Karen Laing is a mother, lactation consultant, midwife and educator and the founder and president of Birthways and WisdomWay™ Institute. She was trained at Duke Integrative Medicine as an Integrative Health Coach and is a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction instructor.
Since 1994, Karen has cared for families in a variety of ways. She has worked as a midwife and lactation consultant, served as a perinatal educator, and has trained and mentored hundreds of providers. She served on the board of the National Association of Postpartum Care Services, where she helped to establish the first national standards for postpartum doulas. She is a blogger, a presenter at national conferences, and has led mindfulness retreats for parents and for professional caregivers.
Karen believes that we have a basic goodness and desire to be in caring relationships with one another and that the skills of awareness and self-compassion, when tended, make us more resilient and effective in those relationships.
From being with friends in their final days, serving as a professional and family caregiver, and teaching and mentoring, she has cultivated ways to be a midwife to others. In her view, both care-giver and care-receiver hold the potential for healing and transformation when given these opportunities.
