Ep 19 Self love as a pathway to healing and personal growth with Gina Catherine

Self love is a concept that I am not sure everyone has their head wrapped around. Sometimes when we think of it we might think of a narcissistic type of self love. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about really loving who you are as a person, all the parts of you. Loving you sexuality, sensuality, the sense of masculine and feminine that we all have within us. In this episode I talk with my friend and colleague Gina Catherine who is Sexuality, Love and relationship coach who supports people on their journey to Self Love.

Gina and I are both cancer survivors and we talked about our own journey to self love and how it supporting our healing and gave us both a sense of deep awe, wonder, respect and love for our bodies.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How fuelling yourself with pleasure rather than rewarding yourself supports self love,

• How we have been conditioned to be humble but the underbelly of that is counter to self love,

• That your sexual energy, which is our life force energy, is an incredible source of creativity,

• When we are closed off to our sexuality it is like closing off a room in a house and never going in there,

• How celebrating yourself is not only a great boundary practice but it sets you up for self love,

• How our sexuality, sensuality, how it shows up in our lives within us is so incredibly unique and discovering the joy of it, is so rewarding and empowering.

You can find Gina and her website www.ginacatherine.love on instagram at @ginacatherine_coaching or listen to Gina on clubhouse. Gina hosts regular conversations on clubhouse. Her handle on clubhouse is Gina Catherine

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 17 Understanding Trauma and navigating it in motherhood and midlife with Shelby Leigh

This episode is a fantastic conversation with Shelby Leigh that sits in the intersection of our work; Trauma resolution and education and transitions or rites of passage through motherhood and midlife. Shelby is a former licensed psychotherapist, now coach and consultant - She teaches trauma awareness to coaches, therapists, healthcare professionals, and organisations worldwide.  

Shelby’s great passion is understanding and supporting folks with developmental and complex trauma in a holistic, body-based, integrative way.  Between her own journey with complex PTSD and supporting thousands of students and clients, she is ignited by supporting folks across the globe to be able to support themselves and the people they work with to move from simply surviving to truly thriving.

In the podcast we talk about:

• What Trauma is and why it sometimes shows up in our transitions through our rites of passages of motherhood and midlife,

• We discuss how many women experience a lot of contact with Medical Practitioners during these rites a passage and how you can advocate for yourself if you have trauma in your body when it comes to trauma informed healthcare,

• How slowing down can lead to much more healing,

• What trauma informed healthcare might look like,

• How we can learn to treat ourselves with greater tenderness and care and how the tenderness can come from the simplest places in our lives,

• How healing our trauma can lead us to right here into the present moment of our life, and be able to show up authentically as ourselves in our life every day.

Shelby has two fantastic online courses she runs around Trauma. Creating Safer Spaces is a course for Coaches, Therapists and Facilitators who are looking to learn and understand how they may become more trauma informed in their work. Creating Safer Healthcare is for Medical Practitioners and their teams who wish to provide more Trauma informed Healthcare. It is designed for both allopathic health practitioners and complementary health practitioners and their teams. Both courses offer expert coaching advice from specialists in their fields, theory and knowledge about trauma, and practice skills you can use to implement every day in your work. If you are interested in either course, click on the highlighted link.

You can find Shelby at her website www.shelby-leigh.com or on her instagram account @fierceheart.shelbyleigh.

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 14 Conscious Dating with Ana Kosta

I’ve watched many of my friends navigate new relationships in the past ten years. In this time of midlife one product of our personal growth is sometimes a fracture in our relationships. It is hard to grow together. Many of us started long terms relationships in our 20s and we kind of fall together, often lead by our desire for each other, without much thought to what we really want in our life and in a partner.

What I have observed is that dating in your 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s is so much different to your 20s. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to talk to Ana Kosta. Ana is a Conscious Dating coach who works holistically with women to help them find a life partner.

Choosing a partner that allows you to have a depth in your relationship requires clarity around your desires both for your life and also of the qualities and values of your partner. Ana Kosta talks openly about her own experience and how she empowers her clients to find that clarity in their own life.

There are some beautiful reflective moments in this conversation as we contemplate creating conscious relationships in our midlife.

You can find Ana on her website www.anakostacoaching.com on instagram at @anakosta.coach and in her facebook Ana Kosta Coaching

Ep 13 Three Golden Opportunities with Dr Nic Pawley

Today I have Nicole Pawley with me to talk about the Three Golden Opportunities. Nicole is a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Birth Educator. The Three Golden Opportunities are three times in our life, as women, that are large inflexion points. Times where we have the opportunity to either foster or risk our health during the transition.

The Three Golden Opportunities are Menarche, Post Partum and Menopause. Chinese Medicine has a long history of menstrual and post partum care. The three golden opportunities are life gateways and periods of life where there is rapid change and a physical reaction. In Chinese Medicine we talk about Qi, Jing, Ying and Yang.

Chinese medicine seeks first to understand natural cycles, and then take advantage of them in order to optimise health and longevity - thereby avoiding future imbalances and making it easier to treat any that do occur. To understand why menstruation, postpartum and menopause are so key in terms of health preservation it’s important to understand the concept of Qi and Jing, which are essence or life force energy.

We are born with a finite amount of life force energy. Qi and Jing are like your bank account if you go hard and fast you will spend it all. Jing is there to help you move through these transitions. If you have a good amount of Jing you will have vitality. If you run hard life will be hectic and these transitions will be difficult. It is important to learn how to nourish and replenish our Jing and this is where pleasure practices come in.

In our practice of pleasure, both sensual and sexual, we replenish our Jing and nourish ourselves.

Our Western Culture is very yang, constant go and on. What is valued is productivity and achievement producing overworked, frazzled and burned out humans. This is detrimental to Women’s health; to everyone’s health. How can we be more Yin our life? Listen to the podcast and you will find out.

You can find Nicole on instagram @drnicpawley. Or you can message me and I can put you in touch with her.

Ep 12 Cyclical Living with Jaime Lauren

This week I have the wonderful Jaime Lauren, who is a menstrual and fertility awarenes coach talking about cyclical living for Women. I loved this conversation! I am a big supporter of cylical living for women and this is why I really wanted to do a podcast on it, it is something I teach in all my work.

Jaime runs a 10 week course of cyclical living and she does one on one work with women around fertility awareness. So what is cyclical living? It is designing your life around the menstrual cycle. This may seem a strange concept to us in the modern western world but women did it for thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution.

We seem to find ourselves in an epidemic of hormone related health issues and this shows up in many health issues in women from teenage years to the 80s. Health issues such as PCOS, endometriosis, infertility, fibroids, acne, IBS, early or difficult menopause, early puberty, sleep problems, anxiety, depression, hair loss and amenorrhea. I am sure there are more.

Understanding your cycle and living with it is, I believe, a big lever when it comes to self-love, self-acceptance and women stepping into their wild power.

You can find Jamie on Facebook in her Group Cyclical Living for Women, her website www.jaimelauren.coach or on instagram @menstrualmagic_

Ep 11 Movement as Medicine with Dianne Shepherd

Dianne Shepherd is back and today we are talking about Sensual Movement. Sensual movement is a non linear form of movement that is a great form of exercise, a meditative process and a source of great healing. It is particularly powerful for working with our pelvic floor and our core.

Dianne and I chat about all the different benefits of sensual movement. It is a great movement for women and so different from other forms of exercise that we do like Yoga or Pilates, that whilst working the core well, are very linear in their progression. Many of these forms of exercise work on the horizontal and vertical planes of the body, not the spiral. The pelvis is a spiral shaped bone, did you know that?

Sensual movement can also build great body mind connections between our brain and our pelvis. It builds life force energy and is a good way for women to build connection with their erotic part of themselves. This form of movement is a great way to work with our emotions and get them moving. Our Emotions are supposed to me in motion not locked up in our body. I have also found with some clients who have trauma in their body, it is a great way for them to work with that, for their body to titrate the energy of the trauma as it is unwinding from their body.

Dianne has a whole host of content on sensual movement in her website portal ‘The Goddess Vault’ which you can find on her website www.shakticore.com it is free to subscribe and you can become a member, just click on the link to get to her website. You can also find her on instagram @wildmenopause and on Facebook her group is The Goddess Vault.

Ep 10 Navigating Trauma in Motherhood and Midlife with Nisha Gill

Information and knowledge about Trauma has become very popular and accessible in the last 5-10 years . This is due to a few factors, greater scientific research and knowledge about the nervous system, the creation of a number of body based approaches to trauma resolution and the fact that there are a whole lot of individual practitioners who have trained in these body based modalities. New practitioners who have written books, started podcasts and started to run trainings both in person and online.

In this podcast, I am joined by Nisha Gill. Nisha is a Somatic Experiencing (trauma resolution) Practitioner who works at the intersection of trauma, birth, female sexuality & embodiment. She draws also from her background in integrative bodywork and counselling. Nisha has a special focus on birth, sexual, medical and developmental traumas through the lens of the nervous system. She combines her holistic tools for a highly tailored approach to body re-connection in the wake of trauma, illness, grief & loss, birth, menopause and other challenging transitions.

Nisha and I talk about what Trauma actually is, how people experience it in their nervous system. We talk about different causes of trauma, the different times in can show up in our life. Primarily, I wanted to talk to Nisha about birth trauma but we talked about a whole lot of stuff related to Trauma resolution work. We talked about developmental trauma and how this can become a big thing either in post-partum, or midlife transition through peri-menopause for us, as our body seeks healing and resolution. How do we know what Trauma responses look like? We explain what Somatic Experiencing is and how it supports individuals through trauma resolution.

This is an important podcast for me because I have coached many women who have unresolved birth trauma or developmental trauma and it can have a hugely negative impact on their life. In terms of the health and wellbeing, their body’s ability to heal and the quality of their relationships, both with their intimate partner and their family but also their broader community. I want to create as much awareness about it as possible.

Nisha and I have a strong relationship; I refer lots of people to her. She also supported me through chemotherapy as I chose to partake in Somatic Experiencing as one of the therapeutic modalities to support me and I believe it had a profoundly positive experience on my body’s healing. My work has a strongly trauma informed focus and I look forward to learning more about it.

You can find Nisha at her website www.feminineinstincts.com.au here facebook groups Birth Trauma Awareness and Feminine Instincts and on Instagram @feminineinstincts.

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