Birth Mystics

Birth Mystics

Welcome to the Birth Mystics podcast. What is a birth mystic, anyway? Doulas Katie and Stephanie define it as a person who pursues contemplation, surrender, and truth in order to understand birth beyond the intellect. Think ”birth nerds” but with a little more depth and spirituality. Here we talk birth through the lens of mythology, philosophy, poetry, and more.

Episodes

December 28, 2022 35 mins

What are the formative birth stories of your life? This is an important question to ask yourself as you prepare to give birth. You may think about the birth stories of your closest friends, family members, ancestors, and even media portrayals of birth. These stories influence and affect you, some in positive ways, some in not so positive ways. One kind of formative birth story that gets overlooked is the creation story. We are only...

Today we are diving into the land of fantasy. Katie was hugely influenced in her childhood by Avatar the Last Airbender. It's a story centered around the four elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. There is also a side world connected to it called the Spirit World full of entities that possess different powers or abilities. In the beginning of the creation of the physical realm many powerful spirits chose to give up their mortalit...

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November 30, 2022 34 mins

Kora, the Maiden, loved to explore the Earth and all its beauty. One day in her wanderings she encountered strange shadows that haunted her steps. In her wisdom, she knew she could help them and prepared for a journey into the underworld. She made her descent, causing the Earth to contract in grief, bringing death, decay, and winter. When Kora arrived, she met each shadow one by one, preparing them for rebirth in the physical realm...

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November 9, 2022 36 mins

You birth like you live. So how do you live? If you're really willing to ponder that simple question, you can go pretty deep. This is not meant to make you feel guilt, shame, or self-judgement. It's simply a reflection of who you are right now. Instead of just plunging into what society has told you is a good birth, this is about curating birth to your specific wants and needs, even if it doesn't look like anyone else's. Birth is a...

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October 26, 2022 33 mins

Stephanie and Katie engage in a composite dialogue that demonstrates the unrest and confusion women can feel when their Mama Bear ferocity wakes up during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Oftentimes these sweet, pleasant, docile women are deeply shaken by their rage and volatility, particularly when it's directed toward those they love most.

Where Katie's previous episode "Princess and the People Pleaser" addressed what it means t...

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Katie reimagines the fairytale of the Princess and the Pea. A lonely prince is looking for his perfect bride to be his princess. When a disheveled looking woman shows up on their doorstep, the Queen comes up with a brilliant plan to determine if she is truly a princess or not. She stacks many mattresses on top of one another and places a single pea in between two of them. She concludes that if this woman is truly worthy of her son'...

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September 28, 2022 39 mins

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

     And he said:

     Your children are not your children.

     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

     They come through you but not from you,

     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

     For they have their own thoughts.

     You may house their bodi...

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September 14, 2022 40 mins

Katie guides us through a discussion about the power of presence and what that can do for your birth. Living in the present moment is one of the greatest gifts birth can give you. Mindfulness is the ability to be in this moment without allowing distractions to pull you out of that focus. You can imagine your thoughts as a river that can sometimes sweep us up into its current. Mindfulness teaches us to pull ourselves above the water...

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September 1, 2022 30 mins

You've likely been taught that birth (and life) is a lot like a maze—having to make the "right" choices in order to achieve a "good" birth. But what if there's another template for giving birth (and living) that removes those vocabulary words entirely and sets you up for peace, clarity, and empowerment?

The whole point of a maze is to find the way out, typically as quickly as possible. And yet, it's designed to frustrate and mislea...

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August 17, 2022 33 mins

Inanna was a queen and priestess and she felt a call to descend into the underworld. She prepared by gathering everything she needed. Inanna made her descent, but at every gate something was demanded of her to give up, which she did. She gave up a scepter, a breastplate, bangles, her necklace…and finally, her robe—enabling her to cross the final threshold at her most vulnerable and powerful.

Katie speaks about rites of passage that...

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August 3, 2022 33 mins

Stephanie's original poem takes an intimate look at the role partner's can play in the birth experience--and it's not what you think it is. How can partners best support the birthing person without overpowering, overprotecting, naysaying, or neglecting? And furthermore, what is their unique transformational potential?

Even more important than the amount of time you spend as a birthing person researching your options, you are the on...

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July 20, 2022 33 mins

Katie shares with us beautiful prose of going into the darkness. She invites us to challenge the idea that darkness is evil or scary and how to use it to our advantage during childbirth. For Katie, darkness is solace, peace, and seclusion, which are wonderful adjectives for birth. Consider how we often meet a lover in the darkness. Our senses are turned down. We get to put all of our focus into touching and feeling.

Stephanie share...

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July 6, 2022 34 mins

Stephanie reads her original poem, "Willing to Die," which explores the metaphorical and mythical journey birthers undertake. Instead of fearing death of the ego, we can learn to embrace it, and when we do—birth transforms us. This kind of death is about moving with the seasons and cycles of life and accepting our undoing. To learn more about Stephanie's work, visit bhavabirth.com

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June 22, 2022 47 mins

Katie tells us the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga. This is a myth, while on the outside can appear very dark, is actually about connecting to our intuition. Any myth with all of its components can represent the entire psyche. Baba Yaga is a powerful template that all of us can follow in our process of discovering our intuition in the birth space.

To learn more about Katie's birth work, please visit www.freyabirth.com

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June 8, 2022 36 mins

Stephanie describes feeling intense grief and rage from childhood trauma that surfaced during her first postpartum. Then she learned about Kundalini, which instilled a deep and profound purpose to her pain. This awakening isn't just trying to shove our past traumas into our faces just because--it's trying to evolve us. To learn more please visit www.bhavabirth.com

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May 25, 2022 34 mins

Katie walks us through her original poem "Poseidon" that she wrote while six months pregnant with her third baby. As she laid in bed pondering her upcoming birth the words just came together in her mind. She jumped out of bed and wrote it down, feeling how it deeply expressed her hopes and wishes for her birth. This poem also represents her embodiment journey. If you'd like to learn more please visit www.freyabirth.com

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May 25, 2022 27 mins

Stephanie discusses what led her to naming her business Bhava Birth. It's a Sanskrit word that translates to becoming. When it's spelled bhavah it translates into giving birth. The etymology shows a deep and profound connection between these two processes, of birth and becoming. If you'd like to learn more please visit www.bhavabirth.com

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May 25, 2022 35 mins

Katie introduces what inspired her to name her business Freya Birth. Join us as we explore Norse mythology to understand the meaning and symbology of the goddess Freya and how it pertains to birth. If you'd like to learn more please visit www.freyabirth.com

References: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, A Good Birth: Finding the Positive and Profound in your Childbirth Experience, by Anne Lyerly

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Welcome to the Birth Mystics podcast. What is a birth mystic, anyway? Doulas Katie and Stephanie define it as a person who pursues contemplation, surrender, and truth in order to understand birth beyond the intellect. Think "birth nerds" but with a little more depth and spirituality.  

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