Back in 2022, I came across a Benny Bufano original Madonna sculpture in San Francisco’s Fort Mason park (see Visualizing Birth through Benny Bufano’s “Madonna”). Recently, I was driving out near San Francisco State University on Brotherhood Way and came across Bufano’s Statue of Peace, which in the 1960s was erected at the San Francisco Airport and then relocated to Brotherhood Way in 2014. I did not take a picture and am using Chris Carlsson’s from the Benny Bufano on Public Art Page at the Found SF website.

As in the case of Bufano’s Madonna sculpture written about here in 2022, the artist’s Statue of Peace provides pregnant and other viewers with a calming image of a mother, whose body appears to enfold one or more colorful children. Her bust protrudes slightly towards the top of the sculpture beneath her glowing head and face. She appears serene and powerful, reminding mothers-to-be of their own capacities as they approach labor and birth.

At this time of war in the United States, with our government unlawfully attacking Iran and other countries, Bufano’s work stands out as a reminder of how our people need to stand up for peace. In this quote from the Found SF website on Bufano’s work, we see that the artist wanted democracies to stand up for peace, and he saw the need as connected to a reminder of protecting the women and children off our world. But it is up to the people at this point since we are witnessing the collapse of our entire leadership and governmental infrastructure during late stage capitalism:

Bufano was a very strong voice for social change in America. He produced art that advocated resistance to oppression. “I sculptured ‘Peace’ in the form of a projectile, to express the idea that if peace is to be preserved today it must be enforced peace-enforced by the democracies against Fascist barbarism. Modern warfare, which involves the bombing of women and children, has no counterpart in a peace interpreted by the conventional motif of olive branches and doves.” (O’Connor 1973).

Birth is something that every human goes through; thus, it serves as a commonality connecting us all across race, class, age, gender, etc. and reminding us of our shared humanity. Identity politics have fractured us. At this time we need to look to universals, and mothers/children/parenting are a universal that reminds us of life, which we can all relate to.

How the universe first came into being is one of the most profound and intriguing questions humans can contemplate, and we become mesmerized over again at other beginnings— the beginning of our sun, our planet, life on earth, and life in general. Human pregnancies and births are microcosmic parts of this macrocosmic cycle of coming into being. Similar to the awe we may feel when realizing that the births of our children are connected to a long lineage of births across human history, so we may feel an extraordinary fascination when thinking about the birth of our universe as a whole.

Our pregnancies and the births of our children are forever woven with coming into being and to the beginning of our universe, and that realization can help us feel interconnected to all life, lessening any sense we might have that we are on our own as we prepare to give birth ourselves.

*This is an excerpt from my new book, Visualizing Birth. For similar content, check out the publisher’s page. Book is available in softcover and hardcover.

I’m excited to announce that my new book “Visualizing Birth” is officially published! This is a short book with beautiful images that has roots in my PhD research on visualization and art in Chinese religious traditions, in my own experience using visualization during birth, and in years of reading about visualization across fields such as neuroscience, philosophy, and sports psychology. It’s also a celebration of 15 years writing this Visualizing Birth blog, which I started in 2010 during my second pregnancy when these ideas first took hold of me.

If you’re interested in the mind-body connection, birth, or the surprising science of mental imagery, the book is a great read. If you know someone who is pregnant, or works in the birth community (midwives, nurses, doulas, prenatal yoga instructors, acupuncturists, etc.), this is a lovely gift. Available in softcover, hardcover, and PDF.  

I’m so grateful for the beautiful cover design by my dear friend, Vanessa Roland, and the back cover endorsements from Ann W. Duncan, Alex Schlegel, Karlton Terry and Ogechukwu Williams. Some of the amazing cover art includes the works of Wenji Billow Kate Hansen Shauna Wiley-Naefke and Xiaohong Zhang. 

More info and to purchase here: https://www.blurb.com/b/12773676-visualizing-birth (softcover and PDF) and here: https://www.blurb.com/b/12773831-visualizing-birth (hardcover)

Chawla describes the complexity of what the yoni is and it’s relationship to birth and the womb, explaining that the yoni is not simply an anatomical representation of a female body part:

Currently the vagina, the entry to the womb, is most often represented in dry, schematic biomedical terms, or in gross, often exploitative pornography. We find completely different representational perspectives in Indian traditions. The root of yoni is the Sanskrit word yuj meaning ‘to unite.’ The yoni is the crucible where things are combined (male and female, mother and fetus) where creation and re-creation takes place. Where unseen human life (not perceptible to the senses other than the mother’s internal sensations—at least before sonograms) takes material form.

We have a desire for precision in words, in naming, especially in body parts, with our orientation towards material reality. We want to know precisely what is the definition of yoni in anatomical terms. But an answer to that question is difficult. Yoni is not a direct equivalent of vagina, nor to womb. A direct correlation between western-derived ‘anatomy’ and indigenous body knowledge is problematic, if not impossible.

The yoni is a sacred site on the female body, capable of creation and recreation. In the Madhubani image shown here, a fetus is seen nurtured deep within the womb, protected through the site of the yoni, which includes the vagina and vulva. For those who are pregnant, an image such as this one is both empowering and spiritual, reminding viewers that their bodies protect and nurture the fetus. The colors of this particular image, which are soft, with light pinks, blues, grays and charcoals, are soothing to look at.

Chawla’s website, Matrika: Motherhood & Traditional Resources Information Knowledge & Action provides visitors with a wealth of information about birth, ritual, and midwifery in India, and includes a video on Cosmic Bodies. Chawla may be reached through her Contact Page.

Supported by a 2025 Luce-AAR Advancing Public Scholarship Grant (Henry Luce Foundation and the American Academy of Religion), Anna Hennessey held three Immersive Art Rebirth Events in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood over the past month. Events on November 28th and December 28th and titled “Re-Conception Pod Rebirth Experiences” were held at The Radical Reading Room on Haight Street near Fillmore, while a larger event titled the “Rebirth Tunnel Immersive Art Installation” was held at the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts located at 50 Scott Street. All events were free and open to the public.

In all three events, participants began their experiences in Re-Conception Pods. After first processing the self through writing, they then walked into a private space carrying their writing with them. In the Radical Reading Room events, the private space contained a second pod, which they proceeded to while listening to verbal affirmations in the room. After processing what they had written through voice and material destruction of the writing in a Rebirth Box, participants left the room and received Rebirth Certificates. The Harvey Milk Center for the Arts event contained a larger tunnel in the private space. Participants in that event began in one of three pods before entering the sacred space of the tunnel, through which they walked and similarly processed what they’d written in a Rebirth Box. They also received Rebirth Certificates upon exiting.

Some participants experienced these installations emotionally. One woman named Cate described the Re-Conception Pod Rebirth Event at The Radical Reading Room as if she had been in a sacred cave, and there were participants in all three events who released tears during their rebirth processes.

Hennessey has given artist talks on the creative process and history behind her Rebirth Installations at a number of conferences, including Harvard University’s 2025 Spirituality and the Arts Conference, the Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth’s 2025 Virtual Symposium, the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, and the 2024 Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion, Western Region.

Different iterations of this same project will be held in San Francisco and elsewhere into the future.

This is a wonderful short video of approximately 10 minutes that shows multiple real births in the squatting position. The film, which is dated to 1979 at locations in Brazil, is based on the research of Moysés Paciornik and Claudio Paciornik, and brings to mind some of the beautiful natural birth videos that the French doctor Max Ploquin created in the 1970s (see here).

The film, which shows the graphic elements of birth–babies crowning, umbilical cords, placentas, blood and fluids, etc. is helpful to other pregnant women who are wondering what birth really looks like. The squatting birth positions of all the mothers represented gives an idea of how squatting during birth can help the laboring mother, utilizing gravity to bring forth the crowning infant.

CPP Pesquisas, Curitiba/Brazil 1979
Edition Tércio Gabriel da Motta
Photography and Camera, Jorge dos Santos

In celebration of Visualizing Birth’s 15th anniversary, we are excited to present the wonderful matricentric work of San Diego-based artist, Alexandra Carter. Using vibrant colors and amorphous shapes, Carter has created an impressive and prolific collection of works through which she represents both the images and the sensations of pregnancy, fecundity, maternity, and birth. 

Today, we feature Carter’s Ejection Reflex, a glorious painting inspired by the labor and birth of Carter’s second child. The work includes life-size figures created through the artist’s use of translucent drafting film with acrylic ink. In our correspondences, Carter has explained the importance of utilizing this medium, “while the material has a light, frosted, airy quality, the subject matter and execution are heavy and explosive with liquid energy.” The artist’s technique results in an image that is both graceful and empowering.

Carter furthermore gives an explanation of the subject matter and history of the painting:

This painting reflects on the birth of my second child—an unexpected and intense home birth. We had planned to go to the hospital, and I believed there was still plenty of time, but then I began experiencing the fetal ejection reflex: a powerful, involuntary series of contractions that pushed the baby out without any conscious effort on my part. It was as if my body took over completely—an awe-inspiring force that I could only surrender to.

The bird in the piece represents that primal, internal power—the sheer velocity and mystery of what was happening inside me. At the same time, I want to leave room for multiple interpretations. The bird’s beak, for instance, resembles forceps, evoking a very different kind of birth—one shaped by medical intervention. To me, this image can hold space for a range of birthing experiences, all of them powerful in their own right.

This is a powerful painting for others to use in the visualization of birth. As they approach labor and birth, pregnant women can imagine themselves as the birthing woman depicted. In it, we see a figure with a meditative face, eyes closed and relaxed as she releases her child into the world. The elegant bird aids in the birthing process, lifting the child gently upward and along to help the woman as she delivers her baby. For those to whom this image speaks, close eyes and imagine a bird or other gentle being at your side, helping to lift your baby and bring your infant forth from your womb.

To view more of Alexandra Carter’s works or to contact her, see her website and contact page. Find her on Instagram @alexandracarterstudio. 

In an article written for Phys.org by Sandee Oster, a PhD graduate candidate in archaeology, Oster discusses the fascinating history of the the ibex motif, which is a motif of the goat image, and its relationship to feminine and fertility symbols, as well as to spirituality and the celestial world. The image highlighted in the article is the one placed above, showing a bronze plaque with what appears to be a female birth figurine flanked by two ibexes. 

This ibex image looks somewhat similar to sheela-na-gig representations, the latter of which has been discussed at length previously in numerous Visualizing Birth posts  (the latest post on this topic is available here). Similar to the sheela-na-gig image, this ibex image can be helpful to a laboring woman, providing her with visualization of a squatting figure whose vulva appears enlarged, with a head protruding as if in the process of birth.

For those interested in the history, I include Oster’s article here, as well as the link to the original source.

Ibex motif linked to fertility and celestial symbolism in ancient Near East art
by Sandee Oster, Phys.org

In a new study published in L’Antropologie, Dr. Shirin Torkamandi and his colleagues, Dr. Marcel Otte and Dr. Abbas Motarjem have analyzed the symbolic meaning of bovidea, particularly the ibex, in the ancient Near East.

The ibex is one of many wild goat species belonging to the genus Capra, typically found in the mountainous regions of Europe, Asia, and northeastern Africa.

Through mitochondrial DNA studies, it is known that the ibex was domesticated about 10,000 years ago, which eventually led to the domestic goat, somewhere in the Iranian Zargos Mountains and Eastern Anatolia.

Images of the ibex have been a prolific feature of much prehistoric and historical art, having featured in rock art, pottery, metal imagery, and even tattoos from as early as the Neolithic into the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Some early depictions of the ibex in Europe feature the animal alongside women, geometric marks, and possible notches indicating days or lunar phases.

In a rock art painting called Mother Ranaldi, for example, a series of goats/ibexes or deer are depicted surrounding what has been interpreted as a woman giving birth. Similarly, a carved image from Laussel rock shelter in Dordogne, France, depicts a Venus-figured woman holding a horn, presumably of an ibex.

Venus figures are typically depicted as women with exaggerated hips, breasts, and abdomens, typically associated with fertility. The recurrent ibex imagery alongside these feminine and fertility symbols may indicate an associated symbolic meaning.

While analyzing the Near Eastern depictions of ibex, a similar theme of fertility linked with the ibex was found. The fresh-water god Enki, who is also associated with the life-giving Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is often depicted together with goats or ibex figures.

a) and b) of Tape Hissar (Schmidt, 1937); c) Tall-i-Bakun (Herzfeld, 1935); d) Blanchard rockshelter. Based on the marking of the Blanchard rockshelter plaque (Marshack, 1972a), the Lune calendar can be comparable with the notation series on the Persian potteries at the Tape Hissar and Tall-i-Bakun sites. Credit: Torkamandi et al. 2025
It is possible this association with the life-giving, land-fertilizing rain, and thus the rain god Enki, and the ibex arose as the mating season of the ibex coincides with the rain season in Mesopotamia (October/November). Thus, the ibex’s natural behaviors served not just as an inspiration for these myths and associations but also as a form of timekeeping or calendar.

Similarly, the idea of the ibex as a fertility and feminine symbol is further supported by other evidence, such as images of goats and deer on female mummies during the Achaemenid-Scythian period (5th–4th centuries BC), or the explicit reference by the goddess Inanna in Babylonian literature to her vulva as a “horn.”

Strikingly, a bronze plaque dated to between 1500 and 700 BC in eastern Iran provides strong evidence for the ibex as a fertility symbol. According to the study, two ibexes are seen surrounding a woman giving birth, an image very reminiscent of the Mother Ranaldi rock art painted millennia before.

Ibexes, however, were also strongly associated with the moon and other celestial bodies. This is most evident in the constellation of the Capricorn, a goat-fish creature associated with both the stars and the rain.

Similarly, in Sumerian literature, the ibex is called si-mul, meaning “star-horned” or “bright-horned.” While in Iranian pottery from sites such as Tall-i-Bakun, Tape Hissar, and Susa, the ibex is sometimes depicted together with a sun, stars, crosses, and a circular point.

In the study, this association is explained by the fact that “[as] the ibex lives in the mountains naturally, ancient societies believed that this animal is closely related to the sky and stars.”

The ox and goats likely persisted as a constant and recurring motif in Near Eastern cultures, not only for their economic value, providing wool, milk, and meat. But also due to their symbolic associations, including fertility in the winter season (October/November), femininity, and the celestial.

“From a spiritual aspect, this animal is deeply rooted in the human collective unconscious mind from the Paleolithic period to the present. Its importance varies across different cultural groups and periods, offering a rich capacity for interpretation. The continuity of ibex symbolism is remarkable, and it is backed by strong archaeological elements, such as Paleolithic cave paintings, Neolithic features, and Bronze Age artifacts,” the authors explain.

Ancient Persian birth rug with fertility/birth symbol

Part II Section 5 of Comprehensive Midwifery: The Role of the Midwife in Health Care Practice, Education, and Research, an excellent book on midwifery edited by Eileen K. Hutton, Beth Murray-Davis, Karyn Kaufman, Elaine Carty, and Michelle Butler, is devoted to Representations of Birth Throughout History. The section appears to have been written by Elaine Carty, MSN, CNM, DSc (hc), CM. One of the representations Carty describes is that of the Persian birth rug, the image of which is shown above. Carty’s full description of this type of rug is as follows:

Another form of artistic representations of fertility and birth is found in early rugs from Turkey, Kurdish rugs, Qashqai, Lori, and Shah Savan rugs of Iran and the Balusch and Turkoman rugs of Central Asia. All have a motif that has been described as a fertility/birth symbol, a simplified graphic design of a pregnant female, symbolizing a veneration of birth and generation of life. (7) There are many symbols from many traditions that symbolize fertility and childbirth in rugs and textiles, and just as many textile specialists who say it is difficult to interpret the meaning of symbols developed thousands of years ago. Nonetheless the fertility/birth symbol in textiles has some common characteristics that have been described: a central diamond, sitting on point, with pairs of curved or hooked lines projecting from the top and bottom points (Figure 1-2). The diamond represents the body of the pregnant woman and the lines her arms and legs. In some versions, a small diamond sits inside the larger one or the motif is expanded with more hooked or curved lines.

The warm red tones and ancient birth symbols on this rug are may be helpful to contemporary pregnant women as they prepare for labor and birth. The image is comforting to look at but it also connects viewers to a lineage of birth over time, reminding pregnant women that they are not alone as they approach birth. Many women before them have experienced birth, and this knowledge of the past is calming and reminds the pregnant woman that she is not alone.

For other Visualizing Birth posts related to the theme of how knowledge of birth as a long lineage of birthing women across time may help contemporary pregnant women as they approach birth as a rite of passage, see: Ivory birth relief from Pompeii, Ancient Egyptian image: visualizing a kneeling position during birth, Visualizing Birth through an Italian Prayer to Pachamama, Pre-Columbian Huaco Image of Crowning, Visualizing Pregnancy in Obed Muringani’s “Women Hunters”, Visualizing Birth through Pam England’s “Fait Based Birth”, Ancient Roman relief carving of birth, Ancient Etruscan Image of Birth, Temple Image of Birth from Ancient Egypt, Timna Valley’s Ancient Rock Carving of Woman Giving Birth, and The Woman of Willendorf: Connecting to a Lineage of Birthing Bodies

The Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth (SSPRB) held its 2025 Virtual Symposium this past April and has recently published videos of the individual talks. This is a talk that I gave as part of the event. My talk, which was titled “Natality as a Philosophy of Rebirth,” includes a discussion and many images related to the study of pregnancy, birth, natality, rebirth, and rites of passage.

The talk represents both a coalescence and a history of how the topics of birth and rebirth became a part of my personal and academic lives.