Created by Canadian artist, Damien Leggett, this work, Freebirth of Amara, is both magnificent to look at and highly useful in the visualization of birth.  The central image of a large dark swirl colored in pink, black and red, indicates the emergence of a crowning baby from a woman’s opening birth passage.  Strong arms and legs spread from the woman’s core, framing her body and adding energetic movement to the birth moment depicted.  Two smaller circles, the woman’s breasts, rest above a raised, pink belly, their swirling shapes emphasizing the crowning that takes place below. Leggett’s use of flesh-colored dots to outline the entire body also act to energize the piece, visually reminding the viewer of how radiant and active the birthing body can be.  Finally, at the center of the composition sits the unmistakeable image of an eye, as though representing a sacred chakra within the female body.  Commonly described and depicted in images from eastern cultures, chakras correspond to powerful, spiritual centers of the body, which together regulate its functioning.