoids personal contact, favoring isolating whenever possible. She practices stillness in the forest. She wanders the prairies alone. She feels everything such that the majesty of Mother Earth can be impressed upon her child. In her heart, she conceives of this child as a reflection of Great Spirit, born from the natural world, “dreamed out in a hush broken only by the sighing of the pine tree or the thrilling orchestra of a distant waterfall”. (Ohiyesa, 1858-1939)

When the day comes to meet her child, she remains isolated, fully embodied with the necessary preparation demanded of this exciting gift. When she hears her baby cry in the darkness, she knows that she has fulfilled her “holiest of duties” as a member of Great Spirit’s song of creation.

Immersed in nature, she is not distracted by questions and concerns of her fellow tribespeople. She is instead showered with the praise of the birds, bees, trees, and flowers beneath her knees.

Contrast this with even the best intended advocates for reform within maternity care, where we are arguing about Georgia’s licensing laws and the ARRIVE Trial.

The Heart Can Grasp What the Mind Cannot

While reading this story, something may have moved within you. You might relate that it brought you joy, or sadness, or anger. Those are emotions.

Forget about thinking…What did you feel?

The heart is the center of your feeling life. The heart is what is moved. The heart is not afraid. The heart does not judge. Fear and judgment are activities of the mind.

Master storyteller Michael Meade describes well the experience of the heart (versus the mind):

“The mind may come to know things through a process of acquiring knowledge and information. The knowledge of the heart is instantaneous and it is revelatory, it is also holistic, and thus it is the primary source of coherence in our lives. While the slightest thing can cause us to change our minds, a life-changing or a life-enhancing moment depends upon a change of heart…Great visions and deep understandings do not come through thinking alone, but rather it is imagination that carries messages between our brain or mind and our heart, allowing thought and feeling to meet. To grasp the truth, we must get to the heart of the matter. To truly know something, we have to know it by heart. To fully express ourselves, we must speak from the bottom of our hearts…And what we need at this fearful time on Earth is the kind of radical transformation that can only begin in the depths of the human heart.” (Michael Meade, Living Myth Podcast, Ep.504, 2026)

A mere pump ca not do that.

A Change of Heart

I was recently blessed with an experience in darkness with Edmund Knighton, PhD.

When your visual cortex is removed from your experience, you get the perfect amount of medicine, with the right amount of spirit, and just enough universe to have a breakthrough in reconnecting to your self. This is the experience of embodiment, which, put simply, is the act (art) of connecting to the experience of your body and heart. You have no idea how much the mind distracts from your inner life until you are blindfolded in pitch black darkness for 36 hrs. That is when the magic begins…

For me, the magic came through dance. I remember lying on the grass and being invited to stand and move to some soft music. Without fear, without judgment, without fear of judgment, I began to move. It was subtle at first, but soon evolved into a kaleidoscopic flow of masculine and feminine energies through my four limbs and my heart. I moved myself to tears, as I felt whole again. I had clarity. I connected with my true essence, which was grounded fully in love. I sobbed not out of sadness. There was no emotion, just flow.

This is why I prefer to make love to my wife in the dark. My mind is removed so that I can be fully embodied in the experience. I can feel everything that she is experiencing. The subtle parting of her lips when I lean over to kiss her. The soft caress of her wet tongue over mine. The quivering of her lower abdomen with slow, deep penetration. The relaxation of her hands, feet, and hips after orgasm as we lay together and feel our hearts connected once more.

We are Missing the Point

Babies are conceived between romantic partners through a cosmic dance of love, where our poles create a microcosmic orbit. The rainbow within us is fully brilliant, and the zygote that results is a codification of consciousness itself.

Consciousness is a big word. The mind is limited - perhaps too limited - in its ability to grasp “consciousness”. And forget what you were told about the brain being the source of consciousness. That does not feel true to me and even some of today’s greatest thinkers have minds that agree with my inner sensibilities.

If we were to rely only on our minds, we would have no way of elaborating consciousness. The mind relies on our senses, and while our senses do interface with our feeling life, they can also distract from our heart center. I learned this from the darkness. Your senses are used to measure the environment, to ascertain safety, but not everything that can be measured is important to embody the essence of who you are.

Likewise, just because something can not be measured does not devalue its importance. You can not measure love or grief or consciousness. We do not even have a clear definition of consciousness, or any clue where it ends or where it begins. The never-ending abortion conversation fumbles this completely. An unborn baby lives in darkness, and likely has no bearing on where they end and their mother begins. This is not a question for the mind. This is a question for the inner life, the feeling life of the mother. How does she know she is pregnant before the butterflies and kicks? I do not know. But she knows in her heart.

What I feel happens with that rotating egg is that the spiraling activity - much like the practice of the whirling dervishes - brings spirit into the newly formed zygote. Can I measure this? Can I prove this? No. But I do not have to. I also can not prove to you that I love my children. I feel it in my heart to be true. And since we do not have a better explanation, that is a truth I am willing to stand by.

If we relied solely on our minds to experience the world, we would have no appreciation for orgasm, romance, grief, or the entheogenic experience of visionary plant medicines.

A lot of human innovation has come from our feeling life, far beyond the world of rights and wrongs.

Consider the classical ayahuasca “brew” of chacruna (leaves of Psychotria viridis) combined with ayahuasca (vine of Banisteriopsis caapi). There are (at least) 40,000 documented plant species in the Amazon rainforest, which is likely a gross underestimate. The number of possible combinations of any of these two plants is around 1 in 800,000,000.

In order for these two plants to have found one another, either two people in the Amazon river basin got very lucky, or the plants directed a human to join them together. Which is more possible? I do not have an answer, but I suspect that - given that the practice of drinking ayahuasca is at least one-thousand years old - something more mysterious is at play, and that this bizarre coincidence is not the byproduct of human mental faculties. Ancient humans, in conference with the jungle, felt their way in the darkness to unite these two allies on behalf of some cosmic influence.

Where are we going?

I propose that, if we have adjusted to the possibility that we as a collective desire birth attendants to support childbirth in order to mitigate risk and improvise safety in a physical process that is anything but safe to the psyche of the birthing family, then we are approaching the conversation about reforming maternity care entirely wrong.

There are calls for more data, better data, more comprehensive meta-analyses, and more measurements to satisfy our minds that we have done everything we can to prevent the death of a member of the mother-baby dyad. I can not responsibly argue against this trend, as this inventory has been a major boon to my practice as an obstetrician.

However, if a woman is not thinking her way into getting pregnant or giving birth, what does it mean to this process if we walk into their birthing quarters in a disembodied state?

We are trying to find answers to birth through our thoughts and emotions, and that has led us to a very narrow passageway devoid of any heart.

When we arrive to a birth, we should be thinking. But we should also be feeling. The medical construct of obstetrics does not lend itself to the feeling life of its practitioners, and many midwives are fighting with bureaucracy to be granted permission to have the same luxury of data and technology that keeps them likewise in their heads and out of their bodies.

The answer is that birthworkers (myself included) should be focusing as much on our inner life as we are searching for papers to support our bias on Pubmed.

This is the only way forward.

Conclusion

I once sat with traditional midwives in South Africa, and I was invited onto their dance floor to cut a rug, and cut a rug I did. They were joking with me afterwards that the words to the song spoke to the inability of white people to move their hips.

Many of us white people were raised in a culture that taught us to be afraid of moving our bodies, to show off our beautiful skin, to speak unless granted permission. As I have already said, this is the work of the mind.

Anybody can dance well, as it is a very natural action of moving these beautiful bodies to the rhythm of music. But this requires us to feel the rhythm. And the same culture that judges us for enjoying lovemaking is equally excited to prescribe you drugs to suppress your “feeling” life. (Think antidepressants, anxiolytics) This same society has outlawed medicines - real medicines, not drugs - that disconnect you from your mind, medicines like ayahuasca, chacruna, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and others.

The remedy for this could be as simple as embracing stillness in nature. Embracing darkness. How do we become re-embodied after a lifetime of ignoring the signals from our hearts? This is my work going forward as a physician.

This is the cornerstone of the upcoming Born Free Twins-Breech Gathering in Austin in November, 2026. I am also organizing a trip to Costa Rica with a handful of birthworkers to do just this with the support of Vocal Transformation and Grandmother Aya.

This is just the beginning, and it is a drop in the bucket, but I will know soon where to go from here.

A Closing Meditation

Embrace your inner life. Surrender to the mysteries of birth. Your mind could use a rest. And your clients are going to love the new you.

You have let Mother Culture create an abstraction of life on your behalf, so much so that large language models (AI agents) are starting to feel very human. AI can never replace your humanity. It can describe emotions, and it can think as fast as (or faster than) we can. But it can not feel. It can not ground itself in loving presence.

The AI revolution is an invitation to consider the cost of losing your humanity as a birthworker, because it can never replace the essence of your heart. You have a soul. You can feel presence. AI agents were not granted these gifts.

There have been calls for a reclamation of the soul of midwifery. “It is the soul that informs the compassion we feel for others and that suffuses the mundane with a sense of the sacred. It is the soul that translates incident into experience, knowledge into wisdom.” (Jane Hope, “The Secret Language of the Soul”)

You were once a baby, existing in the darkness of your mother’s womb. Surrounded by the warmth of her amniotic fluid. As a baby, you needed no help to be embodied. You were fully there. Fully present. Fully alive.

I will leave you with an invitation.

Close your eyes and connect to the sensations in your body. Feel your heart beating. Place a hand on your heart and a hand on your belly. Take a deep breath. Feel your aliveness. Say this with me: “I AM”. Say it again. “I AM”. Take stock of what is going on inside of your body. The weight of your hips on your seat. The weight of your upper eyelids on your lower eyelids.

Breathe.

How does that feel?

Nathan Riley, MD is a dual-board certified physician in obstetrics and gynecology and hospice and palliative medicine. He is also the co-creator of the Born Free Method, an online platform that supports families around the world throughout the fertility through postpartum continuum. Find more support at Beloved Holistics and Born Free Method.

Most electronic health records (EHRs) were designed for a different era, with clunky interfaces, confusing navigation, and tools that were never quite right for the way you actually work.Sena EHR was built specifically for CPMs and midwives doing out-of-hospital births. That means charting that reflects real midwifery scope, including vaginal breech and multiples. Billing, messaging, scheduling, and documentation in one place. A system that works on any device — even offline at a birth with no signal.In this interview with founder Dani Sigmon, you’ll get the scoop for the latest and greatest EHR platform and what sets it apart from the rest!We don’t typically do promotional podcasts, but Sena EHR is the only sponsor that we permitted at the 2026 Born Free Twins-Breech Gathering. Their support made it possible for us to add an additional scholarship this year, and we are so grateful!

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

In this episode, I chat with Farah Tanis, founder of Restore Forward. For the 2026 edition of their WILD Healing Summit, the theme is “A Harvest of Medicine”. I can’t impress upon you how beautiful this offering is, and it was right up my alley when Farah asked me to present as a speaker.

Here are the reasons that I want you to support this event:

* There are a number of amazing speakers that will presenting online, including - Dr. Mmatshilo Motsei, Iakowi:he’ne’ Oakes, Dr. Neena Van Luven, and more - then it culminates in physical presence on their sanctuary in upstate New York — a feast, a performance, and a “medicine walk”

* The language throughout leans on “walking with” rather than “attending” — suggesting a relational, participatory model rather than a passive audience experience

* The 2026 theme, “A Harvest of Medicine,” ties the event to seasonal/agricultural imagery — suggesting themes of gathering, culmination, and traditional or plant-based healing practices, consistent with the “medicine walk” element on the land

Overall, the ethos reflects: nature-rooted healing, intergenerational and communal participation, and a hybrid of digital accessibility with grounded, in-person ritual, all of the components of a more beautiful world that we know is possible.

My personal presentation is probably the best I’ve ever given. I explore the complex nature of fertility and the limitations of conventional medical approaches. I begin by discussing how modern medicine’s focus on reductive materialism misses important aspects of fertility. I outline my expanded approach to fertility workups beyond conventional reproductive endocrinology, incorporating functional medicine testing, nutritional interventions, and emotional/relational considerations. I challenge the gene-centered view of human biology, discussing epigenetics, intergenerational trauma transmission, and the possibility that water’s properties within cells could influence genetic expression. My presentation concludes with insights about the importance of embodied experience over intellectual approaches to conception and birth, drawing parallels between human fertility challenges and our disconnected relationship with nature.

The 2026 WILD Healing Summit takes place on September 9-10, 2026, online, culminating in an in-person opportunity on their land in upstate New York on September 12th. Even if you can only participate online, please go register at www.wildgala.com.

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Edmund Knighton, Ph.D., is a seasoned educator, clinical psychologist, and somatic movement practitioner whose multidisciplinary career spans more than three decades. He has engaged through various capacities with Waldorf education for over 35 years, once even serving as the president of Rudolf Steiner College. Drawing on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the channeled material of “Ra” from the The Law of One, and somatic/transpersonal psychology, Edmund offers consulting for individuals, organizations, and families (including my own) committed to holistic growth.

You won’t find Edmund on social media, but you can reach out to him by email: [email protected] if you ‘d like to have his support in your home.

In Part 1 of this series with Edmund, we discussed some of the basics around Steiner’s philosophy, the Waldorf pedagogy, a 3- and 4-fold approach to human wellbeing, and we started our venture into autism.

In Part 2, we dove deeper into “autism” but also offered an invitation to consider the extrasensory gifts displayed by many “autistic” children. We also covered vaccines.

In Part 3, we discussed the significance of the Holy Nights, a time of spiritual reflection and preparation leading up to Christmas as well as the days that follow.

In Part 4, we focused on men. What is men’s work? What does it mean to embrace your feminine? What is meant by femininity and masculinity? What does this have to do with sex, childbirth, and love-making?

In Part 5, we will explore darkness, sleep, and the importance of being “moved” throughout our life. We also go deeper into the masculine and feminine energetics of being (versus doing).

Edmund shares this Rilke poem early in the conversation, and it is really captures quite a bit of what we discussed:

You, darkness, that I come fromI love you more than all the firesthat fence in the world,for the fire makes a circle of light for everyoneand then no one outside learns of you.But the darkness pulls in everything-shapes and fires, animals and myself,how easily it gathers them! -powers and people-and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.I have faith in nights.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

This conversation took place roughly a week before a men’s retreat for fathers that I am hosting alongside Edmund in Idaho this August. This retreat will include blindfolded activities, MDMA-assisted sessions, movement exercises, and integration practices, aiming to foster trust, vulnerability, and deeper connection among these fathers (or soon-to-be fathers). As a preamble to our time together (and epilogue to a recent darkness retreat that I attended in Aspen, also hosted by Edmund), we explored the value of darkness retreats, the role of sleep and dreaming from the perspective of Rudolf Steiner, and the importance of reconnecting with the feminine, being moved emotionally, and experiencing presence and essence beyond productivity. We reflected on masculine and feminine energies, the significance of darkness in opening perception, and the potential for personal transformation through embodied practices and conscious unraveling of inherited identities.

Be sure you don’t miss Edmund’s beautiful reflection on the menstrual cycle and blood as a sensing organ at [00:34:40]

Email Edmund at [email protected] (He isn’t on social media)

References from our conversation:

* Check out Be Here Farm+Nature’s event offerings, as Edmund is frequently featured

* All About Love, book by Bell Hooks

* Buddha in Redface, book by Eduardo Duran

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Wayland Myers, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who trained first as a mechanical engineer before pivoting into psychology, a background that seems to show up in how methodically he approaches something as slippery as human conflict. He’s spent much of his career teaching and writing about Nonviolent Communication (NVC), the empathy-centered framework originated by Marshall Rosenberg, and is the author of Nonviolent Communication: The Basics As I Know and Use Them.

Myers’s particular contribution is less about inventing new theory and more about translation, taking NVC’s sometimes abstract language and making it usable in the middle of an actual argument. His core idea is that most conflict escalates because people default to judgment and blame instead of naming what they’re actually feeling and needing. Shift that, he argues, and disagreement stops being a tug-of-war and starts being something closer to a joint excavation whereby two people begin digging toward the same root, rather than digging in against each other.In this conversation, Wayland shares his background in psychology, hospice care, and his introduction to NVC through Marshall Rosenberg, leading to his writing of a primer on the subject nearly 30 years ago. They discussed the core principles of NVC, including the distinction between the “language of giraffe” (compassionate, curious communication) and the “language of jackal” (moralistic, evaluative language). Wayland provided examples of NVC in action, such as a parent-child conflict and a role-play scenario involving a midwife and an OBGYN, demonstrating how to connect by empathizing with the other person’s feelings and needs. The conversation also touched on the challenges of emotional intelligence, the application of NVC in politically charged discussions, and its broader impact on relationships, including parenting. Wayland expressed his hope for the legacy of NVC to be a deeper understanding that all human behavior is driven by a life-serving intent to improve well-being.

NVC is so badly needed in today’s world, particularly in the way that we - as birthworkers - are communicating with one another and other healthcare professionals. We have lost the art of connection, and finding our way back starts with the daily conversations we have even with loved ones.

I use NVC in my marriage, with my friends, and with my children, as Wayland’s work has subtly had a profound impact on parenting and what is now known as “gentle parenting”.

Purchase his very accessible book on Amazon. And check out the Center for Nonviolent Communication for more. He also has a website but it hasn’t been updated in a while.

Be sure to check our role play of an OBGYN and midwife transferring a client to the hospital around minute [00:54:40]

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Born Free Method: The Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This was a community call hosted within our Born Free Method program. We meet each week and the calls are recorded, and occasionally we are blessed with a guest like Veda Ray. We repurposed this conversation as a podcast, and it covers a wide range of topics that may be relevant to postpartum planning, especially as you might relate to the conversation around a birth certificate. We also talk about social security, trusts, lotus birth, placentas, taxes, and other topics related to sovereignty, which starts when you decide you want to have babies. This is an important one…

Connect with Veda on Instagram and find her offerings for support on these topics at her website.

References from the conversation:

* Ep 193: The Hidden Ledger: Taxes, Debt, & Restoration Of The Living with Govinda Tidball (Alec Zeck podcast)

* https://ourdataourselves.uoregon.edu/topics/birth-certificate-standardization

* https://exittaxclub.com/

* Word Magic: The Powers and Occult Definitions of Words, by Pao Chang

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!

More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Born Free Method: The Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Ashley Mariani is a trauma-informed couples therapist specializing in intimacy and relationship issues that arise during pregnancy and in the postpartum. She is one of those people in the trenches helping couples reorient themselves to sex and relating with the addition of a baby into the mix. This is not niche, this is not unique: every relationship experiences some degree of hardship after birth.

Connect with Ashley on Instagram. Want to work with Ashley? Email her at: [email protected]

[00:02:55] - When we get into arguments with our intimate partners (or anybody, really), the unmet needs of our inner child surfaces. This is especially relevant for men, who are often lacking guidance on managing and exploring the underpinnings of their emotional landscape.

[00:06:30] - We are storymaking machines, but are all of the stories that we write about our partners true?

[00:11:15] - Trauma in and out of the obstetrics model. Trauma can be inflicted in the obvious ways but also through dismissive behavior or language by your partner or practitioner. Moderating disagreements between partners around interventions in childbirth.

[00:17:13] - Nonviolent communication and seeking to fill the unmet need underlying every instance of emotional conflict.

[00:25:00] - How does birth trauma impact a couple’s connection/communication? When a partner doesn’t provide an anchor of safety during an act of obstetric violence, for example, this lack of felt safety may roll over into their relationship in the postpartum. Ashley has a very great exercise for couples struggling with shared decision-making as their birth approaches.

[00:35:00] - How can a couple begin to re-engage in penetrative intercourse and other forms of intimacy? (Pay attention men!)

[00:43:00] - Communicating needs to your spouse and prioritizing one-on-one time with a baby in the mix

[00:48:54] - Navigating struggles with the lack of intimacy and feeling of obligation to your partner sexually after giving birth. Men often struggle with feeling “third wheel” energy and appropriately grieving the changes can be an opportunity to flex your masculinity.

[00:52:26] - Intimacy troubles alongside co-sleeping. ALERT: It’s healthy and normal for you not to get right back to your pre-pregnancy sex life immediately postpartum. It could take years!

[00:59:00] - How do you manage being “triggered”, withdrawing, and shutting down in response to your partner?

Connect with Ashley on Instagram. Want to work with Ashley? Email her at: [email protected]

References from the episode:

* Nonviolent Communication: The Basics As I Know and Use Them, by Wayland Myers

* Fair Play Cards

* Hear Ashley and others (like Dr. Stu!) speak at the 2026 Reclaiming Birth Gathering

Related episodes:

* What He Never Learned: Repair, Responsibility, and Men’s Silent Longing for Connection with Ted Riter

* From Fighter to Sage: Kyle Kingsbury on Fatherhood and Fitness Beyond the Physical

* Edmund Knighton, PhD (Part 4) - Sacred Polarities: The Ra Material, Steiner, and a Man’s Work in Conception, Childbirth and Beyond

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!

More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Born Free Method: The Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Eric Osborne is the founder of the first legal psychedelic mushroom church in the United States. He has been working with psilocybin mushrooms (and culinary mushrooms) for decades, feeling a pull from without him to continue on this journey despite legal troubles, jail time, and putting his family at risk of losing it all. And yet he persists, because he believes that psychedelic mushroom journeys could be the answer to many of the world’s woes. This passion led Eric to found Psanctuary, where people across the world can find community and engage in ceremonies led remotely by Eric and his team.

[00:20:00] - Why are psychedelics important to the world?

[00:21:05] - Like snakes, mushrooms can be both poisonous and beautiful. What is consciousness? How do psychedelics support reflection on the “big” questions?

[00:40:46] - Could psychedelics deepen your relationship to “God”?

[00:44:00] - Universal laws and codes of the universe exposed through DMT and lasers

[00:47:24] - What role do mushrooms play in the ecosystem and how might this also be beneficial for humans?

[00:49:50] - How have experiences with mushrooms and MDMA helped Eric become a better father?

[00:54:00] - Psychedelics can be confronting to societal mechanisms of control, which is probably why they’re illegal. Sitting in a jail cell with substance abusers who could be saved through psychedelics. The foundations of Psanctuary, the first legal mushroom church in the United States. What if the original eucharist was a mushroom?

[01:13:40] - How to get started using psychedelic mushrooms

https://www.psanctuary.org

References from the show:

* Danny Goler’s experiments with lasers and people on DMT

* The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name

by Brian C. Muraresku

*

This episode was sponsored by Born Free Method.

The Born Free Method digital playground includes over 60 hrs of pre-recorded lessons (w/ slides) spread out over 180+ lessons when you enroll. You will also be invited to a Zoom call (recorded) every other week hosted by me, Sara, and both. We also often have guest speakers, and you will have access to recordings for all 100+ of our past calls/interviews. Enroll for your 7-day free trial!

More ways to work with Nathan:Support for Midwives | Private Consultation | Clear & FreeMedical Disclaimer: Born Free Method: The Podcast is an educational program. No information conveyed through this podcast should be construed as medical advice. These conversations are available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Music provided by RealMovieScores / Pond5

Born Free Method: The Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.