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I'm Hormonal | functional hormone insight + advice
If you're looking for information on women's hormone health, how to support your menstrual cycle, and what you need to know for long term wellness--look no further. I'm Hormonal host, Bridget Walton, provides you with the information you need to get your hormones in balance so you can feel your best.
I'm Hormonal | functional hormone insight + advice
Womb Healing: From Energetic Blockages to Rejuvenation with Maddie Juracka | Ep. 47
If you're new to womb healing, this is the place for you to learn the basics and understand how it can be a valuable tool for you as you move through life. Creating an environment of safety and trust in your pelvic bowl can support your overall health and wellbeing. Maddie bring here experience working with clients and walks you through how to incorporate aspects of womb healing into your own daily life.
Maddie's work is around womb and pelvic care, working with the menstrual cycle and emotional/energetic blockages in womb space. Her work also supports clients who have experienced sexual trauma or birth trauma. Last but not least: Maddie is also a birth doula with a background in clinical herbalism.
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Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Hi and welcome to this week's episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm your host, bridget, and today I'm coming at you with an interview that I did with Maddie Juraka talking about womb healing. So if you just took a slight pause and you're like what is a womb healing? That's something that's new to me, then you're in for a real treat. It's something that was also quite new to me, so I was definitely learning right alongside you all, as I chatted with Maddie, of course, or if you listen to the podcast here from time to time, then you'll know that a lot of the times what I'm talking about when it comes to our hormones and our symptoms and what can those signals be telling us. It's more of the kind of quantitative side of relating to our hormones, and what I love about this conversation that you're about to listen to is that Maddie really brings this to the conversation, or what am I trying to say? Comes, brings this to the conversation, or what am I trying to say? She brings to the table the topic of connecting more energetically, emotionally, to the womb and womb space and connecting to your bodies, which I think is a whole different perspective, and I think you'll really love it. Before we get into the good stuff, I just want to say welcome back. If you are someone who's been here before, or if this is your first time listening, then I'm so glad that you found me.
Speaker 1:I started this podcast about a year ago because I think it's so important to share the information that I know and that can potentially help you to better understand your body, better understand your cycle, better understand yourself. So that's the short version of what we're doing here. As always, the information that I share with you is for educational purposes only, should not be used as a replacement for any sort of one-on-one support from a certified practitioner or from a licensed healthcare provider. So just keep that in mind as you're listening to this episode and all others. Now, that being said, if you are looking for any sort of tailored one-on-one support from a certified practitioner, then you can always reach out to me.
Speaker 1:In addition to the podcast here I do one-on-one coaching with gals who are trying to get their hormones back in order as it relates to their menstrual cycle. So check out the link in the show notes, connect with me on Instagram at Bridget Walton, and if you got something good and juicy out of this episode, I would be really appreciative if you wouldn't mind to rate, review and consider subscribing to the podcast. So I won't make you wait any longer, let's get into this interview with Maddie. Maddie, I'm really excited to have you here for this conversation today, because womb healing is something that certainly is adjacent to what I normally talk about here on the podcast, of course, hormones, how listeners can understand what's going on with their hormones, with their cycle, what to do with that and how to help themselves feel better, and so, anyway, I'm looking forward to getting into womb healing, because this is something I will absolutely be learning alongside the listener here today, and I'm so lucky to have you here teaching us about womb healing.
Speaker 1:So, with that, would you for a listener who this is their first time hearing about womb healing. Give us the rundown of what it is and how you work with that with clients and just what are the main things to know about it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be having this conversation. So the essence of womb healing is really about returning to the center of who we are as women. So in a lot of lineages you'll hear about the womb, or maybe the Hara or the sacral chakra, being the center of power and creativity, inspiration, intuition, and this is really really big for us as women, because this is our womb space, our reproductive organs, our ability to create life as women, whether that's a choice that we're making or not, it's such a powerful thing that we possess.
Speaker 2:So a part of womb healing is the belief that energies and emotions can be stuck or stored in the womb.
Speaker 2:So, as the womb is created to hold, holding physical life, it can also hold things such as past traumas, experiences, emotions, memories, and something really interesting that's so relevant with womb healing is that, basically, when our mothers were a fetus inside of our grandmothers, she had already developed all of the eggs that she'll have in her lifetime.
Speaker 2:So us as women, as daughters, as children, we were already an egg inside of our mother when she was in her lifetime. So us as women, as daughters, as children, we were already an egg inside of our mother when she was in our grandmother. So I think that's such a cool thing that speaks to the ancestral, the lineage healing aspect of womb healing and the way that we may be holding emotions or energies that are ours, but also things that were maybe never ours to begin with and something that has been received throughout our lineage from our mothers, from our grandmothers. So with womb healing, we are working with hands-on touch healing modalities, as well as different somatic practices, emotional release techniques to help the process of purifying and cleansing this womb center, returning to our seat of power as women, allowing us to have a deeper sense of intuition and restoring the wholeness of who we are.
Speaker 1:One thing that you mentioned about really holding on to emotions in the womb space. I want to kind of open that up a little bit more. So if you could talk more about like what emotions, or maybe all but what is really common and what might, or maybe all but what is really common and what might, flag somebody to kind of know that, okay, womb healing is something that I would benefit from and can or should maybe focus on.
Speaker 2:So, with emotions in the womb, there can be, I feel like, definitely a spectrum, one side being someone who is in tune with feelings such as grief or rage, anger, sadness, just to name a few, and then there can also be a numbness. Um, just to name a few, and then there can also be a numbness. So that may also be a reason why women come to womb healing is they tune in with their womb space and they get the sense of nothingness or a numbness and an ability to feel their emotions deeply or to experience states of pleasure in their lives and in their bodies. So there can really be such a full spectrum of emotions in the womb. But I would say the things that women feel a lot can be grief, and that may be from something that they're grieving within themselves, a past version of themselves that has yet to be fully processed and embodied, or it could be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a child. There's many ways that that can be expressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so is that kind of to say it's not that something, any type of grief or any type of sadness, whatever the emotion is? It's not that something, any type of grief or any type of sadness, whatever the emotion is. It's not that it's like exactly localized to the womb in the way that it happened, but that's naturally where we're inclined to hold on to that grief and where it kind of manifests. Is that the right way to look?
Speaker 2:at it Exactly. Yeah, that's a really wonderful way of saying it. Of course, emotion can be held all over the body. We see this a lot when physical pain or illness can manifest. But the womb can really be this store space, so that can be quite unconscious for a lot of women be quite unconscious for a lot of women.
Speaker 1:Um, when there's something sorry, go ahead. Oh, jinx. Um. One thing that comes up, uh, or is like front of mind for me when it comes to where we're holding on to emotions, are the hips right. Or whenever I'm in yoga class, I feel like that comes up half of the time right, which is, which is a great baseline. So I'm curious of how interwoven those two areas are, right, very central, the womb and hips. And similarly, I know that our fascia hold a lot of emotions too, right. So I wonder if you have anything to share on that note as well and how that ties in with how you work with women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I offer wound work and hands-on massage to women, I do work with the hips and with the entire pelvic bowl, especially the psoas, that muscle that wraps around the pelvic bowl, and we're working with the fascia as well just what you said, to help release stuck energy and emotion. And it's very interesting just to feel the state of the body when a woman has an awareness that there's emotion stored in the pelvic bowl and in the womb, and to feel the physical tightness and how much difference some hands-on work can make.
Speaker 1:That is interesting. Or when I think of it from the perspective of, yeah, like tightening of all of those muscles, right, tightening of pelvic floor muscles, and how everything is intertwined. So maybe this is taking things too literally, but when we're talking about womb healing, is that like literally just the uterus or that's the whole? It sounds like that's the whole pelvic bowl, like you mentioned. So like physically, pelvic floor muscles, uterus, everything. So could you clarify and maybe all the listeners are like and maybe all the listeners are like Bridget, we got it. Maybe I'm the only one, but is it what physical space or anatomy is kind of considered there and where is the line between physical anatomy and the energetics, yeah, so womb healing can really quite often be this umbrella term.
Speaker 2:That is more so talking about pelvic healing. So I do love to say women pelvic care when I work with women, but more so from that. It is working with the entire abdomen and organs such as the liver, the stomach, the kidneys. These are all things that I work with during my sessions. We do practices energetically as well as hands-on massage techniques to address these organs and working in other parts of the body first, before kind of focusing in on the uterus, the ovaries. That area of the body can help to create an openness and establish safety and trust. So I think that's really, at least for me. I found the right way to do wound healing sessions is not just going straight to putting my hands on somebody's wound but focusing on opening up the body first when you're working with gals that might have menstrual cycle irregularities or they have fertility troubles or something else.
Speaker 1:That is like um more, what is even the word I'm looking for? There's the, the grief, like emotional side on one hand, and then, on the other hand, is the other more physical, like, I guess, quantifiable side. I don't know if that's the best way to put it, but would you talk to me about what's that like or what womb healing can offer for somebody who's going through something like secular irregularities or fertility challenges, somebody who's going through something like cycle irregularities or fertility challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what wound healing does really really well is increase blood flow and circulation. So we are addressing issues of stagnation, which can be a major baseline cause of a lot of menstrual cycle irregularities or difficulties with conception or fertility, and womb massage can also help to reposition the uterus. The uterus never looks like those anatomy textbooks, where it's perfectly just situated, you know, right, front and center. All women generally have a tilt to their uterus, and massage can also help to bring more alignment to other internal organs as well.
Speaker 1:So it's the like physical manipulation, obviously, of that area to stimulate blood flow and move things around. And is there another component when you're like physically working with the space? That would be important to note too. I'm just trying to make sure I've got the good picture of yeah, kind of how that works I would say the work with the fascia too.
Speaker 2:There's some aspects of a massage session that are more nuanced and subtle, even with the hands on touch, and then some movements that you would maybe picture more when envisioning a womb massage Big hand motions and rocking the body. But it really varies from woman to woman what her body is communicating, whether that's something that she actually has coming up, there's something in her body that she's aware of, or throughout the time of our session We've usually been working together about two and a half three hours by the time that I'm actually touching her womb. So in that time the body can subtly communicate through different signs and areas that are opening up and loosening up and areas that are a bit tighter. So the ways that we'll work with the fashion and the pelvic bowl can definitely be very unique for each woman.
Speaker 1:It sounds like there certainly needs to be a great rapport and trust between you and the client, for sure. What is there that maybe the client should think about, or like a listener who's thinking okay, maybe this is something I should look more into. What are things that she can do kind of on her own, or maybe in preparation? Maybe there's a mindset or emotional component to it that would be separate, or a precursor to like the physical work to be done.
Speaker 2:I would say the biggest thing is having a connection to your own body, as many people are very disconnected from their physical body and have this idea that you know they want to do this healing and they want to do wound healing or any kind of physical healing. But I find that there can be such a huge piece missing when you have yet to actually place your hands on your own womb and just take a few breaths and you are maybe out of touch with your cycle or there's other things that are being bypassed. So I do feel that it's super important to tune in with yourself first, and that can look like, like I mentioned, just placing your hands on your belly and your womb, taking a few breaths. Here there's also a practice I love called the I am noticing practice. So you just close your eyes and kind of tune in with the womb space and just say, okay, I am noticing.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'm noticing that there is a sense of longing or the sense of sadness right now. Or I'm noticing that I'm feeling really tight in my womb space Can I take a few breaths into that? Or I'm noticing that my womb space feels really bright and really alive right now and all of those things are just how we develop body literacy, and you don't need to be a pro, you don't need to do it even every day necessarily, but that is just a great starting point for women who are thinking okay, this is something I'm interested in. How can I or precursor is a word that you used what is a good precursor?
Speaker 2:to me getting into this work before I maybe book a session with a practitioner or go deeper down this path.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's totally like opening up a can of worms, isn't it Right?
Speaker 2:In the best way possible.
Speaker 1:When you start to well, you start or I guess, stop ignoring some of the signs that your body's trying to send you. You're like all right, I will actually acknowledge this pain or this tightness or whatever the feeling is, understand the rhythms of my cycle or my body. Certainly talk about that a bunch here, and is there anything else that comes to mind when it comes to? I'm thinking of a listener who doesn't have that awareness of their body yet. Like, maybe is there a daily or kind of weekly practice or reminder that you would recommend to start building that connection with oneself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say something that's really great is working with the breath Just simply letting the belly go, letting the jaw soften, letting the shoulders relax and just taking a few conscious, deep breaths. I think that's a wonderful place to start. You can place your hands on your body. You can do get a great lotion or a massage oil that you like and just place your hands on your woman. You don't really need to know how to do any particular type of wound massage, but it's just establishing that hands-on touch, that connection.
Speaker 2:That is really beautiful when it's something we can offer to ourselves. So you can bring your hands from right to left and the flow of your digestion and just do some circles on the belly and place a hand on your heart, a hand on your low belly, and just breathe here, even setting like a little reminder on your phone just telling you relax your belly, as, as women, we're always sucking in and holding everything in and just gazing at yourself with a lot of love. When you look at yourself in the mirror, when you look at your abdomen and your belly, we have a lot of emotions and judgments and feelings about that part of our body, for sure, but just starting to meet yourself with more compassion and love and knowing that things will unfold as they're meant to, and just giving yourself a lot of gratitude, or having the awareness that you're ready to start this journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love what you said there and that's definitely not something that happens overnight. Right, That'll be something that takes us all a whole lifetime. Actually. Maybe we're never really done with that. We're always working on it. What are some things or what is something that relates to womb healing that you think is a common misconception or what do you wish? That everybody knew about it, or that menstruators or people with wombs or everybody knew about womb healing.
Speaker 2:I have noticed a lot of women think that womb healing is only for you if there is quote unquote something wrong, such as a noticeable imbalance, or you have had birth trauma or sexual trauma, maybe you experienced a pregnancy loss. But womb healing, as much as it is for the women who have really pinpointed that there is something they'd like to address, it's really for everybody. It's coming back home to our center and there's always something there. I feel like I mentioned a lot of it can be quite unconscious and we'll all fall on that spectrum at a different place. Conscious, and we'll all fall on that spectrum in a different place if we've had something major in our lives that has led us to womb healing or if you are just simply open to seeing what it's about and seeing how it can benefit you do you think, or how do you think, that womb healing and mindfulness like fall along the same spectrum?
Speaker 1:to me, they sound like they're on the same spectrum. Is that the right interpretation?
Speaker 2:definitely um. I feel, with the process of one healing, that you are being more in your body, which I feel is a huge pillar of mindfulness in general being embodied. I feel like there's so much focus within the wellness and spiritual community of getting out of the body and astral projecting and all these great tools is something I've noticed but there can be not enough emphasis on actually being in this beautiful body that we have and where mindfulness and womb healing come together is just creating a new connection with our bodies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds like a very grounding exercise or practice. Yeah, we've talked a lot so far about the emotional perspective of it, the kind of physical manipulation component of it. Is there anything else like looking at it through a holistic lens that you bring into womb healing or that is a common practice to coincide?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really enjoy the somatic aspect of womb healing as well. So when I work with a woman for an in-person womb healing session, my sessions range between about three to six hours, depending on how deep somebody is wanting to go in that timeframe and just what we've agreed upon. But before we begin any hands on touch, we do about an hour of somatic practices, and this is a way for us to just start to become aware of what's present in the body, and also, during this time, I love to teach these tools to women as well, so this is a time when they can learn some practices that they can bring into their own flow yeah, I would love to know what are some examples of somatic practices, Because to me that's like you know, looking around the room to kind of feel grounded and oriented and like basically building safety in my body, right.
Speaker 1:So what are some examples of that or that somebody could just do at home to have that same practice?
Speaker 2:I love bringing in the elements of breath and sound and movement, especially sound with wound healing, because when we make those really satisfying long exhales and those good releases and the low tones, that helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Our resting the chest, it activates the vagus nerve. So this is a really, really wonderful way to drop into the body. So that could be taking those deep breaths with your hands on your belly, like I mentioned earlier, but not just exhaling in silence.
Speaker 1:If you have the space and the ability to to, it's wonderful to just let out any sounds and deep groans and moans that your body is just wanting to come through and that can be a great somatic practice I personally just have that experience, mostly at yoga classes or other breathwork classes that I go to, and if I go to a yoga class and there are no loud exhales, I'm like I got gyps today, like I gotta go home and do my exhales now, but anyway, yeah, I see right, that's a really great example for somatic exercises of sending signals of safety to your body right, absolutely, and it's something that's so accessible.
Speaker 2:You can do it at home, you can do it in your car, just any moment that you need a release. It's something we can come back to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when it comes to things like herbs, or I know we've talked about yoni steaming before. How does that come into the whole womb healing picture too?
Speaker 2:I think herbs can be a wonderful way to support somebody's journey with their womb and their pelvic and their reproductive health, and of course that will look very different depending on other things that somebody has going on. But something that I do work with as an herbal medicine for all my clients are flower essences. So that is basically the vibrational frequency of a flower. The flowers are meant to have more emotional energetic properties. When we make teas and tinctures and stronger herbal concoctions, those are wonderful for working with the physical body, but flower essences date back thousands of years and that is basically just soaking a flower in water and then you take a few drops of that. And that is basically just soaking a flower in water and then you take a few drops of that and you consume it. So it's helping to address the emotional energetic body. It's considered a homeopathic remedy.
Speaker 1:So this is something that's really really gentle and subtle, um, but can really be so profound that's really interesting because you know, I guess everything all happens at the right timing for whatever reason. I was just listening to a podcast earlier today. They were talking about I think they just called it spirit doses, when you use whatever is the herb, but like just a tiny, tiny, like one drop. So, yeah, and what are the different kinds of flowers that you use quite often? What are, or is it just about? Well, yeah, does it matter? What kind of flower do you just? Is it whatever flower somebody likes?
Speaker 2:So there are thousands of flowers. If you find a store or website that has flower essences. There's so many choices, so every flower has been kind of assigned or people have figured out what their benefit is. So it could be for, maybe, heartache or grieving the loss of a loved one or regaining confidence of self. Leaving the loss of a loved one or regaining confidence of self. A flower essence that I feel like you just can't go wrong with is rose, and same with those spirit doses that you were mentioning. Working with the energetics of rose can just be so beautiful for heart and wound healing, so that is something I use a lot with my clients. Even having rose petals and evasive roses during our sessions feels very important to me, and just bringing that essence of love and beauty and almost like another energy into our space Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Can you elaborate more on the spirit dose, because I can't elaborate on it for myself, but I would love to understand what it's all about.
Speaker 2:There was a point where I felt very sensitive to a lot of herbs.
Speaker 2:I am starting to do some deeper work with herbs and plant medicines and had this realization that less can be so much more and by really being present with especially one plant at a time, sometimes in blends, there's a lot going on and it's wonderful for working on healing something in the body.
Speaker 2:But it can be this wonderful devotional practice to work with one herb, say, for maybe a week or a month, and it doesn't have to be your only herb, but there's times where you sit with it and you just drink a little tea or you take a few drops of tincture, maybe a flower essence, and it's working more within the subtle energetic realms of the plants, as all plants have their own personalities, their own wisdom, their own teachings and things that they're here to bring for us. It can be a great process, especially if there's a particular herb or plant that somebody is already connecting with or something has come up in their lives. What's the pull to chamomile right now? Or rose or lavender, and just working in these smaller doses and seeing if you can get to know the plant a bit more smaller doses and seeing if you can get to know the plant a bit more.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that it's very easy. Well, yeah, it's going to be easy to really make a connection with whatever is the herb or flower that somebody is using or just having. You know, everybody has their own connections with whatever it is when they first smelled a certain flower, and so from person to person those connections have to vary too, huh absolutely, and most people will know.
Speaker 2:If there's something that has come up for them a lot, or if they naturally feel this pull to a certain plant, chances are that it has something to offer you, whether that's physical healing that you're needing, or it represents something emotionally or energetically that can serve you Not as like an ad placement or something, but for somebody who is interested in spending a couple bucks on their first couple of herbs, like where would you send them?
Speaker 2:Of course, if you happen to be in San Diego, the People's Market in Ocean Beach it's an organic co-op grocery store and they have a bulk herb section and everything is organic and you can just get a bag there and take your own jar and fill up as much as you need. If you just want to try something out and see how you like it, that's a really, really great way for online. I love star west botanicals or mountain rose herbs. They have a pretty big selection. You should be able to find everything you need yeah, okay, thanks.
Speaker 1:Um, so we've talked about kind of I don't know the logistics, like how how the session flows, or is there anything that we missed? When it comes to when you're working with a client or from the perspective of a listener who wants to try out or get more involved in womb healing, what can they expect, or what should they maybe expect?
Speaker 2:So there can be so much that happens during a womb healing session, and something that I've yet to bring up that I feel is so important is the process of integration. That can be sometimes more intensive than the process itself, and that's something that I feel really passionate about deeply supporting my clients through. Sometimes, in the moment, certain things can come up and as it all starts to realign and assimilate in the body and you have a few days to just feel any shifts or changes in the body, there can be a whole new set of emotions or thoughts, feelings that are coming up. So I feel integration is really, really important.
Speaker 1:And so what does that really look like when it comes to integration and this is something I'm just, you know, I feel like maybe I should even understand that more already but what does that really mean when it comes to the day-to-day or any kind of after work, if that makes sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what integration means is all of the work that you did during that time in your session, whether it's womb healing or something else that you've done with a practitioner or a big experience that you had. You are carrying forward the lessons and you are having devotion to continuing this work. So having a one-off WIM session and just like never thinking about it again and going back to all the same patterns, it's not going to do anything, maybe for a couple of days. So for integration, that is choosing to look at the things that have come up and be present with the emotions that you're feeling, be present with your body and then also working with certain practices that I help guide my clients through as tools for their integration.
Speaker 1:Okay, I see what you mean. Now this makes a lot more sense process of, yeah, really working with whatever it is emotionally or probably emotionally that during your session, and not sweeping under the rug and really making it. It's like the lifestyle shift right, it's not a band-aid to have one session, it's, um, really that's where you're doing the learning and, from there, growing oh, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:The integration can be the real work because the sessions a lot can come up. But it is that space for somebody to receive and I want somebody to be in full receivership. But then when they go back to their own lives, that's when you need to step into more self responsibility and accountability for the work that you're trying to do. And returning to the intention of why did I want to get into womb healing and what did I come here for?
Speaker 1:On that note of intention, womb healing is appropriate, you mentioned for everybody. So I'm thinking, when it comes to somebody who is pregnant or who's postpartum or who's never been pregnant before, what might be differences in how you would work with them or what they could expect? And now that I've even said that question out loud, I'm sure that every session is different for every client, or even with the same person. You know you're never going to have the same session twice. So are there trends, kind of overall?
Speaker 2:Maybe that would be helpful to open up and dig into women that I find, um, if I go talking about postpartum, something I hear a lot is, my last birth feels incomplete, um, and there is a process that I do at the very end of the session, when all of the body work is finished, called a closing of the bones ritual.
Speaker 2:So this is a body binding practice where we're using rebozos or long cloths to create these knots and these ties over the pelvic bowl, the abdomen, the legs, the head, and it just cocoons you in this really wonderful space of rebirth. And that's something that is done for a lot of postpartum women, referred to as different names in different cultures. But the Closing of the Bones practice is a big part of the session and something I do for everybody, not just my postpartum women, but a lot of women find that a womb healing session can bring them a sense of completion and closure, with a big experience like a birth, whether or not they've had birth trauma is there a particular culture that womb healing originated in, or where, like where are the origins of womb healing?
Speaker 2:So when healing is often I hear a lot about the Mayan roots of womb healing. Mayan abdominal massage is a wonderful practice that I'm seeing a lot more now, even being offered in spa settings a lot more accessible these days. But what I have learned from my research and my teachers is that womb healing is something that's been present across all cultures, all continents. It's just not always talked about as much. But tending to the wombs of other women is something that women have always done for each other In times of menstruation, such as red tent practices or postpartum midwifery.
Speaker 1:Across cultures, the massage has always been a part of that that makes sense and or fits into this puzzle timeline of the last hundred or more years of, as a society, us all collectively becoming less connected with our bodies. But that's really interesting and I at least, for me, right growing up in the united states, in whatever the midwest, now now out in California. But it's something that for me is like even relatively new right to be learning about it, maybe for the first time or maybe getting a deeper understanding of what it is and how it might fit into their life and their connection with their own body and their own womb and everything else that we've talked about today. What role does it play in conception? Is there a close link there for somebody who is wanting to conceive and having? Are your hormone levels at? But I'm really interested in this emotional, energetic side of of supporting clients in that way too. So what do you think there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the term conscious conception is something that is getting more popularized. I'm hearing more about that and it's a really big part of womb healing and how womb healing can support women who have a desire to conceive or maybe have had difficulty with their fertility. And, on the emotional, energetic side of that, it's working with the shadow work aspect of the womb, the idea that the womb can be the storehouse for unconscious fears or past traumas and pains, and how we can really look at the beliefs, the fears, the preconceived ideas that we have about our fertility journey or motherhood and how these ideas are stored in the womb. So it's working more with the shadow work, which relates to doing a deeper dive into some of these more shadowy, taboo aspects of ourselves, some of these more shadowy, taboo aspects of ourselves.
Speaker 1:Without, of course, getting into any super specific specifics, would you share with us some stories of women who you've worked with and the transformations that you've seen them go through?
Speaker 2:So there was a wonderful client that I got to work with and she had given birth to her son about three years ago and she experienced a lot of birth trauma from an emergency cesarean and also came to me with that feeling of being incomplete from that experience, yet the desire to have another baby and her and her partner had been trying and she was also working with an acupuncturist and a few other modalities and was having difficulty with that process. So she had a really really wonderful awareness already about the emotional aspect in that she was having fear around how her next birth experience would go and a lot of unresolved and unprocessed emotions about her past birth processed emotions about her past birth. So through the process of womb healing and somatic work and simply giving her the space to share her story and do a bit of verbal processing over time, in a few months she was able to conceive and of course that is just a beautiful combination of everything that she was doing with all of the other acupuncture and the herbs and whatnot.
Speaker 1:But she she really had um a lot of clarity through that shadow work process yeah, that's really beautiful and a reminder to that, like everything in life, it is multifaceted. Right, there were, like there's, always multiple inputs. It's not, like we mentioned before, there's no, there's no bandaid solution for things like this. You really have to be invested in you know what you, what you want for yourself moving forward, or what you want for your family moving forward, or whatever it is, and um with that, really put in like the energy and and thought and do the shadow work, like you mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not easy. So I I think it's wonderful. I I commend all the women who are making that choice for themselves. It's way easier to bypass all of that. It's incredibly difficult, but it's so beautiful once you've gotten to process those shadows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you think that womb healing is something like if you could wave your magic wand, would everybody be practicing this actively?
Speaker 2:I would love that. That is just my wish and my prayer and my dream. I think if more mothers could teach their daughters about this, that would be incredibly powerful, if this was information that we got to grow up knowing. So many of us, at a much later point in life, are coming to all of the wonderful holistic modalities that are out there and, of course, some women have been tapped into this through mothers and grandmothers and being in touch with their cultural roots. But, oh yeah, I think this is something for everybody, of all women, of all ages and stages, whether you are past your years of fertility, whether you have a menstrual cycle or not, whether you actually have a physical womb or not. A lot of women have had hysterectomies and I've had a client of mine ask how womb healing can fit into her life now that she doesn't have a physical womb space. But again, it's coming back to that concept of the sacral chakra, the hara, the etheric space, and we can always return to that center.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that we haven't covered in our conversation so far that the listener should know about and keep in mind as they start this practice?
Speaker 2:I think sometimes it can feel quite overwhelming. I think sometimes it can feel quite overwhelming just how deep wound healing can go and when you start to get into all of the information that's out there. There's so much of it now that's accessible to us. But returning back to the simplicity of connecting with your own body and knowing that this can look different on a day-to-day basis and even a lot of women will tune in with their room space and just say I see nothing, I feel nothing, I am getting this sense of darkness. But I think that's also very valid and that is the beginning stages of developing a relationship with something that we have been connected with for maybe our entire lives, and that nothingness is is wonderful. It's the. The womb is essentially that void. It's this infinite space of everything and nothing. It's's an oracle of our intuition. So sometimes it looks like that darkness and that's okay.
Speaker 1:That's where we can seed our intentions to create a relationship for someone who is wanting to connect more with their womb space but is like listening to us and just thinking I do not know what that means to picture what's in my womb space. Are there audio, like videos or anything that they can listen along to? Do you have any recommendations there or resources for folks?
Speaker 2:So on my website I do have a free meditation. It's a very accessible beginner practice. If you sign up for my newsletter, it's sent to you automatically and my mentor, melissa Sanger. She also has a wonderful library of different meditations and practices that are available on her website, so I would definitely direct people to her as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect. I will put a link to your newsletter in the show notes so you listeners can just go ahead and click on that real quick. How else can listeners connect with you after this, if you want to learn more?
Speaker 2:connect with you after this if you want to learn more. I am on Instagram at Maddie Jiraka and my website. My newsletter is great. I am somebody who loves more long form typing and writing, which I feel like can translate better to newsletters, so I love posting some kind of infographics and pieces of wisdom to Instagram, as well as things within my daily life that relate to this journey of womb healing. But the newsletter is great for more of that storytelling format, as well as updates about any in-person or online offerings. I've got going on.
Speaker 1:Maddie, thanks again for joining me on the podcast today. I've linked up your newsletter in the show notes so the gang here knows how to connect with you. If you enjoyed this conversation, if you got something out of this, then I would be so grateful if you would share this episode with a friend, with a sister, or if you feel called to do so, then maybe even get crazy and rate or review the podcast, click that cute little subscribe button down there. So if you want to connect with me outside of the podcast here, you can find me on Instagram at Bridget Walton. But otherwise, thanks so much for hanging with us. Thanks for listening all the way to the end, here especially, and I will see you here again on the next one.