Have you ever struggled to bring your dreams into reality, wondering over and over again… “What is wrong with me?” or “Why can’t I just….?”
(Artwork by Katariina Agnes Fagering)
I know this feeling SO well. And I’ve also known the opposite.. the feeling that NOTHING can stop me, NOTHING can stand in my way of bringing my dream to reality.
Birth has been my biggest teacher, the gateway through which I have come to understand the source of my feminine power.
In Ecstatic Birthing for Goddesses, we take the feminine cycle of creation, the journey of conception through pregnancy, labor and delivery as it relates to our METAPHORICAL babies.
Collectively we will focus on one stage each month during our live calls, learning how to identify and diffuse common obstacles and practicing tools of pleasure to support your flow through moments of intensity unique to that stage.
During the private sessions, the focus is wholly on what YOU are creating, identifying your unique spot in the feminine cycle and exploring practices to infuse your journey with pleasure while supporting your process.
Our exploration will always bring us back to the body and how to locate and expand the flow of ecstasy within!
This is a pivotal moment in your life.
You have never been in this exact position before.. preparing for this birth of this baby.
Yet… you have been here before. You know this feeling.
You have been faced with the inner struggle of knowing what you really want and being afraid you can’t have it.
What if you fail? What if what has worked for other women won’t work for you? What if it’s just too good to be true?
I’d like to introduce you to Ekaterina Baranova, a doula and childbirth educator, who just completed her first round of the Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training Program (graduates are able to repeat the training as often as they are inspired).
Ekaterina has spent the last year immersed in the content, practice and community of PLEASURE, actively contemplating and practicing bringing it into the world of birth.
You will see, from the blog she has written here, so many of the different pieces I’ve highlighted at play:
The tools and practices you can bring into birth to have more fun, and support the flow of labor and delivery
The invaluable nature of being immersed in a like-minded community
The elevation of consciousness about the body and the interconnected nature of life, birth and sex
Opening to the flow of pleasure within via the body practices
The shift from thinking states to FEELING states to tap into our intuitive and primal nature
The power of being present in the body
The transformation in supporting others from being draining to nourishing
Bringing everything you learn in this training into the world with your unique flavor
Elevating the birthing culture through your pleasure
And so much more.. I’ll let her tell you herself!
If you are a woman living on this planet, it is likely that you are familiar with the sensation of depletion, of having given everything you have to give (and more) with little left for yourself.
Biologically women are wired as nurturers, but culturally we are not trained how to take on that role in a way that feels sustainable.
Mothers are taught to be self-sacrificing and put their kids first.
Practitioners are taught to put their clients needs first.
The problem with this model is that eventually we get depleted and hit a point of utter exhaustion. And at that point we are of no use to anyone, not even ourselves.
Childbirth can be deeply empowering, pleasurable, ecstatic and even orgasmic.
Yet most women experience the opposite.
There is a HUGE gap between the possibility and the reality.
The gap is not whether or not Ecstatic Births actually exist.
The gap is in how we are raised, our relationships to our bodies, the structures of training and support that exist (or not) for women, the healthcare system, the legal system and so much more.
I see so so many women judging themselves harshly or feeling down in the dumps for not “achieving” this ideal.
That is the heart of the matter right there–
Ecstatic Birth is an IDEAL and ideals are not a measure by which to judge ourselves, but a source of inspiration, elevation.
While bringing the image of the picture perfect birth you have in your mind into reality is incredibly difficult, (when does life ever conform perfectly to our ideals?) elevating your experience of birth is astoundingly simple.
Let me show you what I mean via this fool-proof 3 step strategy:
Sensuality is a powerful tool women can use to enhance their experience during labor and birth. Melting into her sensual nature allows a birthing woman to fully relax, stay present, and enjoy the process of labor and delivery.
Giving birth is the culmination of the sexual act. You birth with all of your sexual organs, stimulating and flooding them with sensation. Childbirth at its best also mirrors the trance states of arousal and orgasm. Melting into her sensuality heightens a woman’s experience of pleasure during childbirth, much like it does during sex.
Sensuality at its essence is a practice, a way of experiencing life. What if you were to treat your birth like the sensual ride of your life? What would that mean? What would your birth prep look like? Read on to learn specifically about sensuality as an aspect of preparation for an Ecstatic Birth.
Are you dancing through life? Or muscling through it?
Are you creating your dreams and desires with pleasure? Or through grit and a continual endless PUSH?
How often do you experience ECSTASY?
Whether you’ve never given birth, already have, want to or don’t – birth is a powerful metaphor for how we create, gestate, and realize any huge desires as women.
As we flow through life, we are birthing all the time- babies, relationships, projects, jobs, ourselves… over and over and over again.
Pregnancy and BIRTH are a feminine process- perhaps THE feminine process and as much as the patriarchy tries to co-opt, control, manage and undermine it, it can never be anything other than FEMININE.
Patterns of muscling through, numbing out, or awaiting a savior as we birth and rebirth ourselves, are signs that we are out of alignment, that we are trying to conform to systems that weren’t created for us, that do not honor our feminine design.
As the feminine rises so does our ownership of the birthing process!
The time has come to birth all your creations like WOMEN.
Birthing our creative projects is similar to birthing our babies in that both can challenge us and take us places we have never been before. We can come through to the other side having had an experience of intense grueling difficulty or an experience of intense empowerment and rapture. The difference between the two is rarely the objective facts of the birth, but our subjective experience of it.
In my work helping women birth their babies with pleasure, I have found that a woman who prepares to have an Ecstatic Birth brings this wisdom into her mothering and all aspects of her life.
Used consciously the underlying principles of Ecstatic Birth can enable us to birth our metaphorical babies through pleasure as well.
Wherever you are in the world the supermoon is shining bright on you at night. Full moons illuminate our darkness both tangibly and metaphorically.
There is a whole lot of darkness currently being illuminated on our planet, whatever your political orientation. So many intense patterns, thoughts, emotions coming to the surface triggered by the elections here in the US.
The full moon is a great time to truly see what has been hiding in the darkness and to set the intention to let go of those things that aren’t serving you.
Identify them, write them down, throw them in the trash (or rip or burn them) and as the moon wanes, feel them energetically wash away from your life.
My concern today, my tender tribe of mamas and birthworkers, is your bodies. How are they feeling?
I personally have been struggling with an overwhelming sense of violation, a creeping feeling of unease, a brimming anger that the female body continues to be treated so disrespectfully, and intense grief that so many people were able to make light or overlook this when they cast their votes. Different people hold different things as sacred.
I hold the female body as sacred, as the portal through which new life comes into this world.
A feeling of safety in the body is one of the cornerstones of Ecstatic Birth prep, so I am wondering…
How is your body feeling?
…separate and distinct from how your mind is processing.