In celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary, this chapter offers some historical and personal context behind the emergence of the film. 

 

The applause filled my ears and washed over me like a healing balm. It went on and on. It was a standing ovation after the first ever screening of Birth As We Know It at the Human Rights Congress of 2006, in Seattle. On August 24, my ‘baby’, the film Birth As We Know It, was welcomed in a huge University auditorium full of professionals and progressive thinkers of the time. People were clapping, their faces were wet with tears, nodding in appreciation while my heart thundered in my chest. The film was fresh out of the editing suite, I didn’t even have any printed DVDs to share. 

 

The first time this film was imagined was 1984. Igor Charkovski (the Russian waterbirthing pioneer) said, 'We need to make a documentary about what we’re doing here’. That jumpstarted a process that we had absolutely no means to accomplish. We were young, broke, but extremely enthusiastic and hopeful. By the time it was shown at the Congress, I had been ‘pregnant’ with Birth As We Know It for twenty years. I had numerous ‘miscarriages’ along the way. A number of times, when it looked like the film was actually possible, something would run over the project like a freight train and we'd be back to ground zero. About a dozen nervous breakdowns later, came that first standing ovation - one of many I was blessed to receive as my message made its way out into the world.

 

It’s now been twenty years - millions of views, millions of lives impacted - and it’s time for me to tell its story. The creation of this film is a birthing story in its own right.  

 

I am eternally grateful for the women who agreed to be filmed and share their births with all the future mamas - hats off to you! Those births in my film are all that we have recorded  from those days, because for years, we didn’t have a camera. All of the early years went unrecorded. When we finally got a camera, Alexei Sargunas, (a prominent figure in our Waterbirth movement in Moscow, an artist and the husband of Tatiana, one of our midwives),was in charge of it mostly. So only when he was available and if a woman was willing to have him around, her birth was recorded. Most births occurred at night, and we didn’t have lights to film. Most women didn’t want to be filmed; we respected that. Some women were filmed but wanted to keep the footage private, which was also understandable. In any case, I have profound gratitude to those brave souls who were open to inspire millions of women by sharing their birthing experiences at the frontier of human achievement. Giving birth the way these women were able to do was nothing short of true heroism, and of the utmost pioneering spirit. It was what I jokingly referred to as the Russian Olympic Birthing team!

 

When the film came out, the demand was so urgent and huge that I was running out of stock faster than I could print it. In fact, hundreds of copies were pre-sold even before I received the boxes with the first 1,000 DVDs. If you own one of the very first copies, it’s a collectible item - please, don’t discard it. I don’t have any of them left, as the entire last print of DVDs burnt in the Paradise, CA fire of 2018. 

***

Now, at-a-glance, the stages of ‘birthing’ Birth As We Know It: 

Stage 1: Novyi Svet 1992 - Conception 

Stage 2:  Birth Into Being  1999 - Gestation

Stage 3: Birth As We Know It  2006 - Victorious Delivery!

 

Conception: Novyi Svet, 1992 

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In 1986, when the very first baby was born in the open waters of the Black Sea, it became a pressing matter that something of that magnitude, this new to humankind and so radically different, should be video documented. At that time, the only video cameras known to us were the huge, heavy machines that people working for the government TV stations had restricted access to. But, as Providence would have it, one of the foreigners who had come to study with us at the Black Sea birth camp had left her camera behind when she went home, bless her heart. Her name was Estelle Myers, she went on to found the first waterbirth centre in New Zealand. 

 

So all the footage that we have from the mid-80s to mid-90s was taken with that camera, mostly by Alexei Sargunas. About 25 hours (out of hundreds of hours) was later condensed into our very first one-hour-long Russian documentary Novyi Svet, which means ‘New Light’ in Russian. This is also the name of the nearest village in the Crimea, on the shore of the Black Sea, which sustained our birth camps by its farmers' market and little shops, serving as a portal into the outside world. 

 

The film Novyi Svet was wonderful; its creation was true teamwork, a work of inspired certainty. The money came from the generosity of the hearts of many people who believed in what we were doing, especially Margaret Smith of Aptos, CA, Andrey Gurskiy and Igor Sokolov of Moscow. I had served as an unexpected conduit for manifesting the money for the production of the film.

​

In 1992, Novyi Svet, starring Tatiana Sargunas, filmed and edited by Alexei, who was also the artistic director, produced by A. Gurkiy, I. Sokolov was finally finished. Shortened by half, it would later become Birth Into Being in 1999.

 

Soon after its completion, Novyi Svet was put on the shelf at the JSC Videofilm, a movie studio where it was put together, due to the complexities of Russia’s political reality, which was extremely harsh after the collapse of the system. Mafia wars spilled onto the streets, the economy in eleven Russian time zones collapsed like a house of cards within weeks, people were starving and nothing in the country worked. Novyi Svet fell outside the margins of immediate survival needs. But you can still see it on Youtube for free (in Russian, of course) 

​

 

Gestation: Birth Into Being, 1999

 

The full story of what transpired between Barbara Harper and myself and how our video ended up with her will be in my book that hopefully will come out before the end of the year. It’s too big for the newsletter. Right now, I can say that I am actually grateful for what unfolded. Thanks to Barbara, the film was doing its magic all over the world years before I was ready to do it. She did a really great job of getting the message out, while I was still firmly anchored in one place - as a newly settled housewife with a small child and very little English. 

 

The main silver lining of our loss of the film Birth Into Being, was that it pushed me into making Birth As We Know It. If this situation hadn’t occurred I would have marked my destiny’s ‘to-do’ list of film-making as ‘done’. It would have remained just that half-hour long bit of information. Whereas the Birth As We Know It  DVD was almost 4 hours long, including all the bonus features, and I was finally able to give some vital information that benefitted millions of women, which would have been impossible on VHS, the format of Birth Into Being. 

 

In 2008, almost 9 years later, under strong peer pressure from Suzanne Arms, Marilyn Milos and Dr. George Denniston, Barbara finally surrendered the master VHS copy. However, by then, I had produced Birth As We Know It on the new format of  DVD. Everybody in the field had owned Birth Into Being (on VHS) already, and we all moved on. 

 

Victorious Delivery: Birth As We Know It, 2006

 

In 4 hours of the Birth As We Know It DVD, I was finally able to really give the info on how to approach the art of people-making consciously, and with dignity.  It was called 'the most comprehensive guide to natural birth" by many. It has won multiple awards and received lengthy standing ovations at many conferences around the world. It has been featured in many magazines, discussed on countless podcasts and shows. In 2010, it was shown at a Hawaii Senate hearing dedicated to prevention of domestic violence.

 

Fun fact: 9 In 2010, there were only 6 foreign titles in the medical schools and universities of Iran, and one of them was Birth As We Know It. Iran also had a clear goal at that time to reduce the C-section rates to 12% by the year 2025. At the time, I had a lot of hope for a bright future in that country. I don’t know how much they progressed in that direction, but even if it helped a few people, I’m happy.

 

Another fun fact: Hundreds of people told me they watched this film more than a dozen times. Dozens of people shared  that they watched this film more than 100 times. These are the educators who show it in their classes, and they all say a version of the same thing:  They put the film on once again for their students, planning to accomplish something else while the film is screening, only to end up watching the whole thing again, inevitably discovering something new in it that they hadn’t noticed before. Even asking me in amazement,”Was *this* there the whole time?” Yes. It was. 

 

Yet another fun fact: I auditioned eight different professionals for the voice over. I did not consider myself as a good narrator because of my accent, and it simply did not occur to me. Every person I tried sounded very professional with their perfect English. None of them sounded right to me. I kept showing them the music of each phrase the way I hear it. But they could not repeat it - it sounded mechanical. Finally, my editor Skyler said, “Let’s record you”. I agreed, thinking that it would be something for them to practice with at home before they come to the studio. We recorded the whole thing with one take, non-stop. 10 I went back to look for other people to read the voice over, while Skyler stayed and worked all night. The next day, he showed me the whole film with my voice in it. The end of that story.

 

One last fun fact: To have somebody read the voice over, we needed to have the whole text in print. However, we didn’t have any script. It was a patchwork of different recordings of the insights of the day. I basically summarised what was happening for me personally while working on this project, and it magically fit into the birthing theme. Skyler would then brilliantly place each new recording bit somewhere in the footage. So by the time we started auditioning for the voice over, there was no printed text. Skyler said that he would just play the film and transcribe it. He paused the film after the first two sentences, typed, then realized that he remembered the next sentence, and the next… ultimately, he never had to turn the film back on. He typed the whole thing by heart! While editing the footage, then tweaking it to the music tracks, he had gone over every segment so many times that he knew the entire text by heart, without knowing it!

 

Oh, and the countless healing stories I heard from viewers! The river of tears shed over some parts of the film - still, even twenty years later, I receive many tearful testimonials. I can’t even take credit for it. It seemed to me, the film was forming itself according to its own pre-existing blueprint.

 

Ultimately, we made three different versions of the film: 75 minutes, 40 minutes & 25 minutes. It’s the same film, edited differently to fit different timeframes for presentations in classes, talks and conferences. For example, Hypnobirthing Institute was my main wholesale institution client for many years, but they only bought the 25 minute version because it did not contain the episodes of C-section and circumcision. It only spotlights the creme-de-la-creme footage - five orgasmic births. The 40 minute version includes the intense parts, but is better suited for a one-hour class. The 75 minute feature film has everything, with 11 amazing births in various settings. The hard copy DVD had  almost 3 hours of bonus features, which I was very happy to share, but with all that was lost in the Paradise fire, only parts of it are now available digitally. A shame, because some of those bonus features were actually my favorite parts of all the material.

 

Working on the film, I felt that on some level, it already existed. I just needed to be very precise in making it the way IT wanted to be. I also had a very distinct feeling that it was ‘making me’ as much as I was making IT - expanding me, giving me lots of emotional stretch marks, melting down what didn’t belong. I felt like I was grounding a new birthing paradigm through my body, against all the forces on this planet invested in keeping women miserable.

 

In the first year of its life, the film was sold in 48 countries without any marketing, advertising, or promotion. The second year when it was on its fifth print, it got translated into 14 languages, all by local volunteers.

 

This film was created as a woman-to-woman personal conversation. On a personal level, I created it with the desire to share my knowledge with my daughter.  Then it turned out to be a film I wished that I myself could have seen before my pregnancy. Eventually, I realized that my true wish was for my mother to have seen it before she had gotten pregnant with me. Even my grandmother…if she had seen this film, she would have paved a way for my mother to give birth to me with grace and dignity. I came to realize that this film is truly for everyone, not just pregnant women, or even just women.

***

By 2003 I had a sense of urgency to do something about the film again. After Birth Into Being became a run-away project, I had a bad taste in my mouth about it all and no idea how to proceed with no money or time for it, no skills, patience or personality for fund-raising,

 

At a party in Mill Valley, CA, I had a lovely conversation with a new friend, Cecily Kate Borthwick. We shared a special moment of truly seeing each other. I spoke of my dream to make this film. She shared her dream of having a family, which she had never had before. A year later, with no contact in between, Kate called me in the middle of the night from Edinburgh, Scotland; her mother had just died in her arms. Kate was undergoing an intense revelation at that moment, and she called to say that she wanted her next step in life to be using her inheritance to make this film. Not only would she work on it with me as the artistic director, but she would also pay the editor! 

So the work began. Kate returned and found an excellent editor, with many awards for National Geographic documentaries, with lots of fancy equipment and who was very expensive, charging $150 an hour. In 2005, this was an unthinkable amount for me but Kate insisted - ‘only the best’!

 

They worked together for 11 months, while I kept up with my busy schedule, teaching my workshops all over the world. Periodically I would drop in to see how they were doing, only to find out that what they were doing was not what I would be doing. So I would outline the changes and take off again. 

 

$35,000 and 11 months later, the draft of the film was not what I wanted to see. It was a sweet, artistic, and generic National Geographic-style piece, narrating the developmental stages of the fetus, the history of the peoples of the Black Sea and how to get there from Moscow. The editor said that she was not going to include any birth footage, because then she would not be able to enter ‘her’ film into any film festivals. It took me four months to get my originals back from her! At first, she refused to release them to me, convinced that I would certainly ruin the project that she had grown really attached to. Finally, I had to sign a contract with two conditions upon which she agreed to return the tapes to me.  The contract stated that I would never mention her name and would not use any of her work (that she got paid $35,000 for already!) because she was sure that I would make a really poor documentary that she did not want her name to be associated with. I gladly signed it and finally got my tapes back.

 

Three months into working on the film, Kate was swept away by a new romance for good. She had found the love of her life (they are still together) and had a beautiful baby boy shortly after. When I got the tapes, I had a major realization: It was time for me to fully step in. I finally got it: it was my project to make! I then cancelled all my engagements, found a new editor, rolled up my sleeves and started the whole thing over from scratch. It was a very delicate process of creating, re-creating, and co-creating this film. While working on it, I had over a dozen of the deepest emotional meltdowns. It activated in me everything that could have been activated.

 

At some point, I noticed that IT was not giving me any slack. Like the birthing field of a human baby, this film, or creative project, demanded my complete attention and surrender. Unless I was actually living what I was talking about, it was not letting me continue. IT (I can’t help but to refer to the Birthing Field of this film with capital letters) was bringing up everything there was to be brought up in me. Every hidden particle of my resentment to life, to birth, to happiness, the levels of my deep anger and frustration, that I didn’t even know were there -  were all reflected back to me with a consistency only a birthing field possesses. Unless I was in a complete alignment with IT, the work would somehow start lingering and lingering until coming to a complete halt. And IT would not let me off the hook until something within me would shift and make it right somehow, and then IT would keep going again with more power than ever. I had to constantly expand and expand, and then some - my emotional body was getting stretch marks all over. I was way out of my comfort zone. But all I could do was grow into it. THE ONLY WAY OUT WAS IN! 

 

A few times, I thought it was a lost cause; that it was simply impossible to finish, because of the amount and size of the obstacles mounting around it. It felt like centuries of resistance to peaceful birth on this ‘planet of tears’ ganged up against me at once - all the forces invested in keeping women disempowered. Social, religious, political, economical structures that sustain themselves on keeping humans miserable and build themselves up on human suffering, supporting the fear-based mentality in mass-consciousness, and keeping people from accessing their true potential. It felt like that was actually what I was dealing with, while trying to ground the new birthing paradigm, literally, through my own body. 

 

The First Obstacle: The Disappearing Act

 

One of the obstacles I faced was my constantly disappearing editor. It all started when Marilyn Milos, the founder of the No-Circ movement, had given me raw half an hour long footage of circumcision. I included only one minute of it in the film, but even that was very hard to watch. I had many men running out of the room or starting to sob during screenings. To watch the whole raw torture and agony of the screaming newborn baby, see the blood, and hear the calm voice of the doctor performing the procedure, explaining to a group of students standing around watching it, that the baby doesn’t feel the pain, that the screaming is just a reflex… was nerve-racking, to say the least. After Skyler, my editor (bless his heart) watched the raw footage, he disappeared for 3 months. He would not respond to my calls, hiding from me when I went out looking for him. He reacted quite intensely to what he saw. The delicate, deeply feeling, artistic nature of his, did not handle it well. He went on a drinking binge. I had no idea what to think… Month after month went  by, and I had no idea what his disappearance meant. He had all my originals, and he had completed many months of editing by that time… I was also re-traumatized, finding myself abandoned again as had occurred with the first film and its editor. It was paralyzing, disheartening, and draining my very life force. I had no funds to start over, or any enthusiasm to do so. Besides, I didn’t even have my originals, I did not know what to do.

 

So I kept meditating, taking long breaths and long walks, praying, going out dancing. This is what I do when I am overwhelmed - when ‘the unstoppable Force hits the impenetrable wall’, as they say. I drop everything and put myself together first. Then it’s just a matter of time for the situation to self-regulate itself.

 

One day, I succeeded in finding Sklyer. We talked, cried, and drank some tequila. I brought him to my house, put him to sleep in my guestroom and then kept him in safe captivity for a few months under my watch. He never wanted to look at the circumcision footage again though. I had to find another editor. I found a young, sporty guy who  didn’t flinch. It took him 2 days to create the 1 minute cut that you see in the film today and the 5 minute cut for the bonus feature on the hard copy DVD (from the 31 minutes of raw footage). It was so refreshingly uneventful - two days later he brought the edited video to me, and I paid him. Done! He didn’t say a word, no comments or questions, - done!

 

We then made big progress with Skyler, almost finished the film. But then I needed to urgently fly out of the country for three weeks. That’s when I lost him again… He completely disappeared on me six times during the year we worked on this project. Like in Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’ my part was agonizingly waiting for Skyler to call or show up. With my allergy to patience— it was the hardest, but most potent medicine. When that pattern of his revealed itself to me, we were too deep in the works for me to find another editor to start over. Besides, I was already sold on his artistic magic. The way he was putting everything together was really speaking to me. Later, I learned that this brilliant artist had never finished any project he started. He had a real aversion to finishing anything. 

 

Skyler was working pro bono on the film. With all Kate’s money spent on the first miscarried version, I didn’t have anything to give him at this stage. I was literally living off of my daughter’s piggy bank myself, not knowing if or when the film would ever bring anything back. I was doing it simply because I could not, NOT do it. 

 

I have a lot of respect for Skyler as an artist and while he is the kindest, most beautiful person you can find, working with him was like trying to lean back on a cloud: Now you see him, now you don’t. It was extremely frustrating. At the end of the project, Skyler disappeared again for good. After searching for him for a month and hundreds of unreturned calls, my boyfriend and I broke into his house and in a heated, near fist-fight situation, I collected all the footage and sent it to the printer. My sense of urgency was in the red for many months by then. I felt like I was letting down all the babies who were being born without their mothers having a chance to see what was possible. At that point, I almost hated Skyler. I could not wait for him any longer. Needless to say, we did not part well.

 

As soon as the film hit the streets, the demand on my appearances, classes, and talks went through the roof. I had to decline 30-40 invitations per year simply because there was not enough time in a year to travel to all those locations. At the end of the day, I’m very grateful for Sklyer’s vision, effort, skills, artistry, and patience with me. I don’t know anybody who could have been more artistically perfect for the job.

 

Another Obstacle: Musician’s rage

 

32 musicians had generously donated their tracks for this film. I am eternally grateful! It was a deeply moving and confirming experience for me to receive so much support from strangers. I’d explain what I was doing and unanimously heard ‘Take what you need, it’s an honor to be a part of your project’.

 

One of the musicians, however, went through a very strong process to stay in it. I chose two tracks from his CD and sent him a copy of a finished piece of editing. It is a tedious process to edit footage to the music, not the other way around. One can’t mess with a musical phrase to accommodate the footage. So it was a big piece completed with his tracks around a few other episodes, one of which was the proverbial circumcision scene. I was very happy and satisfied with the whole edited sequence, and was eagerly awaiting his response. What I received was outrage - complete with obscene language and threats to sue me, etc. He didn’t even respond to the episodes with his music. He raged about me speaking against circumcision! The strongest psychic attack I’ve ever endured in this lifetime went on for the next few months, completely disabling me with so much disdain and hate pouring towards me. A lawsuit was looming against me, for mocking people’s faith. I was not prepared for this outraged response! Later, I learned that he had been fighting his wife for many months to circumcise their one-year-old son, to which she was strongly opposed. He believed that being a devoted Christian, he was still under an obligation to have this ritual performed. At some point, he went ahead and had his son circumcised, without his wife’s permission and knowing. During the procedure, something went terribly wrong and the boy was in a severe condition. It turned out that the musician’s reaction to my work was not about me at all. It was his inability to cope with the consequences of his own actions. So he found an outlet for his pain and rage: me.

 

The entire time I was under the onslaught of his attack, I could not work. I was meditating, breathing, going out dancing in the evenings, and praying for peace in this man’s soul. Then one day, out of the blue, I received a calm, polite letter from him, apologizing, explaining his reaction, and confirming his permission to use his tracks. So I went back to the project as it was before this dramatic delay.

 

There were so many contractions and expansions of my nervous system during the emergence of this film. I honestly tried to understand the whole process - what does it really take to give birth to something (anything) while being ‘walking wounded’ that we all are, or to the degree that I was, given my own personal history.  To give birth but also articulate it, take notes, and reflect on the drama unfolding in the world of me. From what I understand, every person has to face that same task of unleashing the creative forces within,  at some point. I don’t care how many lifetimes it takes. When it comes down to it, what that unleashing will look like depends on the quality of gestation - l the ‘baby’ can take the form of a nuclear bomb,  a beautiful poem, a little baby girl, or the next Mother Teresa. 

 

At this point, it had become very clear to me that just understanding the words about conscious birthing, grasping the concept in my head, was not enough. To be able to finish my project, I needed to upgrade my entire nervous system to literally, physically anchor the energy of conscious birth in this 3-D reality, in my own body. It didn’t really count that somebody else had done it already and had said all their words before me. I needed to find those words to come out of my own heart and mouth.

 

By the way, all of these roller coaster filming experiences took place in Chico, California, where I had lived since 1993. The pattern of the filmmaking seemed to go in spirals: Everything would be flowing smoothly, I and my co-creators would be working together in total agreement, until suddenly something would trigger a huge drama. Then, the next frozen part of my being would be pushed into a complete meltdown, after which I would know exactly what and how to say in the film’s narration! I would just describe what just had happened to me, with me, and for me. So, the text in the film ultimately had very little to do with the 50-page script Kate and I wrote in the beginning. I had a recording camera set up for four final months in my bedroom, and every morning I went for a walk in the park to gather my wits and reflect on the situation I was in. Then, I would come back home and talk into the microphone, narrating the latest piece that I just came up with. Then, Skyler would find an appropriate place to insert it into the film. 

 

Incidentally, this is why the first few prints were sound-challenged, it was actually a patchwork of different recordings! But I didn’t have the luxury of waiting - women out there had their due dates, and I needed to make it available for them ASAP. It paid off - there are quite a few babies out there whose mothers saw the film before it was even sent to print, days before their deliveries, who cancelled their pre-scheduled C-sections for convenience reasons at the last moment and had beautiful homebirths instead.  

 

Every time when the project would stall, it would appear to be for real “external” reasons, not connected with any of my doing - some objective circumstances that I had no power over. And every time the pressure cooker would bring me to my knees, to the point of a deeper experience of life and rebirth, I would feel another range of expansion, propelling me to my nervous system’s next upgrade. Literally, like I just received another lease on life. And after each of my nervous meltdowns, the project would experience a quantum leap; it would suddenly continue to evolve in the most unpredictable, magical way. 

 

Even if this was just my inner schizophrenic making up all of that larger than life/battle of Good vs. Evil context that probably only took place in my own head, well, it was real for me. And it still feels great to win! To get to watch my ‘baby’ marching around the globe and live to tell the story! 

 

I felt I needed to be very precise with what exactly needed to be conveyed in the film. To squeeze so much material into a one-hour long feature film didn’t seem possible. When I started working on it, the only format I knew of was VHS. Producing something on two VHS tapes meant a lot of hassle. But one day, I learned there was a new technology that came into existence: DVDs!!!! Yes!! We were going to produce it on DVD!!! It meant that a lot more stuff could go into it, including the bonus features! Suddenly, everything was so much easier. But still, I had to understand what exactly I could afford to leave out, because there was so much I wanted to say.  Finally, I found peace by promising myself that I would write a book later, and would not have to be so brutal about cutting out those big important pieces.

====================================

 

When I finally finished and sent the film into print, my neighbor immediately sent a copy to Marilyn Milos, whom she knew from anti-circumcision advocacy. I had received the raw footage of circumcision from Marilyn, who used to work as a hospital nurse. She saw how excruciating circumcision was for baby boys. She took the initiative to speak with parents to change their minds, but someone reported her and she was fired. On her last day as a nurse, she used a hidden camera during surgery and shared it with the world! With that footage, Marilyn singlehandedly changed the statistics on circumcision on the West Coast from 95% down to 35% in the first decade. She lost her job, and became a fierce activist! She created a ‘NoCirc’ organization and invested all of her energy into educating the population about the unspeakable harm being done to the newborns. She became a powerful force of protecting little boys.

 

It turned out that Marilyn was organizing a ‘no-circ’ presentation at the upcoming Congress on Human Rights at the University of Seattle. She asked me to show my film there too. The program was already full and printed, as it was only a week away, so she offered to host screenings at lunchtime on all four days of the congress, in the main amphitheatre. I was definitely on my way to Seattle!

 

The first day I showed Birth As We Know It, there were maybe 10 people present, eating their lunches. The second day, there were probably a hundred people. The third day, the amphitheatre was full to the brim, with standing room only! I was asked to speak a little afterwards, even though the official program was supposed to start right after lunch. Every screening ended with a standing ovation. After I finished my short presentation on the last day, there was not a dry eye in the auditorium. Hundreds of people stood up to show how moved they were.

 

Outside in the lobby, a tall, distinguished gentleman approached me. His face was still wet with tears. He said that he was very passionate about all the issues I was speaking about in the film and that he wanted to do all he could to support me. To which I gave him a straight look and said hopefully: ‘Do you mean money?’ He said ‘Yes, I do’ and pulled out his checkbook.

 

Right before my departure to Seattle, I had received two money-related messages. One was from Kate, in desperate need for money. She had spent her inheritance on my film and was now living off of her credit cards, which were by then maxed out. She had had a car accident and was in a dire financial situation. Another was an invoice from Skyler for $40,000. He wrote that he did not want to wait for the film to sell, that he needed to be paid in full, ASAP. So during my entire flight to Seattle, I was completely freaked out about money, feeling the urgent need to pay both of them off, and had absolutely no idea how to cover my debt. I was barely covering my own bills in those days.

 

So when George (Dr. George Denniston, with seven lines of abbreviations after his name) stood in front of me in that lobby, asking me how he could be of help, I had no hesitation saying that I needed funding to pay the creation debts and print DVD copies asap. There was a long dance of him pulling out of me how much I needed. I said, Anything would help - and it went like that for a few minutes. Finally, when I heard, “Dear lady, just give me a ballpark, - what do you need right now? It’s the last time I’m asking you.” - I blurted out “$75,000! To pay off the editors!”

 

And just like that, he wrote me a check for $75,000, right then and there, in that lobby, completely freeing me from my panic, my debt, my guilt! Well, it took a few days for me to completely believe what just happened, while the check cleared. But both Kate and Skyler were very happy to receive their payment in full so soon. The next production of DVDs went out with George’s name on the cover as our co-producer. My eternal gratitude goes to this most amazing person! We became good friends; it turned out that George is one of the true Elders on this planet. A truly wise, deeply spiritual, most generous and one of the most loving Spirits I've ever known! He practiced Transcendental Meditation for 40 years without ever skipping a day of meditating. Thank you, George! Sending you a big HUG as you read these words! 

 

Postpartum 

It’s already a very long story but believe me it’s not even all of it :) I do want to share it in its entirety, but later, in my book. This is just a teaser.

 

After releasing the film, instead of a much anticipated deep sense of relief, my nervous system, with no warning, went into a complete shock. “Now I've done it! What was I thinking! Who do I think I am! How did I dare?!” My nervous system was completely short circuiting, pulling my head into my shoulders. I got very quiet, expecting all hell to break loose! And for a while, it seemed like I couldn’t do anything about it. I was expecting capital punishment. I thought making the film was intense; it was not even close to the intensity of having it out in the world! All of a sudden, the author Suzanne Arms’ scenario surfaced hard in my mind. When she published her book ‘Immaculate Deception’ in the early 70s about the misconduct in maternity wards, and the abuse of laboring women and newborns, Suzanne became a target of way too many angry doctors. They made sure that her life became very complicated. Having that in mind, I chose not to point fingers in my film, simply showing the alternative instead, how empowering and beautiful it can be. So I didn’t expect anything like this welling of deep terror to come forward, but I could not help but notice that I was basically paralyzed.  

 

You see, growing up, my family lived in a communal apartment. It was a 4 bedroom apartment with 1 toilet, 1 bathtub, 1 sink and 1 kitchen with 1 stove.  4 families lived in that apartment, one family per bedroom. In the 1950s, 60% of Russians lived like this. As everybody had the same work schedule, all 4 families came home from work at the same time, 4 women instantly crowding each other in the kitchen trying to fix dinners for their families, dashing between the stove and the sink, all 4 tired and hungry, sometimes all 4 of them on their periods at the same time, all 4 just met by their needy, tired husbands and children who waited for their attention all day. 

 

So, pretty early in the history of that co-housing, the kitchen became a taboo for kids. Under no circumstances we were allowed to enter the 'holy ground', especially after one of the kids got burned with boiling water, when one of the mothers tripped over an unexpected child, while 4 of them swiftly swirled in a crazy kitchen dance.  

 

For some reason, it took me a long time to comprehend this taboo. With every little drawing that I created and honestly considered a masterpiece worth sharing, I kept running into the kitchen to share my excitement with my mother, only to be yelled at, threatened in no uncertain terms and smacked hard with a wet towel if I failed to remember not to come very close to her and was within her reach. 

 

As a result of this repeated experience, my creative flow had completely dried up. By the time I was about 7, nothing wanted to be expressed any more. In my world, creativity has become a punishable crime. It took me many years to break that spell. But only now that I really understand the degree of the effect it had on me. 

 

Fast forward back to the film release, all hell did in fact break loose, in a totally unexpected way: Two weeks after I got boxes of DVDs from the printing company, on 11/11/06, my father died in his sleep. Dad's passing took us all by surprise. He was one of the top athletes in Russia. Very healthy and strong. Never been to a doctor in his life, other than for a pre-competition check-up. In the last 5 years of his life, he had won 63 medals, 40 of them gold or 1st place, depending on the level of the competition. He was 74 when he died. After he had reached 70, he was competing in Moscow in the age category ‘over 60’, a very small group of athletes, since there was no such category ‘over 70’ in the Russian Senior games. Russian men normally don’t even live that long, never mind running and bicycling. The average male life span in Russia was 56. 

 

There was a spooky completion in it. The film had started with my friend’s mother dying and ended with my father’s death. Death, like quotation marks or like parenthesis for this project, was on both sides of the journey with it. My parents lived in Moscow, so I couldn't even be there for the funeral. As I learned about my father’s passing, my daughter was diagnosed with cancer. During his funeral, I was in the hospital with my child as she was immediately operated on. Two weeks later, I myself had to undergo a major abdominal surgery. That experience brought me to terms with my own mortality and the world of medicine. It was my very first personal encounter with it since my own birth; there was so much healing in it! I had never been to a hospital or to a doctor until the surgery. What a big learning curve! …But everything eventually settled into their new places… Life has its way of going on.

 

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While working on this film, I had a target audience in mind: my daughter. She was only a child when I had started my work, and was not interested in any of this. Because I didn’t have anybody to leave her with, I had to take her with me to all of my presentations and classes and she was overexposed to all this birthing information when she was so little. - Back then, she was not paying attention to the subject, of course. All she knew was that she had to share me with ‘it’ - anything related to birth could be on another planet, as far as she was concerned. She had had enough of it! Still, I wanted her to be able to access this information if or when she would be ready for it. And who knows if I would be there at that point. So, basically, it was a woman’s quest to make sure that her daughter received the correct information about birth. (By the way she did get a direct download in spite of herself! She birthed like a pro both times - a 1.5 hour long delivery with her first child and literally, a half hour with her second, when she didn't even feel she was in labor until the baby showed up.

 

I also came to  realize that my basic intention for making the film was to share what I, myself, wanted to know when I was pregnant. And what I needed somebody to tell me before I was pregnant. Yes, I was helping Igor; yes, I knew all the concepts, but you see, I was never one of the pregnant women going through the program. I held space for others, organizing classes in Moscow and birth camps at the Black Sea. But in the very beginning of my own pregnancy, I had been stranded in California. It’s a long, miraculous and bizarre story - how I had come here for a short visit, against all odds (because at that time, in 1989, there was not even a bureaucratic procedure for a single Russian woman to come for a private visit to the U.S.) Jewish people were leaving Russia by the hundreds of thousands, but for Russians the borders were still as closed as ever. There really was no reasonable explanation for how I had been granted a visa by the American consulate. But it was a precedent. It opened the doors for lots of other single Russian women to be able to come to America, even though it took a few more years before the flood of Russian ‘mail-order’ brides. To make a long story short, I never got to take a birth preparation class myself, and as soon as I left, my country fell apart. Suddenly, I didn’t have a country to go back to. A big mess, (basically, an unofficial civil war), began there. During my first year in America, I was crying every day, missing my tribe at home, in Russia.

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The reason I have included so many visibly unrelated details in this chapter is because I wanted to give you a wide context in broad strokes. Where did the film come from? Why me? I had absolutely no credentials or skills for making this film. There is a part of me that wishes that actual professionals - psychologists, doctors, film-makers, etc were doing this work - researching, publishing, learning… but very few actually do! Those few who are doing amazing work, bless their hearts! But what are others waiting for? I wish it would be all done already! So that we can have heaven on Earth! If professionals would be doing it, then I could just do what I really love to do -  go dance, hike, make out, play! But until then, the Birthing Field was calling forth my service, my commitment and willingness to show up. So here I was, doing my part.

 

On one of our daily walks, my 93-year-old mother recently shared with me a story that explained a lot. I had no cognitive knowledge of it but it turns out, the good old limbic imprint has been at play: my body, my nervous system remembered it and kept playing it out consistently throughout my life. It was a very powerful imprint!

 

When I was about 3 months old, my grandma finally visited us with the stated intention to help. My parents lived on the city’s outskirts, in inhumane conditions at that time. It was a badly built barrack shared by four families with a common outhouse and wood stoves in the bedrooms. At least, there was electricity and running cold water in the shared kitchen. The main commodity was a glaring absence of a road or a sidewalk leading to it from a bus stop. There were pine boards thrown right on top of the perpetual mud along the edge of a small cliff of a marsh. 

 

One day, my grandmother decided to take me for a walk to give my mom a child-free moment to do her chores. As my parents didn’t own a stroller, the only option to walk with me was to carry me in her arms. It turned out to be a very short walk. A few minutes after Grandma left with me, my mother heard hysterical screams. She ran outside and saw my grandma trying to fish me out of a marsh, standing on the bottom with dirty black water reaching her waist line. With this fiasco, on top of all her tasks, Mom now had to wash all of Grandma’s and my clothing. And to have her Mother wrapped in sheets for many hours, sitting in the middle of her small space while her clothes were drying, feeding her and entertaining her, while being scolded and put down because it was my own mother’s fault after all. That was the kind of dynamic the two of them had all their lives. 

 

The next time Grandma was invited over was to see my parents’ new apartment, about 10 years later. She was very willing to help with unpacking, started to open the box with Mom’s favorite china and knocked it over. Only a few pieces survived the crush. I don’t remember seeing her in our home ever again.

 

I’m sharing this story to offer another angle of understanding on my interactions with people I have hired to help me over the years of my career. Every single one of them carried some degree of resemblance with this imprint that I inherited from my foremothers. To the point that it was expected…

 

The moral of this story: with all my awareness of the correlation between our imprints and our life’s situations, in the making of this film I had still fallen helplessly prey to the programming in my nervous system. Until very recently I had no idea about the volume of charge in this early life imprint. Now I have a chance to actually do something about it. Also, having said that, I had this repeated dynamic only with those who were supposed to help and got paid for it. I received an enormous volume of volunteer support from people around the world when it was not expected, mostly, without even requesting it. My eternal gratitude goes to every single person who showed up and made it possible for me to accomplish as much as I did. I remember and greatly appreciate every one of you!

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​Ocean Birth

Many women, after watching Birth As We Know It, say: “I want to go and give birth in the ocean”. Well, the reality is, giving birth is not easily accessible. I actually spent a lot of time looking for a place on this side of the globe, especially in Hawaii. The requirements for a place are: the water has to be clean, warm and calm, the beach has to be secluded, very private, empty of tourists and easily accessible. If anyone knows of a place like that, talk to me! I didn’t find it.

Meanwhile, as those familiar with the work know well by now, what really is important for birth is not the presence of dolphins and extravagant traveling, but many, many other factors, which a pregnant woman should focus on. The best thing is actually not to travel far away, because after the baby is born the family will have to face traveling back home with a newborn: crowded airports, airplanes, a long drive in a car. None of that belongs in the baby’s first few days and months. Besides, it is possible to create a sweet dolphin birth anywhere, in the convenience of your own living room, like we did in the middle of winter in Siberia! We can meditate on dolphins and listen to their recorded sounds and experience their presence without traveling afar. It's all about frequencies nowadays!

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Arly heals  her cesarean imprint by watching BAWKI 64 times

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Arly was 4 when her Mom was pregnant again. Arly was born via elective c-section and the next one was scheduled already because Mom thought it was a better option, even though she was severely traumatized during the first delivery. She never acknowledged her trauma because she thought it was normal. While she was birthing, the whole class of young male medical students, without warning her, were taking turns putting their hands into her vagina to touch the cervix and the baby's head while she was in stirrups. Nobody asked for her consent. They just told her that they need to do this to learn. 

Arly was displaying a whole host of side effects of a severe birth trauma. She was unable to make eye contact with people outside of her family or clearly communicate. She was always hiding behind mom's leg, still bedwetting at four, not eating well, really struggling with her digestive tract. Her drawings were very dark, black and brown crayons just torturing a piece of paper, often ripping it through. I could see how much turmoil that little girl was in. And there her mama was planning to go to that hospital again!

They all watched my movie together. Then they cancelled the c-section, got a portable tub, set it in the living room and two months later, their baby was born beautifully, quickly, at home into daddy’s happy hands. But my story is about Arly. After watching my film with her parents, she watched it 64 times! Every morning, she would push the button and watch the whole 75 minutes. When I came to visit two months later, it was a different girl! She greeted me at the door, gave me a big hug, and was a little chatter-box. Her mom said she stopped bedwetting, was eating well, and was now drawing princesses, flowers and rainbows. After watching the movie daily for over two months, she adopted a new story of her own birth! Nobody told her to do that, it was her own impulse. On the sixty fourth day, she abruptly turned off the DVD player in the middle of the film, turned around and declared: ‘This is the way I was born! And I’m going to be a midwife when I grow up!’ And walked away. Never asked to see it again. 

She literally reprogrammed herself! Completely absorbed the new limbic imprint, and all her symptoms went away. At four, at her own accord! It was absolutely brilliant! She never knew the details of her birth story. But her new adopted story was wholesome and healthy; she was safe and welcomed into this world properly. 

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Another beautiful testimony: someone gave my film as a prank gift on the 40th birthday to a musician, Rara. It was a big party with a lot of bearded and not very sober musicians present. When it was time to open the gifts, everybody laughed at first at the site of a birthing film. But Rara took the prank further and inserted the DVD into the player right then and there. It went on! Pretty soon, it got really quiet and there was not a dry face in the place. It turned into a sobbing room… They watched the whole thing - it stole the party! In the next few days I got emails from a bunch of musicians asking me to choose their music for my next project. They wrote that they would be honoured to give their music to this cause! 

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The highlight of my experiences sharing this film was in South Africa, in 2012. I was a key-note speaker at a large midwifery Conference in Johannesburg. With over 600 doctors and nurses present, I showed the film, spoke afterwards, and when I finished, there was complete silence… I stood there on stage, alone, resorted to deep breaths, for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t know what to expect and why I could hear a pin drop. Finally, the MC slowly came to the center of the stage and holding back tears, said quietly, ‘I would like to invite whoever wants to come on stage to sing our National Hymn for Elena’. The whole place rose to their feet and I could now see tears on their faces. On all 600 of them… About 4-5 dozen people ran to the stage and quickly self organized by harmonies. Within a couple of minutes, they all looked for a signal to start. One of them stepped forward and the sound blew my mind! Everyone in the audience joined. 

The South African National Hymn has very long, majestic notes with unbelievable harmonies. With a 600-piece choir, it sounded like the land itself was singing to me.

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We must pay tribute to Elena for prompting us to re-examine basic features of human nature. Her film explains why millions of women, all over the world, dream of giving birth in the sea, among dolphins.

                                                                                                                 Dr. Michel Odent, Author, founder of the Primal Health Institute

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Every young woman in the world, before she has a child, should see this film. She needs to know that there is a choice between fear, and joy. Before she can make that choice wisely, she must see Birth As We Know It. It will help her avoid the pitfalls of “modern” medicine, which fails to recognize that birth is a natural process that women have been carrying out successfully for millions of years. This film will lead her toward experiencing the empowerment a natural birth will give her, which is her birthright. It is unlikely that she will ever see such an important film again in her lifetime.

                                                                                                                 George C. Denniston MD, MPH, Professor of Family Medicine,                                                                                                                                University of Washington; President, Doctors Opposing                                                                                                                                Circumcision; Former Associate Medical Director,                                                                                                                                        Planned Parenthood Federation of America; President,                                                                                                                                Population Dynamics, Seattle WA:

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Elena shows you that birth is not something to fear - that it can be the most ecstatic ORGASMIC experience of your life! We highly recommend her LIFE-CHANGING work and her DVD. It's phenomenal - the BEST DVD on Natural Birthing out there! 

                                                                                                              Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes of The Raw Food World: