Placenta Ritual

Ritual: a ceremonial act or action performed in a customary way.

Monumental changes in our lives are often overlooked today, largely due to a lack of connection; connection to our communities, to the work we do, to the life phases we find ourselves in and to our intrinsic selves. Conceiving, pregnancy, birth and parenthood are all such passages in need of pause and a return to union with ourselves. Identifying with our natural cycles brings us to a place of centre, grounding and inner knowing. When we make room to pause and feel for our inner rhythms, we begin the shift back to our heart space and can then find the deeply desired connection we are yearning for.

By defining beginnings and ends to our various passages, rituals structure our social worlds and how we understand time, relationships and change. A rite of passage is a ritual or set of rituals that moves participants from one state of being to another. With birth, all involved move from liminality into being – the baby moves from its place of ‘betwixt and between’ to the earth plane, the woman moves from Maiden into Mother, the child moves from the ‘only’ into a sibling and the man moves from Stag into Father. This process of transitioning from one role to another is an awe-inspiring and monumental task, requiring vigilant awareness and intention to ensure that the potentiality of the moment is properly guided.

Imagine after the birth of your baby, while cozied up together, you gather with those who love you and supported you through your birth. Together you light several tapered candles and slowly take time to revel in each other, your newly born baby and the moment you find yourselves in. As you do, the tapers slowly burn through your baby’s umbilical cord, gently and intentionally separating them from their womb partner; their placenta. During this ritual everyone present is quiet, yet bubbling with excitement and joy over the monumentous occasion of the birth that has just taken place. In this space and time you each recognize that this moment is one for the books, to be remembered and respected. One of the most important points of ritual is that they not only mark time; they create time. In this moment you feel suspend and wholly present.

Soon, the cord comes away from itself and the burning is complete. Baby is now their own person, no longer linked to the placenta that sustained and gave them life as they grew together those long 9 months! Perhaps you feel the honouring isn’t yet done and your placenta deserves more love and respect. What does this look like for you? In what way would it feel fulfilling to recognize this gorgeous organ and complete the cycle of this birth?

Placenta ritual is common in many cultures across the world. If you feel called to do the same for your and your child’s placenta, then do so! Burry it beneath a specially selected tree or bush, so that it may continue to nourish and allow the tree to thrive as your child also grows over the years. Perhaps you feel drawn to take it to a river or body of water to be spread, so it may be carried away through all the water channels life has to offer. Or maybe, you want to return to plant or spread it on sacred ground in your homeland, in hopes your child always has a tether to that place.

There are so many beautiful and meaningful ways to honour your placenta that don’t involve consumption, allow me to help you in this endeavour.