Ep 48 Women, Power and Deep Knowing with Celine Levy

When it comes to midlife we often talk about the concept of ‘women stepping into their power”, what does this actually mean? Well in today’s episode I will unpack that with my friend and colleague Celine Levy. Celine is a Sex and Power coach who works with women to help them gain a sense of agency and connection with their bodies.

Celine and I talk about power and how it is relational and what is actually happening in the neurobiology of the body when we are not in an ‘empowered’ stance; by the way we both really dislike the word empowered.

Celine has a really interesting story and her path to this work, showed her that ‘power over’ another can be devastating, and how the cultural conditions in an environment can set us up for these experiences as we adapt to cultures to try and belong and feel safe. This close shave with a cult has propelled her forward into work with women so that they can learn to listen to their bodies through building a strong connection with their nervous system and the messages it sends.

In this podcast we talk about:

• What power is, how it can only exist within a relationship and how the state of our nervous system drives our responses to what we are experiencing.

• How when we interact with another person there are two conversations going on at the same time. There is the conscious dialogue that comes through the mouth and at the same time our nervous system is having a conversation and when there is a mis-match between the two we notice this in particular ways.

• How we can rewire and re-pattern the nervous system to achieve a different outcome.

• How estrogen creates a biological behavioural drive for soothing, connection and accommodation and when in our post menopause life we don’t have those high estrogen levels, this impacts on our behavioural response.

• You can do all the fancy communication classes you want but if you don’t do the work on your autonomic nervous system you won’t get the result you are after.

• We all have a sense of deep knowing in our body. When we disconnect from our bodies we lose this connection. Reconnecting with our bodies builds reconnects us with our deep knowing.

• How our cultural conditioning impacts on our acceptance and willingness (often unconsciously) to demonstrate certain behaviours.

• How learning to hold the energy of sensation and emotion within the body, gives you more power and therefore more options in how you are able to choose to respond to what life throws your way.

You can find Celine at www.celinelevy.com or on instagram at @thelovedwitch or her french language instagram account @sorcierotique

Ep 46 Developing leaders and helping them to thrive in very uncertain times with Deborah Pascoe

It has become more important than ever that organisations focus on developing their leaders to cope with the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) times that we work in. We have been talking about VUCA for the last 15 years, it has arrived and to be honest it is more dysfunctional than ever as organisations struggle to deal with the many complex adaptive challenges that they are facing; coming off the back of the pandemic many organisations are simply drowning in these problems.

Today I talk to my friend and colleague Deborah Pascoe who is a leadership development expert about how we develop these leaders and why it is important. Deb began her career in the corporate sector where she worked in a range of business roles before quitting in her thirties to work out what she really wanted to do. She fell into consulting by accident really and realised very quickly that it was her great love. Now thirty years later she has worked with many organisations from all different sectors and has a deep and broad understanding of leadership and adult development.

This is a varied conversation where we talked about:

• why leadership development is so important and why organisations should invest in it,

• why collaborative problem solving is integral to solving adaptive challenges,

• How organisational purpose keeps us anchored in tough times and the ability to articulate our organisational purpose is the single biggest driver of employee engagement,

• How our individual north star helps us to navigate the intracacies of life when we lose our way,

• Why people get stuck in the personal development and how learning trauma stops us from pursuing growth on a personal and professional level,

• What the learning cycle of the brain is, the dopamine-opioid cycle and we we can hook into that we can keep on learning and growing throughout our life.

Deb talks about her own midlife journey and how it was transformational for her in many ways and now in her sixties she really feels she is in the prime of her life. There is a lot of wisdom and reflection in this conversation that is grounded in a deep understanding of what it means to be a human in these times we live in. You can find Deb at Phronesis Foundation.

Ep 44 Exploring wellbeing in Midlife and beyond with Dr Beth Claxton

Midlife is a time that tends to show up the vulnerabilities in our bodymind. We experience these as physical or mental health issues, challenges in relationships and sometimes just a really strong drive to make some big changes in our lives. In this episode, I am joined by Dr Beth Claxton to talk about wellbeing in midlife and beyond. Beth is a board certified OBGYN and a certified functional medicine practitioner who reside in Northern Arizona in the USA.

In this episode, we talk about many aspects of our health and wellbeing in midlife. We talk about Beth’s own midlife transition and how it has brought her full circle with the desires she had at a very young age to work in a healing role of some capacity. Beth has always had a strong sense of inner knowing that healing has been a pathway for her.

In the podcast we cover:

• Beth’s experience in healing and where it can be most powerful,

• They key areas to focus on in midlife for your overall wellbeing, Stress Management, Sleep, Exercise and Food and explore each of those,

• We talk a little about MHT/HRT and how it can support your health and welbeing,

• We talked about a range of different strategies we can use to monitor and support our health during midlife and beyond,

• The work Beth offers now in her functional medicine practice such as her 10 week Ayurvedic course and how it offers us a different perspective through which we can connect with our bodymind and Beth’s upcoming Detoxifying Menopause summit that is coming up.

During the podcast we talked about Athletic training for perimenopause women and the reference Beth mentioned was Athlete Project 51, which is information about how women can train for their own physiology.

You can find Beth at www.flagstafffunctionalmedicine.com on instagram and she has a facebook group is Flagstaff Functional Medicine

Ep 43 Liberating the Inner Child with Moira Cormack

In this episode I am joined by my colleague and friend Moira Cormack to talk about Inner child work and how powerful it is for all of us to do so that we can heal our childhood wounding.

In her coaching work, Moira focuses. specifically on supporting people to heal their emotional pain with inner child and body based healing. Moira is currently in the process of creating an inner child online course so it seemed like a good time to talk about what inner child work is all about.

Moira talks about the inner child and how we can find our inner child somatically because it lives within us in our body. Our nervous system stores every experience that we have in our body and we can connect to our inner child through sensation and the language of the felt sense. The felt sense is the language of the body. We talk about how it is the unmet needs of our inner child that are coming out in our adult relationships and that we project these needs onto our partners to meet. It is not the role of our partners to provide those needs, they are not our parents. Part of this work is learning to find your own inner parents and adult parts of yourself so that you are able to regulate and soothe yourself when you find your inner child parts triggered.

Moira shared many personal experiences of her own life journey, how midlife has been a powerful transition for her to do this deep work herself, that illustrate how highly impactful this work is. We can see through the gift of hindsight how all of her life experiences and work experiences make her the perfect person to teach and coach deep healing experiences with inner child work.

You can find Moira on instagram at @moira_coach or on Facebook and her link Tree is linktree/Moira-Coach

Ep 42 Barbie and the bucket of frogs - Tales of Sisterhood

I recently went to see the Barbie movie and loved it. There were so many great messages in there, and they dealt with what are extremely complex cultural messages and phenomena, in a way that was digestible for even the youngest members of the audience.

So today I wanted to reflect on those messages and points and unpack the patriarchy a little bit and how it impacts all of us and share some stories of my own about how I have seen how patriarchy gets in the way of women mentoring and supporting each other. Of loving and complimenting each other, of being able to brag and cheer for each other. This is where the bucket of frogs story comes in.

Sisterhood wounding is a real thing and many women suffer from it. It is both collective and ancestral trauma that impacts us individually. Let’s face it, most of us have many wounds from our teenage years when it comes to the sisterhood. Patriarchy pits women against each other, we learn to not only hate each other but we hate ourselves. We hate the feminine aspects of ourself and this is what disconnects us from our bodies. In the long run, that wound causes signifiant damage. In stops us from speaking our truth, we lose our voice. It stops us from having deep, honest, vulnerable relationships with each other. We disconnect from ourselves and from each other. We disconnect from our hearts.

I offer some tips and guidance about where to start when it comes to sisterhood wounding and healing the collective trauma that lives within all of us.

If you want to join my Magnificent Midlife course click on the link and sign up, or you can go to my website www.kelliestirling.com

Ep 41 Thriving sexually in midlife and beyond with Gabriella Espinosa

Midlife is an incredibly transformational period of our lives and when it comes to our relationship with our sexual selves it is almost a revolution that most women feel they experience. Midlife can be a new chapter in our lives. Today I have women’s sexuality and empowerment coach Gabriella Espinosa with me to talk about how we can thrive sexually in midlife and beyond. Gabriella is the founder of Women’s Body Wisdom, an online coaching, education and movement platform that guides women to reclaim their pleasure and power in and out of the bedroom. Her work lies at the intersection of embodiment, eastern traditional wisdom, female sexuality and menopausal health and is informed by over 15 years of guiding women to connect to their bodies and love themselves more.

Gabriella experienced her own revolution in her midlife transition and she talks about it in this podcast how it become an invitation for her to get to know herself on multiple levels. Her story is an inspiration for those of us who may feel lost and disconnected from their bodies or those of us who have strived and achieved the long held vision for their life for years only to find in midlife that all our own methods of success no longer work for us.

In this podcast we talk about:

• We have to re-pattern our nervous system to reconnect and rebuild our relationship with pleasure. The key to rekindling our relationship with pleasure is to become sexually self-sufficient is doing it from a place of fullness and we can only do this when we learn to connect with what feels pleasurable to us,

• How our sensuality is the pathway to rekindling the relationship with pleasure that we feel inside of our bodies,

• We talk about our life force energy, Eros, and how connecting with it helps us understand our body,

• Erotic blueprints. What are they, how can they help you connect with your own erotic wiring, how they can help you understand your partner’s to experience better sex both on your own and in relationship,

• How in midlife we have to bust up our cultural conditioning and internalised belief systems around pleasure to connect with our sexuality,

• When we learn to connect with our own pleasure we befriend our body and learn to treat it as an ally. This helps us to advocate for ourselves both in the bedroom and in the Doctors office.

You can find Gabriella on instagram @gabriellaespinosa and at www.gabriellaespinosa.com.

If you would like to try the erotic blueprint quiz please follow this link

Ep 38 The energy chiro, on nervous system healing with Dr Kathryn Theodosis

Dr Kathryn Theodosis joins me for this fantastic podcast where we are talking about our amazing bodies, in particular our nervous systems. Kathryn is a chiropractor who works with clients to allow their nervous system and energy system to move out of a state of stress and fear and into one of greater safety and connection. This shift allows a greater sense of safety to be held by the nervous system and the energy system, giving space for us to connect with parts of us we have not felt safe to prior

Kathryn started off as a traditional chiropractor and was introduced to network spinal analysis a gentle mode of adjustment using contact points on the spine. This transformed her own healing experience and she then completed further professional training in network spinal analysis, a modality of chiropractic care created by Donald Epstein. This then lead her to two years of professional training in Integral Energetics with Dr John Hare and Dr Fred Swan, who have created this modality that works with the body’s energy system.

In the podcast we talked about:

• Different nervous system responses and how they show up in our bodies,

• How our life experiences and our life story are held in our muscles and organs and we can often see this in a person’s posture and stance,

• How network spinal allows the body to unravel, reorganise and integrate its life experiences in a gentle way allowing it to continually adapt and become more flexible,

• That our brain loves novelty and new experiences and this helps our brain stay young and have capacity to create new neural pathways as we age, this means we can keep on learning and this is supportive of good mental health outcomes as we age,

• How repressed emotions and old trauma and stress are held in the body and how that can sometimes manifest as pain,

• The heart and its energetic field are another area where we pick up on the emotions and energy of the environment around you. Often it is our heart reaction picking up on the emotions of others that reacts before our conscious brain,

• Different body holding patterns such as rigidity of the spine and what the somatic story behind that is,

• What practices suit what nervous systems. We talked about meditation and it not being for everyone and how in fact it can for some people, reinforce a trauma pathway of avoiding their body,

• Why creativity is so important for our emotional well-being,

• The current trend in cold water exposure and heat through saunas and why they don’t suit everyone,

• Women’s bodies and listening to our cyclical natures, taking queues from our body and not punishing ourselves for not able to be ‘on’ all the time.

You can find Kathryn on her website www.theenergychiro.com or on instagram @drkathryn.theenergychiro

Ep31 Living with Chronic Illness with Elizabeth Ann

Today I talk to my friend Elizabeth Ann about Living with Chronic Illness. Elizabeth is a Music Therapist who herself has living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for many years now. We thought it was time to have a discussion about Chronic Illness which is so prevalent in our society now days and so poorly misunderstood.

Elizabeth’s journey of Chronic Illness lead her to change her career and she went back and retrained to become a music therapist. Reinvigorating her long love affair with music and being a musician, which is a natural talent that she is incredibly gifted with, and supporting others on their health journey through the therapeutic modality of music therapy.

In this episode we talk about:

• What music therapy is and how it can support you in your health journey,

• What Chronic Fatigue is and the systems in the body it affects,

• How living with Chronic Illness impacts on the relationships in our lives and the power dynamics that exist within them,

• How music, dance and singing are a tool that connects us with our past stories and history,

• How becoming chronically ill can support us to get really good at expressing our boundaries,

• How our current cultural paradigm makes it hard to heal and function because we need so much more downtime,

• How illness can become our identity if we are not careful,

• The notion of what wellness actually is and having the identity of being unwell can be really disempowering for some people,

• How to clean out your cupboards to detox your life. If you want to reference the Dirty Dozen food list we talk about click on the link.

Please contact me if you would like to get in contact with Elizabeth regarding Music Therapy and I can forward on your enquiry to her.

Ep 29 The power of Slow with Casey Hall

Today I talk with my friend and colleague Casey Hall, who is a sensuality coach, about the power of slowing down. Casey is both a sensuality coach and holistic wellness coach and has studied and worked in the wellness landscape for many years. She is the best person to talk to about this subject because not only is it the centre of her work but it is her life story also. She learned that slowing down was helped her heal and grow after many years of living a fast paced life.

In the podcast we discuss:

• How Casey moved into corporate wellness and realised that 90% of the cases Doctors deal with are related to stress,

• That sensuality is a key to helping us slow down and live a life with more presence,

• That the emptiness and loneliness many of us feel is a disconnection from self and slowing down helps us to reconnect with ourselves,

• How pleasure is a great tool to help us to slow down and be more present in our lives,

• That many of us have internalised cultural belief systems around slowing down and pleasure that stop us from pursuing both and this lives largely in our unconscious so most of us are not aware of our blockages toward pursuing both,

• Our bodies speak their own language and they are talking to us all the time, we just learned to ignore their messages,

• Slowing down helps us to make better conscious choices and decisions in our life.

You can find Casey at her website www.sensualitycoach.com on instagram @sensuality_coaching. Casey does a podcast with her Business Partner Elizabeth Menzel called “Slow the F Down” you can find it on all major podcasting platforms.

Ep 22 The heart of creativity with Moira Cormack

Where does creativity comes from? This question has always sat with me. I am a very creative person and I have been painting, sewing, dancing, drawing since I was a young girl. I’ve rarely stopped. I’m always curious when people say to me ‘I am not creative’. The curious part of me always thinks, what no, it is in there somewhere we just have to find it.

So I invited one of my most creative friends and colleagues Moira Cormack to to talk today about creativity. Creativity is healing and it is meditative; it brings us straight into our subconscious.

Despite Moira and I both being incredibly tired, we connected so beautifully in this conversation and held space for each other.

In this podcast we cover:

• To be yourself creatively in the world we live in is a big challenge because we are always pushed to conform by our sense of wanting to belong;

• That creativity can be incredibly playful;

• How the schooling system stifles children’s creativity;

• How creativity, sexuality and spirituality feed each other and are door ways to each other;

• How fear squashes creativity;

• How sexuality is soothing to our nervous and endocrine systems. When we soothe and bring our nervous system down, it promotes endocrine health and creates space in our body for our own creativity to grow;

• Our creativity changes throughout our life, depending on how it feeds the systemic role we are taking up. Sometimes it is for others and then sometimes it swings around and is for us;

• How connecting with our body and learning to listen to it opens you up to your innate creativity.

You can find Moira on instagram at @moira_coach or on facebook under Moira KC

Ep 21 Healing and growing ourselves to heal the planet with Mangala Holland

There is no doubt that we are in a pretty strange place in the world today and the last two years have been surreal on all fronts. The whole covid situation has shown us how divided we are but also how community oriented we are also. The environment has suffered terribly all over the world. Some countries are doing a fabulous job of investing in alternative energy products, whilst others in the developed world barely have it on their radar. Often I ask myself how can this not be a priority?

What is it going to take for us to change the way we show up in the world and think about not only ourselves but others in our community? Do people not think about the circles of influence in their life?

I’m very pleased to be able to have this conversation with Mangala Holland. Mangala is a Women’s empowerment and sexuality coach and she works globally with female, trans and non binary individuals, supporting them in their personal development, holistic health and wellbeing.

There are many great points in this conversation. In the conversation we cover:

• How sexual healing supports your overall health and wellbeing,

• That sexuality is a foundational part of who we are as human beings so to avoid it is like having a room in a house that you lock up all the stuff you don’t like in and never go in there,

• Sexual healing is a journey to liberation and learning to resource yourself with pleasure opens you to a level of joy in your life that is profoundly life changing. It improves all the relationships in our lives

• Embodiment work is a key to connect deep within yourself,

• When you are able to orient from within, you develop stronger ‘roots’ and your resilience builds for tougher times,

• There is a tension we have to learn to master between ‘me’ and ‘we’ and it involves learning how to resource yourself and take care of yourself so that you can do your ‘we’ work and think about the broader community.

• Activism work is exhausting and often leads to burnout and that is essential to learn how to do the ‘me’ piece and show yourself love and care to sustain yourself for the long game,

• When we do deep work on ourselves, it impact positively on our relationship with ourselves, with others and ultimately our relationship with the planet. In a profoundly positive way.

You can find Mangala on her website. www.mangalaholland.com. She is also on facebook and instagram under Managala Holland.

Ep 20 Menopause as a pathway to our authentic sexuality with Dr Laura Monk

The transition through to Menopause is complex and multi-faceted. It is a death and rebirth, a shift in identity in all the different aspects of ourselves. There is a lot of stigma around sexuality and ageing, so for many women there is great fear that their sexuality will disappear. In this episode, Dr Laura Monk and I talk about the pathway that Menopause provides to discover your authentic sexuality.

Laura is both a Psychotherapist and Sex, Love and Relationship coach who loves to work with women through midlife and menopause. Laura shares with us her own sexual awakening post menopause and we talk about the possibilities for growth and development in terms of a woman’s sexuality that Menopause can present.

In this episode you will learn:

• How our desires can become very different from what they have been previously,

• How the enormity of the menopause transition can be challenging for women in their partnerships and bring us a question of whether we bring our partner with us or not,

• The many pressures that women face throughout life that prevent them from being who they really are and menopause present an opportunity to be our true selves,

• Our sexuality which is such a core part of our humanity is rarely addressed in most mainstream therapeutic contexts,

• Your sexuality is not about your estrogen levels and the medical model assumes it is just that alone,

• Connecting to your sexual energy which is your life force energy is connecting to your energy body; that this is what makes you magnetic and attractive not all the external dressings we learn to apply.

You can find Laura on instagram at @drlauramonk and on her website www.drlauramonk.com.

Ep 18 Demystifying Hormone Replacement Therapy with Dr Fatima Khan

I’ve wanted to do this podcast for quite some time and have been quietly searching for a Doctor who is a menopause specialist and who takes a holistic and systemic view of the Midlife and Menopause transition. I looked at practitioners all over the world and found Dr Fatima Khan who funnily enough works about 2.5kms from my house!

Fatima is a highly skilled Peri-Menopause and Menopause Specialist with a holistic approach to women’s physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.  She completed her medical training in the United Kingdom from Imperial College London in 2007 achieving a Bachelor in Medicine and Bachelor in Surgery. She also achieved a Bachelor in Science in Pharmacology and Therapeutics with publication of her research. 

Fatima has an Advanced Menopause Certification accredited from the British Menopausal Society and  Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive and Healthcare of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. This was achieved after training extensively at Kings College London, which is a tertiary referral centre for menopausal women with complex medical backgrounds. She has also undertaken further training in the USA on optimising hormonal health for anti-ageing and longevity.

I asked Fatima to not only talk about HRT and explain what it is, its history and the messaging around it, but also to talk about Estrogen and the role it takes up in our female bodies beyond our menstrual cycles and fertility. This is because Estrogen plays an important role in supporting the functioning of a number of our body’s systems. Additionally I asked her to talk about how the decline in estrogen and progesterone impacts on other hormones in our body.

Fatima has given us a multi-faceted, in depth, explanation of HRT and our hormonal health. In this podcast you will learn:

• The link between estrogen and our mental health;

• The impact of estrogen decline on our metabolic health, cardiovascular health, cellular health, and our bone health;

• The lifestyle factors you need to consider when you are in your perimenopause transition;

• a thorough understanding of Hormone Replacement Therapy and the history of it, the clinical trials that have occurred in our recent past that have impacted our perceptions of HRT;

• And why taking a multi-faceted view of your health and well-being is important in the menopause transition.

You can find Fatima on Instagram at @menopausespecialist or on her work website www.agoracentre.com.au. I encourage you to follow Fatima on instagram if you use it, she has some excellent posts that are all evidence based. I think it is incredibly important to understand the many facets of the menopause transition and that includes Hormone Replacement Therapy. Broad knowledge and understanding of your health, in mind, body and spirit, gives you information, options, discernment and choice. It empowers you to be creative in driving you life from a desire based perspective.

Ep 16 When do I become a Woman with a capital W with Kendra Cover

Today I talk to my friend and colleague Kendra Cover who is a women’s intimacy coach. Kendra and I were wondering out loud recently recently about this and wondering What does a woman with a capital W look like, what is it that stops us stepping into womanhood and what does it look like to others. How would we know, what does it feel like inside of us?

In this podcast we explore:

• The rites of passage that women go through how poorly supported they are,

• How women feel their value comes from the roles that they take up in their lives. That we are conditioned to be a good daughter, good friend, good mother, good wife; all the time giving so much of ourselves away to others. That within these roles there comes so much discomfort that we feel that is surprising to us;

• How few archetypal roles are available to women in terms of how they show up and this narrowing down of how we ‘are’ diminishes so much of who we are,

• How learning to hold all of our emotions and listening to the signals they provide is both a source of great power and pleasure to us,

• There is so little encouragement culturally in our society to encourage and honour people really to get to know themselves on a very deep level,

• The lack of ritual and honour that exists within our society to support women through the rites of passage we go through,

• When you connect with your sexual energy which is your life force energy you can never turn it off and it is such an incredible source of vitality to us in life.

You can find Kendra on her website www.kendracover.com on instagram @kendracover and her Facebook group is called Into the wild of womanhood.

Ep 15 Sensuality and Pleasure, a pathway home with Carol Anne

Pleasure, sensuality and sexuality are such core aspects of who we are as human beings. Carol Anne and I talk today about the power of sensuality. Our sensuality is how we experience the world through our five senses. It connects us with our life force energy. It brings us into the present moment. It is a great resource, providing nourishment in the moment in tough times.

Our sensuality provides us with so much pleasure and is a pathway to our sexuality. When we start to practice enjoying the pleasure of our five senses, we build neural pathways inside of us that create greater capacity to feel pleasure in all aspects of our life. Our five senses bring us right into the present moment; our present moment is where life happens.

So why do so many of us get so triggered by the words sensuality and pleasure? Well it is worth listening to the podcast. You will learn:

• How our ‘good girl’ conditioning has us disconnecting from our sensuality,

• How the sensations in our body are the voice of our sub conscious,

• How our sensuality connects us with our emotions,

• Our sensuality and pleasure gives us ‘fuel in our tank’ to deal with the tougher times in life,

• Our sensuality is a pathway out of our rational and logical brain to experience goodness in our body in the present moment,

• Our sensuality and pleasure allow us to feel all the emotions that are available to us,

• Our body has a natural orientation to pleasure and this contributes greatly to our healing and harmony in our body,

• Healing does not always have to be hard and gruelling, it can be pleasurable,

• Connecting with our sensuality brings us into the core of our being, how it allows us to be ourselves at the most primal level. That when we can access this part of ourselves we don’t have to try so hard at life.

  You can find Carol on her website www.carolanne.com.au or on her instagram account @carolannealive

Ep 9 Becoming a Mother with Belinda Haan

Have you ever heard the word Matrescence? I hadn’t heard of it until a couple of years ago. It means the journey of becoming a mother. In this podcast I talk to Belinda Haan who is a coach and facilitator who runs the group The Motherhood Gathering. The Motherhood Gathering is a little different to your average mothers group; they do not talk about their babies. They talk about their growing pains and joys through the transition of creating their inner mother.

In the podcast you will learn the definition of Matrescence and the different contexts that our growth occurs within. We discuss the cultural and familiar boundaries and hurdles women face in this transition and we wonder why in the year 2021 is it really early days in understanding the complexity of this transition when women has been around since the dawn of creation. Or maybe is it that once it was understood but that ancient knowledge was dismissed in favour of science. Unfortunately it is a not an area the medical field has explored in great depth. Most research is on babies. One of the most challenging aspects of Becoming a Mother is the reconciliation between our projected fantasy of how we will be as mothers compared to how we are once the baby arrives. That and the wide spectrum of emotions we experience can be a lot to handle for a woman who is also sleep deprived and healing from birth with little support (which is often the case).

The reality is even many years after children have arrived we are always in the process of ‘Becoming a Mother’ it is a never ending learning process and our identity within that context constantly grows as expands.

Belinda’s website is www.themotherhodgathering.com and you can find her on instagram @thermotherhoodgathering. In the podcast we mention a new york times article ‘The Birth of a Mother’, click on the link to read it.

Ep 6 Pelvic Pain: healing the bodymind way with Lorraine Faehndrich

Today I talk to Lorraine Faehndrich about Pelvic Pain. Lorraine is a Mindbody Mentor and Pelvic Pain Relief Coach. She specialises in working with women holistically to heal Pelvic Pain. Lorraine coaches women individually and also runs an online learning program called “Healing Female Pain Program’.

Lorraine works with clients who have pain in the Pelvis. That can be sexual pain, ovarian pain, urethral pain, vaginal pain, endometriosis, menstrual cramps, nerve pain such as pudendal neuralgia, pelvic floor dysfunction, structural pelvic pain, frequency and urgency issues.

Lorraine loves working with women with Pelvic Pain because she sees the underlying issue is often related to our relationship to our sexuality or to suppressed emotions. But most importantly her work is about connecting women with their body and the innate wisdom within it. She has found that as women we often guard and protect ourselves a lot in our pelvic area. Sometimes this has to do with our relationship with our sexuality or sometimes it can be emotions suppressed. Often this repression of emotions has resulted in a slight contraction of muscles and it has often been there most of our life. When we go through the bigger transitions in our life like having children, getting married, losing parents, perimenopause, these instances often bring the issue of repression to the forefront. It is experienced as pain.

This is a fantastic podcast, there is lots of great information for you to ponder when it comes to the innate power of our bodies to heal themselves. It will help you to start to think about how your body can be in charge of your healing; not your head which is the common held narrative that dominates healing.

You can find Lorraine at her website www.radiantlifedesign.com on instagram @lorrainefaehndrich or on facebook under Radiant Life Design - Pelvic Pain Relief for women.

Ep 5 Menopause - The Passion Portal with Dianne Shepherd

Menopause as a rite of passage seems to be poorly misunderstood by many people. It is not something many people talk about openly and so many women suffer in silence with physical symptoms that cause pain and exhaustion. Today I talk to the wonderful Dianne Shepherd about Menopause. We discuss her experience of it, what she learned in the process. Dianne is a holistic sexuality coach and astrologer. She coaches women through the midlife journey, teaches Jade Egg practice to many women to help improve their pelvic floor and reconnect with their Yoni. She is also an astrologer and gives fantastic readings.

There is so much wisdom and insight in this podcast from Dianne. You can find Dianne at her website Venus Rebirth or on instagram @venus.rebirth

Ep 4 Womens Empowerment with Julia Lally

Julia Lally and I have a great conversation about womens empowerment and sources of power. Julia is Sex and Power Coach who works with both men and women individually and also with couples. In this podcast we talk about what power is when we talk about womens empowerment and where power actually comes in this context.

Julia has created a coaching program that helps women find this. She believes that orgasm is a huge source of power for women. You will learn how connecting with your emotions and strengthening your nervous system will enable you to stand clearly in your personal boundaries. How getting clear on your desires and allowing yourself to receive is a huge source of power. Based in the UK Julia works all over the world and you can find her on www.julialally.co.uk, via instagram at @julialally or on facebook at ‘You can have it’.

Ep 3 What is happening to my body? with Sarah Smith Osteopath

Today we talk about what is happening to the musculoskeletal system as we move through midlife. I talk to Sarah Smith who is an osteopath with a special focus on womens health, in particular pelvic health. The thing I like about osteopaths is they take a very systemic view of the body. Sometimes I think menopause gets a bit of bum deal with many issues of midlife ageing blamed on menopause. In this episode, we explore why do so many of us start to have joint issues, pelvic issues, tendon issues and the like as we age. How do hormones affect collagen reproduction. We know that collagen affects skin but Sarah tells us how it really affects our joints too. We talk about gut health, prolapse and shoulder and hip bursitis. You will really get a sense of the interconnectedness of all the systems within our body and that the body has its own innate healing capacities.

If you would like to connect with Sarah you can find her on instagram @sarahsmithosteo or through her clinic www.movebeyond.com.au