Conscious Conception: Elemental Journey Through the Labyrinth of Sexuality

Rating:
Summary: Elements for co-creating bliss
Review: Both a practical handbook and a treasure mine of thorough research, meditations, and musings on conception and the primal period of life, Conscious Conception answers every question a reader could have about this essential part of family life.

Central to the book are the Bakers' dialogue and questions about every aspect of welcoming a "pre-baby" into a family, with corresponding articles by many different contributors. The book is arranged in thematic sections symbolized by the elements - earth, water, fire, air, and ether - each section opening with a metaphoric fragment of Greek mythology. What follow are incredibly rich pieces covering everything from optimal pre-conception nutrition, to men and women's physical and celestial rhythms, beautiful rituals for enhancing creativity, fertility and conception, healing ceremonies for abortion, dreamwork, etc.

While borrowing examples and guidelines from a panorama of references and cultural backgrounds, such as the Vedic scriptures, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, feminist literature, ancient healing arts, Jungian psychology, tarot, astrology, anthroposophy and other esoteric arts, it never stays stuck in one optic. Instead, it suggests how we can use all of these tools to forge our own path. By embracing a broad vision, it transcends the usual do's and don'ts of accepted traditions, and joyfully shows how uniting to co-create new life can be a truly spiritual and full path towards enlightenment. It celebrates love, life, and family in all their beauty and freedom.

What makes the book so special is that despite the intense debates and meticulous articles, it never takes itself seriously, and always reaches out to include the reader, while remaining light and fun in the process. It is a book you'll find yourself underlining and dog-earing throughout, reading and re-reading, at once lending out to all your friends and wishing you had it back.

Conscious Conception offers the eye-opening and optimistic message that conception is not a random act. It is a sacred celebration to be carefully planned, as it holds the potential not only for a more fulfilling family life and caring society, but an opportunity to grow, to heal ourselves, indeed, to "heal the earth by healing birth."

Rating:
Summary: Conscious Conception: Elemental Journey Through the labyrint
Review: Conscious Conception Elemental Journey through the Labyrinth ofSexuality By: Jeannine Parvati Baker and Frederick Baker

In 1987while pregnant with my forth child, I read Conscious Conception. This book confirmed for me the sanctity I felt growing richly in my belly. As my body became a mobile-home for my son, my heart stormed about so many questions. This book fed my mind, and soothed my heart.

Later when I lived in Bali, Indonesia, as a midwife... I used Conscious Conception as tool when working with couples who were trying to achieve pregnancy. The words and concepts of communication with pre-babies, I would translate. The many pictures and images needed no translation.

Now in the year 2000, I endeavored to re-read Conscious Conception. this time as a mother, as a midwife and as a grandmother. Inside these pages I have unearthed even more treasures, than in my first two readings of the book.

As a master teacher of the Ovulation Method of Natural Family Planning, I highly recommend Conscious Conception. I am grateful to find in Jeannine and Frederick's writing kindred souls, willing to acknowledge the potent "response-ability" of sexuality.

Be you man or woman, ask yourself; "Do I consider my fertility a blessing or a curse?" And then ask; "What cultural and societal influences have determined how I feel about having babies?" As you delve into this dialog with yourself and those you love... Conscious Conception will serve as an enlightened textbook. You'll find it is divided into chapters by the elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether. Within each element the word-meals are served up in delectable portions, which will at once leave one hungering for the next course, while fully satisfying.

Those interested in Natural Family Planning will wish to visit the Family of the Americas web site, for practical instruction and guidance.

We all arrived on Earth as the result of two people making love. Perhaps that is why sex is unquestionably the red hot tile in the mosaic of life. I urge folks on this Earthly journey to pack Conscious Conception. May your medicine bag to be full of what you really need.

Robin Lim Certified Professional Midwife END

Rating:
Summary: Kee's review
Review: Had I read the book concious conception before hand, I would've reconsidered abortion and viewed pregnancy completely different and with out fear.... Well, not the kind of fears that I endured atleast. I started to cry when I read the section: Ritual 4 healing abortion. Until I read the book, I didn't even think I could heal from it..... We just get so caught up in the way society deals w/it....just ignore it or pretend it never happened ! (And we wonder where disease comes from...) Until I read this book, I never learned how to honor my true self and didn't think it was possible to heal from certain things.... But it is ..... you can learn to heal yourself in so many ways. Not just live w/it! So what I'm trying to say is : Conscious Conception thought me alot more than conception...... It showed me how to be "concious" of my life,of who I really am. It gave me back my POWER as a WOMAN! Thank you Jeannine, for such insight and for sharing it with the rest of the world.. " I AM WOMAN and I am PROUD!" Kyera

Rating:
Summary: this book changed my life
Review: I am an avid reader of books on many topics..spiritual, medical, educational....this book is all that and more. It has changed me. I have recommended it to many friends and all have loved it (can't put it down). This book is such a great inspirational resource for women and while the focus is fertility...even those not trying to conceive will find plenty of empowering wisdom inside this book. It offers a great perspective of who we are as females and the power of creation that is contained within us. While some of the views are a bit controversial (abortion..to have or not to have....baker is confidently pro-life) ...my pro-choice self did not at all feel put off by baker's comments on the subject. In fact, quite the opposite. THIS IS A GREAT BOOK. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Rating:
Summary: Conscious Conception
Review: If you were going to buy just one book.... *to curl up and read on a lazy afternoon time and time again, *to fill you in and up on all things relevant to fertility, sexuality and life, *to speak to you of things beyond your wildest thoughts and imaginings, *to refer to when you cant find info anywhere else ....and sewn together most beautifully...then let this be the one, you won't be dissapointed.

Rating:
Summary: A message for all time
Review: In today's world of ever-increasing assisted reproduction technology, this book is even more important than when it was first published in 1986. This enormously rich and original work of art takes readers on a very special journey. A journey about beginnings, with a very special guide-Jeannine Parvati Baker reigns as the spiritual leader of the Women's Movement in the US and her influence has spread abroad as well. She has always been a powerful advocate for babies to be born naturally into families who can express their own power inspite of the medical establishment.
Every individual considering pregnancy should study her insights, and return to the book again and again, because a conscious conception is the cornerstone of primal health.

Rating:
Summary: A completely new perspective on everything/ I LOve It
Review: Luckily for me I have actually gotten to meet Jeannine Parvati Baker and have seen the amazing way she speaks and lives her life. The woman does practice what she speaks. I have never read anything like this book before. I am still reading it over and over and I can say that she and her husband are far ahead of all of us or maybe she still holds onto what was so good in the past. Either way, I highly recommend this book, if only for the way it will blow your mind.

Rating:
Summary: I am a home schooled teen
Review: There are very few books that I consider mandatory
reading for humanity; Conscious Conception is one
those books.

This is not a "new-age" book at all. It is a
guidebook for living life to its fullest. What
Jeannine and Rico have written sits in the home of my
soul. It is like some kind of cosmic memory had been
brought back. I can just hold the book and feel that
warm fuzzy feeling of being loved in the womb of Terra
Madre.

I learned a great deal about my impact on the planet
earth and how, with a few simple steps, we can all
make a positive change in how the future looks.

With Conscious Conception, you learn how to welcome a
new person into the world. You realize that
everything you do, up to the biological act of
conception, has an impact on our children. Also, you
will realize that free birth, the chance to birth a
whole child without trauma, will be the key that opens
the door of peace.

This is also a great book to better understand your

body's natural fertility dance, and how we don't need
human-made devices (abortions, c-sections, etc.) to
control birth.

A wonderful book! There are not enough stars to rate
this masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This book is a beautiful, breath of fresh air! Ms. Baker is a goddess, and will thoroughly help you to see the goddess within yourself. What can I say about this lovely work of art? As you meditate through the words of this "bible", you will begin to cultivate a fertile self you never knew you had. I bought this book to help with my fertility problems, and it is wonderful in this aspect, but it is oh, so much more! Please read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A KEY TEXT FOR ANY SERIOUS INQUIRY INTO FERTILITY AWARENESS
Review: This text is a sound and multi-faceted scholarly investigation into the language, culture, and consciousness of a (still) leading-edge topic: Fertility Awareness.

Indeed, Conscious Conception is a cornerstone opus, and as such is required reading for any serious inquiry into a realm that was taken to a whole new level of sociology once science gave us those microscopic photos of conception itself some years back. The many resources of this book offer readers multi-faceted ways to restore meaning to a topic that sometimes appears to be the exclusive domain of laboratories and medicalization.

Incorporating a good degree of earth-based re-connection and ancient mythologies, Conscious Conception offers readers a new paradigm. This is where awareness of fertility cycles, biological energies, and resultant creations is expanded, resulting in a whole NEW definition of fertility which has more to do with healing one's approach to ALL creative energies and one's relationship to the earth itself.

Being that our very planet is rife with industrially induced environmental crises and wounds, it comes as no surprise that human fertility rates are also affected. Currently, we are told by science that sperm rates are crashing, and rather than attend to the ecological message in that, we are encouraged to barrel full speed ahead into technological "solutions" - and the associated multi-billion dollar industry this supports - rather than to find the healing in our own souls, and re-define this language of (in)fertility that so haunts our culture.

As a Doula and student midwife, I recommend Conscious Conception, with its vast text and eclectic collection of images/graphics, to: * any student of the Life Cycle, * science friends who wish to incorporate more meaning into their world view of fertility, *anyone seeking to heal their familial legacy of fertility mythology, *anyone seeking more than exclusively- medical definitions of the mysteries of reproduction, *and couples seeking to expand their definition and practice of fertility awareness for the benefit of the planet.

The beautiful new-agey dolphins on the cover of this book may alarm some scholarly students; let me reassure you that the text itself is a consummate collection of scholarly gold and cultural insight that belongs in in any good library of Life Cycle material. It is worth its selling price for the bibliographies and book reviews alone.

It is the sort of book that one works at according to one's needs, and I recommend approaching it as a collection of works under one cover, reading it over a long period of time, with periods of reflection in between - like how we approach a banquet table at a sumptious feast.