Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson

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EP112: The Skill of Culture Building, The Making of Tribe, Spiritual Colonialism, and Grief Practice with Matthew Stillman Feb 26, 2021

Show notes

The Skill of Culture Building, The Making of Tribe, Spiritual Colonialism, and Grief Practice with Matthew Stillman.

We dive into the big questions of where we are at in this point in time- what is community? How do we make it? Are we right to want tribe, and if so, what does that really mean? We also touch on the deepest parts of our connection from Earth and place, and how that can come to bear with "medicine," Ayahuasca and spiritual colonialism.

What Matt Shares:

-How the city you are from is different than the place you are from -Origin of the word "tribe" - tribe is much more than an affinity

-How race + culture intersect, and the origin of culture

-The history of Ayahuasca and spiritual colonialism

-The need for grief practice

EP111: Luisa Muhr on Family Constellations, Ancestral Trauma, and Working Somatically While Online Feb 10, 2021

Show notes

Luisa Muhr joins me to talk about her work in Family Constellations Therapy, including intergenerational trauma resulting from the holocaust as well as racial trauma within the United States. We talk about the importance of community space in a therapy setting, why working within an energy field is so effective, and staying somatically engaged while online.

What She Shares:

What Family Constellations is and how it works
The importance of honoring our ancestors and those in our systems
How working with the impact of the Holocaust has shaped her work in the world

What You'll Hear:

Working within an energy field
Unwinding old patterns through ancestry work
The difference between drama therapy and Family Systems
Who is included in our family systems
The importance of speaking a story out of secrecy
The value of processing within community
How working with archetypes can help us process and heal
Restoring appropriate predator energy
Creating space for healing intergenerational social traumas
Weaving Family Constellations into your own work
Processing beyond the overt narrative
The importance of ritual in healing
Connecting into the energy field even when separated by geographical distance
Identifying what you need
Using technology to continue our somatic practices in community
The difference between the outer relationship and narrative, and the internal experience
Centering yourself in your own healing work
How your healing impacts your children

Resources

Website: www.familyconstellationsnyc.com Website: www.luisamuhr.com IG: @familyconstellations.nyc

Luisa Muhr is a New-York-based artist and healer, specializing in Family & Systemic Constellations. As the descendant of her great-grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, Constellation work has always played an integral part in Luisa's life. She provides group workshops and one-on-one sessions.

EP110: Race in the Body, an Exploration of Whiteness in Yoga, Fitness, and Core Expression Jan 31, 2021

Show notes

Liz Koch rejoins me for a third interview, this time to discuss whiteness and colonization in the body. We explore how those pieces show up in the physical body and sensory systems, why it matters, and the importance of physical movement in anti-racism.

What Liz Shares:

The interconnection between how we use our bodies and our racialization of bodies
Racialized movement patterns
Recognizing racialized nervous system responses
How the idealized body in fitness is not only white, but also male, and how that impacts female fitness

What You'll Hear:

Noticing how performative behaviors re-iterate a frozen spine
Changing our view to see Body as Process, rather than Body as Object
Valuing the expressivity of the human body
Re-assessing the idealized human body to include expression
Developing your sense of self through knowing primal responses
Examining your ancestral relationship with colonization
Using movement patterns to re-enforce or interrupt white body supremacy
Engaging with your psoas to feel more grounded
Letting go of control as decolonization
Becoming available for genuine responses rather than socialized reactions
Questioning what whiteness looks like in the white female body
Tracking subtle whiteness
Healing ancestral trauma through owning your Eros
Decolonization as an ecological imperative
Participating in society as a community member, not as an individual
Re-membering into culture and community and out of strategy
The more animal you are, the more human you become
Animal body as coherence
Pre-empting anti-racial work through movement and the sensory system
If your body can't move, you can't feel your instincts

Resources:

https://coreawareness.com/

IG: @stalkingwildpsoas

Liz Koch is an international teacher and author with 42 years of experience, focusing on kinesthetic intelligence and somatic awareness. She is the author of "The Psoas Book," "Unraveling Scoliosis," and "Stalking Wild Psoas: Embodying Your Core Intelligence."

EP 109: Transformed by Birth: Ordered Culture + Wild Nature + Archetypes Birth and Life with Britta Bushnell, PhD Jan 19, 2021

Show notes

-Story of the Apollo/ Artemis birth

-The role of twins in mythology- two sides of a coin

-Artemis is the goddess of childbirth, when she is born, she immediately midwife's her brother's birth

-Artemis- Moon Goddess, darkness, untamed; Apollo- Sun God, bright, civilized

-How are these archetypes helpful in birth preparation?

-Ordered culture over wild nature

-In an Appolonian setting (hospital,) how do you bring Artemis?

-Kimberly's birth experience and handing over power in Apollonian way to midwife

-Pandemic popped the Apollonian illusion of control and tossed us into Artemisian realm

-Children are Artemisian

-How do we compromise the Artemisian in Apollonian structure in spite of our ideals?

-Parents beating themselves up in pandemic for kids falling behind

-The blurring of public and private

-Did birth move you to be more Apollonian or Artemisian?

-The grief and loss through the pandemic

Dr. Britta Bushnell (she/her) is a wife and mother, author of Transformed by Birth, veteran childbirth educator, celebrated speaker, mythologist, and specialist in childbirth, relationship, and parenting. For over 20 years, Dr. Bushnell has worked with individuals and couples as they prepare for the life-changing experience of giving birth. Her work with parents has been enriched by her doctoral work in mythology and psychology, her years spent as former co-owner of Birthing From Within, as well as her dedicated study of solution-focused brief therapy, storytelling, sustaining sexual vibrancy, and helping romantic partnerships thrive even during parenthood.

EP108: Women, Money, Dependence and the Beginning of a New Era with Clelia Peters Dec 13, 2020

Show notes

What Clelia Shares:

Her journey with money coming from generational wealth
Accepted gender roles within her community and her work with Mama Gena and Barbara Stanny
Turning point in her journey about her role as a woman came with having an abortion
How she came to terms with money, wanting to enter the "marble hall of the daddies," and getting there

What You'll Learn:

What gender roles look like in communities with generational wealth
System of dependence in humanitarian aid paralleled system of dependence of being wealthy and feeling that you will be taken care of
Women are outside of the worlds of money + commerce
Revenue - costs = profits
Assuming she would have a non-accretive job, and a virtuous, non-threatening in dating
Thinking business school was a "world of benevolent daddies"
Business school is 75% male, 25% female (the one professional school that remains disproportionately male)
What business school is really like
The shift to be motivated by money and power
Interviewing women in business, and if they'd left, why had they left?
Shifting structures and logistics in keeping women in workforce, but there is something much more profound than "solving" the logistical problems
Generations and stages of feminism in business, the metaphor of a building
Few models for feminine leadership
Codeshifting women do in corporate jobs
Online businesses are operating outside of the core systems of power that exist (real estate, technology, finance)
The US is not a true capitalist country, it is a corporatist country
We give corporations (not people ) welfare, with bailouts
Market-based system, where both people come as empowered transactors
What about reparations- how do we level things so people are empowered transactors? How do we level set the system?
What rich people really do or think- are they Democrats or Republicans?
Economy managed on merits, based on financial outcomes
2500 years of white supremacist patriarchy that we've lived in, and we are in a transition
Developing a vocabulary of collective questioning
Being a channel and gauging with her intuition when deciding whether to invest
Why it's taboo to state your sex within business, even if that may be informing your communication style
Does she look for female-run companies to invest in?
Masculine as triangle, feminine as a circle

EP107: Repairing Pre- and Perinatal Trauma and Listening to Babies with Kate White Dec 04, 2020

Show notes

Kate White is an advanced bodyworker, perinatal educator, and somatic trauma resolution professional. She developed much of her work following the pregnancies and births of her own two children. She is the Founding Director of Education for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and helps administer an online program for parents and professionals who work with parents, runs a private practice, and offers her own seminars through the Center for Prenatal and Perinatal Programs.

What Kate Shares:

What prenatal and perinatal psychology are
How these fields developed
Personal stories about helping clients with difficult birth stories
The process of repair

What You'll Hear:

The importance of including pre- and peri-natal psychology in the gestalt of psychology
How neuroplasticity, epigenetics, and attachment play into perinatal psychology
The impact of fetal experiences on the adult body- FOADs
Understanding that most experiences are repair-able
Incorporating mindful exercises around boundaries, differentiation, and connection to help your baby feel secure
The importance of restoring intuition
Why sleep is foundational to a healthy mother-baby dyad, and why sleep training may be detrimental
Bodywork to support babies with tongue tie
How Pitocin impacts the birthing pattern
The importance of slowing the narrative to resolve traumatic imprints
How Supported Attachment can help babies process birth trauma
Completing birth impulses
Learning how to hear what babies are saying
Supporting older children in repairing birth trauma

EP106: Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art with James Nestor Nov 27, 2020

Show notes

James Nestor, author of "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art" joins me to speak on all the ways facial structure, nutrition, eating habits, and industrialization have impacted humans' ability to breathe, why it matters, and ways we can get back to the basics.

What James Shares:

Details of his years-long research into breath
How he increased his facial bone density and expanded his airways
When the paperback edition is released there will be new material!
His creative process for writing

What You'll Hear:

Reclaiming breath as your own human right
The environmental and morphological challenges to breathing well
The theory of dis-evolution in the human species
How the industrialized diet has impacted face shape and breath efficacy
How facial bones differ from other bones in the body
How chewing raw food helps kids breathe better
Redefining 'healthy' food to include chewability
How chewing impacts the nervous system
The importance of breastfeeding for long term airway health
The potential connection between industrialization and tongue ties
Helping your kids build helpful breathing habits
The connection between ADHD and breathing
The data behind breathwork
Why data and anecdotal evidence are both important for changing our minds
The connection between the nose and the vagina

EP105: Sex + Gender, Humans + Animals and Evolutionary Biology with Natalie Dinsdale Nov 23, 2020

Show notes

What You'll Hear:

Definitions of sex + gender +intersex
Sex is a functional category defined by the gametes you reproduce. Males produce sperm; females produce eggs.
Sex is binary
Gender is the social and cultural attributes and rules based on their sex
Intersex is a mismatch between phenotype and genotype, or when sex based on observation is not obvious
How common is intersex? Ambiguous genitalia is about 1 in 5000. (The origin of misinformation of intersex as 1 in 200, as common as redheads)
Evidence of intersex increasing
Explanatory power and unifying systems of evolution and astrology
Is evolutionary biology equivalent to Darwinism?
How evolutionary biology helps us understand female sexuality.
How humans differ from animals- brain size, large energetically expensive brain related to the placenta, walk on two legs, intense social nature
Are humans monogamous? Or Non-monogamous?
Sex for pleasure, social reasons or reproduction
Possible immunological benefit to monogamy- preeclampsia study as an example
Female as coy, shy strategy waiting for males to come to them. Darwin in Victorian England. Female in estrus are aggressive and search out mates
Strip clubs tips change based on where a woman is during her cycle!
Role of homogenous spaces, same sex as well as same gender places
Females produce a larger gamete, by definition females invest more heavily in reproduction and take on more risk, which presents asymmetry in the sexes.
Why doesn't the male get to decide about abortion
Role of homogenous spaces, same sex, same gender places
Controversy of Vancouvers women's center that is female only
Body, felt sense of sex. Our perception of sex is adaptive for coding for "female" and "male" for saefty
Preferred gender pronouns and Using respectful pronouns
Birth and gender
Learning about sexuality through 1st person experience, kids coming to explorations through different avenues.
Reductionist biology- we are pieces and parts and can just dismantle and take them apart
Human pregnancy is much more expensive and risky than any other species
Testosterone has a negative influence on fertility
Fertility as an industry, and its impact on women
Aquarian battle of the old and new. Futuristic and technological androgynous planet
We felt controlled by reproduction and now we want control over it, rather than surrendering to our body
Menopause is rare, grandmother investment

EP104: The 2020 Election, Democracy, Supreme Court and What Our Part Is with Dwight Worden Oct 04, 2020

Show notes

What Dwight Shares:

Is this the worst, most contentious election in history?
What should we do with our emotions during this time?
Why is he spending his retirement working as a Mayor of a small town?
How to decide where to donate, where to give money or time
The historical role of the Supreme Court?

What You Will Hear:

Historical contention during elections
Do emotions belong in politics?
Most people agree more than they disagree, when we get beyond labels
Orienting to blue within politics
How to deal with overwhelm when there is so much suffering
Acknowledging what is actually possible
What to do when you get into the rabbit hole
What about homeless people living in Del Mar? What happened with that?
Does your vote matter?
Small donations matter because candidates need money but they count the people that contribute
Democratic National Committee distributes money to the other causes (Senator and Representative candidates
What happens if the Senate goes 6-3? What do you think about extending the number of seats?
Supreme Court traditionally was conservative and in favor of corporations and business, against the individual
The Warren Court changed the court, and we may be going back to pre Warren Court.
Echo chambers of news sources and listening to news on both sides.
No common source of information any more
Learning how to relate beyond labels
The US is partially socialist
Should we have hope?
Progress is sometimes minimizing backsliding
Are the debates important? Does this format work?
Trump exemplifying an unhealthy fight response in debate- and how we see authority
We've trained ourselves to expect a game show, not a debate
Why running a country is not like run a business

EP103: Healthy Attachment and the "Strange Situation" with Bethany Saltman Oct 01, 2020

Show notes

What Bethany Shares:

Bethany discusses her new book, "Strange Situation", and why understanding attachment is so helpful
Her personal journey as a mother and the re-evaluation and renegotiation of her own narrative
Bethany gives her thoughts on modern attachment parenting

What You'll Hear:

Bethany tells us about her book, "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment"
The difference between research and me-search
Classical Attachment and Modern Attachment Styles
Bethany's journey of renegotiating her past and her narrative through the lens of Mary Ainsworth's research and writings
The power of leaving your kids alone
Attachment parenting
Dr. Sears is public enemy #1
Reflective functioning/ mentalization
The struggle to understand the world as a third being when raising your child
How being your best and worst self can ultimately benefit your child
The secret window of time
Being comfortable is key to comforting your child
Why attachment is nothing to be afraid of, because we can always move ourselves into more security

Summary:

Bethany Saltman joins the Magamama podcast once again, this time to discuss her new book "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment. We talk about how insecurities can devastate your ability to function as an independent adult, and Bethany shares her own story of how she's overcome these difficulties.

Bio:

Bethany Saltman humbly describes herself as a long-time Zen student who lives in a small town in the Catskills with her husband, daughter, and two dogs. Moreover, she is a renowned author, researcher, and editor whose work can be found in publications such as New Yorker, New York Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Parents. Bethany has spent years studying the many emotions we feel that make us human. Amongst those emotions, attachment is one that stuck with Bethany, leading her to write her first book "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment".

Resources:

https://www.bethanysaltman.com/strange-situation
Twitter - @BethanySaltman

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