Hot+Brave
Hosted by birth worker and activist Bianca Sprague from bebo mia Inc (https://bebomia.com/), Hot + Brave is like a hilarious conversation with your feisty friend who doesn’t give a f*ck. Brave stories, business support, hot topics and #truthbombs that will either balm your soul or light fire to your rage.
Hot+Brave
S5 E11 - Breath as Medicine: A Doula’s Guide to Embodied Healing with Jillian Marchand
In this tender and powerful episode of Hot + Brave, I’m joined by Jillian Marchand, founder of Exploring Embodiment, for a deep dive into breathwork, reproductive health, and the cultural disconnection so many of us carry in our womb space. We talk about how shame, trauma, and discomfort get stored in the body and how breath can be a gentle way home. Jillian shares accessible tools for shifting your relationship with your womb and honoring your body as sacred, even when it’s hard.
Jillian is a trauma-informed breathwork facilitator, Reiki Master, and the heart behind Exploring Embodiment. Learn more about her work at https://exploringembodiment.square.site
We also cover:
- What breathwork offers us when talk therapy falls short
- Cultural messaging that distances us from the pelvic space
- How to meet discomfort without collapsing into it
- Practical ways to reconnect with your body, even after trauma
This one’s especially for birth workers, doulas, and anyone who has felt numb, angry, or ashamed of their body. There’s healing here.
Early bird is now open for our Maternal Support Practitioner training and you can use the code BIRTHBIRD for big savings (yes, it works on payment plans). www.bebomia.com/doulatraining
I’ll also be speaking next week at the Collaborative Birth Conference in London, Ontario - if you entered our giveaway for a free virtual ticket, we’re announcing the winner later today!
And hey, bebo mia is hiring! If you love sales and birthwork and you’re passionate about reproductive justice, send us an email at info@bebomia.com to apply.
Make sure you subscribe, leave a review, and grab your headphones. Let’s breathe together.
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You are listening to the Hot and Brave podcast with Bianca Sprague from Bebo Mia, where you will hear brave stories, hot topics, and truth bombs that will either light fire to your rage or be the balm you need for your soul.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, hey, you're listening to the Hot and Brave podcast where we talk about the messy, beautiful, ragey, sacred reality of life in this current world. I'm your host, Bianca Sprague, and I'm so glad you're here. Before we dive into this powerful episode with Jillian Marchand, I've got a few updates and some real life to share with you. Because if we're going to talk about embodiment, it feels right to start with what's alive in my body right now. So this past weekend, my, I guess, technically ex-con my cousin-in-law Ashley she came to visit me from Toronto and we did so many magical things including having a lovely session with Jillian Marchand who is my guest today and Ashley and I we you know explored my little town and she went to our farmer's market and on Saturday we drove the Cabot Trail together oh my god when I say it was magic I mean it it was this cold spring air the roof down on the mustang convertible she rented uh every time we took off from a like a photo spot like a pullover of which we hit all of them we would scream mustang the sun was on our faces a little too much sun i forgot my sunscreen um and to be honest my nose got scorched the birch pollen puffed my eyes up so i look like oh my goodness you don't even want to know I don't even know they were like on fire but it was so worth it when we pulled into the driveway 12 hours later it looked like we had really been to hell and back even though we sat in a luxury vehicle driving but you know we laughed the whole time we blasted Mustang Sally and that was the only song even though I had great playlist ready because we talked about everything and we watched the cliffs and the ocean blur past I miss her already and I'm I'm just really grateful she made the trip. Sometimes joy just sneaks up on us like that. And now some exciting things happening here at Bebo Miha. Early bird registration is now open. I finally got all, all the tech changed over. Uh, so our maternal support practitioner training. Yep. That's our full spectrum doula cert program. Um, it is open for registry, uh, open for registration and, you can use the code birth bird for a huge savings and it does work on payment plans. We get that question all the time. And if you've been waiting for a sign to start your doula journey, this is it. Uh, also next weekend I will be in London Ontario for the collaborative birth conference I'll be speaking there I have a workshop I'm on a panel it's going to be a really beautiful gathering and you'll get to see Kelly and I so if you want to be in London Ontario here is also your sign also if you entered our giveaway for the free virtual ticket to attend stay tuned we're going to be announcing that winner later today and Babel Mia is hiring we are building out our grassroots Roots community-led sales team. And if you are great at connecting with folks, good at sales, passionate about birth justice and reproductive health, we want to hear from you. So shoot us an email at info at babelmia.com to apply. And another heads up, our scholarship program will be accepting applications in a couple of weeks when I get back from the conference. We need a little bit more time, but keep your eye on your inbox and our socials. If that's something you're hoping for, you'll be able to get that application in. All right, y'all. Let's talk about breath, bodies, wombs, and all this goodness. Today's episode is with the incredible Jillian Marchand, who I've talked about several times. Jillian is the founder of Exploring Embodiment, a somatic healing community where she supports folks on their self-healing journeys. She does, oh my goodness, she can do so many things. She's a Reiki master and a trauma-informed breathwork facilitator. She does cacao ceremonies which I think is really cool I haven't had the chance to do that but I've done her Reiki and her breath work and her sound baths and she brings her background in dance to all of her offerings she helps people use movement breath and sound to shift their energy and reconnect with their inner wisdom and this conversation is so tender and important in it we're going to be talking about cultural messages that keep so many of us disconnected from our wombs shame, disgust, trauma, silence and how we can use breath work to come home to ourselves. It's a really nice follow-up to the conversation I had with Anna from Sacred Birth International a couple episodes back. So I would recommend listening to both of them. They just build on each other in a really lovely way. And Jillian shares how breath can help us regulate differently to discomfort and how we can be this really gentle way to meet the parts of ourselves we've been taught to avoid. And it kind of creates this path back to the sacred. So whether you're a doula, a birth worker, or somebody in a body who has struggled to feel at home there, this episode is definitely going to speak to you. Grab those headphones, take a deep breath, let's get into it. Oh yeah, and if this show means something to you, it would mean so much to me if you could leave us a review or share it with someone who needs it. It helps other folks find us and it keeps these conversations going. All right y'all, here's my conversation with Jillian. Hey y'all, I am so excited about this conversation. I am currently sitting in a cavernous beautiful room, hence there's a bit of an echo, and Jillian and I are staring out over the ocean that is just like so stunning. You should see her beautiful house. I've done such amazing breathwork with her and after having two transformative sessions, I had to have her on the podcast to talk about this amazing work that she does, that you do. I'm like talking to you guys, talking to Jillian Here we are. Hi, Jillian. Thank you so much for being here. Hi.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm excited to be here. My first podcast ever, so I have no idea what to expect, but I'm excited to dive in. We'll be
SPEAKER_02:gentle. Honestly, y'all, right now we're like flopped on the floor looking at the ocean, hoping that the sound works out for everything. Oh, man. Okay, well, let's start at the beginning. What brought you into breathwork? Why did you want to explore this and the womb space like how did this all intersect
SPEAKER_01:I mean I think very common to a lot of people who get into this work is it starts with your own struggles with your own issues and so for me It was probably six or seven years ago. Everything was kind of coming to a head. The stress, all of the things that I was going through. I was struggling with boundary issues, with not speaking my truth, and just feeling like I was living different realities than everyone who was around me. It was like we weren't... We weren't really talking about the same things. My partner and I, we could be having an argument and we're both clearly in like two totally different realities. So that's kind of what took me here was I needed to start dealing with my shit basically. Because I kind of had this intuitive feeling like if I don't do something, I remember my heart was just like aching. And I felt like if I didn't do something that I would end up having heart issues or having a heart attack. So I reached out to a family friend who did breath work and does intuitive healing and that just like completely changed. shifted the trajectory of my life. I got into doing breath work regularly and I started doing Reiki because I was having pain. I still am in a job that doesn't feel totally aligned, but at the time I was experiencing so much pain through my arms from a shoulder injury that I just had to take a break and stop. And so with that, that's kind of what led me to Reiki. And after I did the Reiki, then I was just leaning into what would be the next best step for my own healing. And so I joined a trauma-informed breathwork facilitation program just to further my own healing, not knowing what I was getting into or what I was signing up for. I just signed up for it, made a big investment. And then I got in there and it was, we did all this training, but but we also had to do practicums. So I had to start getting all of my own clients and breathing people every day and that was when I really realized that I could translate the work that I was doing for myself into the collective and into my community so as soon as I graduated I immediately started offering my services and then I was able to integrate the Reiki as well and since then I've started incorporating other modalities I have a big background in movement so I started incorporating movement and I started incorporating sound healing and ceremonial cacao and then the last year I I felt very called to join a program working with a female physiologist who really opened the door for me to do more womb work and I've just been kind of integrating that now into my life for myself but also into my offerings because I know there's so much embodied wisdom to share. So that's kind of how I got into it. I love that.
SPEAKER_02:And I mean, so many practitioners talk about coming into helping and healing work. because of their own journey. Like I would say it's in the top, I'm going to say top two reasons why folks become birth workers is they have or witness a really empowering, incredible birth, or more often, sadly, they have or witness birth trauma or a bullshit birth that left folks, you know, in some kind of state of crisis. And so, you know, I love that it became such a personal thing for you. And then you're like, once you've got that sorted, you started sharing this gift. So as anybody who's been listening for the last three weeks to the podcast, I have been talking about Jillian in every of my episodes, every one of them, about how just profound breathwork being integrated into my work. So I've had a Jillian shout out every week. So I thought it would be just so great for us to look at breathwork and how it can support our womb health because we're in constant struggle with our wombs and it's showing with how unwell. And this is by design, y'all. I know I talk about this all the time, but this is by design to have us really disconnect from our power source for those folks with wombs and internal sex organs. One of the things I love is the name of your business, which is Exploring Embodiment. And I'm curious, what does that mean to you? Why is this like a radical act, especially for women and gender expansive folks with a uterus?
SPEAKER_01:I love that. And I think it even connects back to what you're saying before, is a lot of us have this embodied experience of something that leads us to this. So... Exploring is, for me, it's all about curiosity. Curiosity has been a really powerful tool in my own healing. I think a big part of it is when we first start going into the body, when we first start being with ourselves, there can be a lot of shame and judgment. And for me, curiosity was a really, really beautiful tool to help get through that. some of the the shame and the judgment and to just go in with this like childlike wonder this curiosity about why we are the way that we are, why we have these patterns, why our body responds in these ways. So exploring for me, that's kind of the reason. It's this exploratory process. I'm still doing all of my work alongside all of the people that I'm working with. So it's also very much a part of my own practice. And then embodiment, getting into the body, working with the body, and... The reason that I feel this is so important is because, like you said, systematically, we are disembodied. And I personally believe that the reason that we are so disembodied, the reason that the systems and the powers at be have us in a disembodied state is because the body gives us access to the soul. And so if... If we're disconnected from our body, we're disconnected from our soul. Once we all come back into a place of empowerment, of being in our bodies and connected to our intuition and to our soul, we're gonna create so much magic and new systems in the world where all of the old stuff is kind of going to become obsolete because it's created from a place of disembodiment. So that's kind of why I I worked with those two words. I also really just love alliteration.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_01:know, right?
SPEAKER_02:Hear, hear. So
SPEAKER_01:those are the words that kept coming to me. I remember going on hikes and thinking about the words, just brainstorming with some of my girlfriends. And these two words just kept coming up. So it seemed fitting.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. And I think it is... I mean, the fracture from our intuition is such... Like, we have... external forces have ultimate control over us. We're at the whim of mood and economic political environmental whims like we're just like kind of getting smashed along I'm waving from side to side because that's the only way I can like like seaweed kind of this um and you know when we're talking about birth work or even just like body autonomy um trusting our intuition is so critical but if we don't if it's been severed and we don't even know what that voice sounds like um it's so hard. We think we're making a body choice, but it's really like a head choice or a coercion choice or a stress response or a reaction instead of a response. So I think I just love your work. I adore you. I want to ask you about this idea of living with soft edges that you have, which I think is just a really cool quote. It's on your website, which I just loved. What does that look like to you when you think about that? Especially when we're thinking about our intuition and just kind of like, I'm making again this breathing hand motion. Yeah. And does it tie into reproductive health or is this just like as a general existence?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, when I think of the edges, I kind of come back to the concept of our window of tolerance, we all have a space with which we can function in, which for many of us who have experienced trauma, that window of tolerance can get very small where we are very easily shifted out of that up into like anxiety, depression, or up into anxiety, sorry, and then or down into like apathy depression so when we work with finding our edges and softening those edges it helps us to expand our window of capacity because there are some practices where they essentially get you to blow through our edges which we can have very transformative in the moment experiences, but we cannot integrate them into our daily lives. And so when we kind of approach those edges with a softness, with a gentleness, it allows us to slowly dissolve. I'm like trickling my fingers. I'm a bit French, so I speak with my hands.
SPEAKER_02:We really should have filmed this one. We should have made a video. We're just like gesturing and moving on the floor here.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it allows us to start to dissolve those edges Yes. and expand our capacity for life, which is so beautiful because when we expand our capacity to feel more, it's not just that we're able to feel more, say, anger or emotions that typically we wouldn't have allowed ourselves to feel, but it also allows us to experience more bliss and joy and freedom. So kind of the window opens in all directions. So now we get to experience life with more zest Yeah, more depth and dimension.
SPEAKER_02:I love the window of tolerance. We talk about the like hyper and hypo arousal states. Anybody in your MSP right now, this is what we've been covering with mindful care, mindful practitioners, mindful patients. And so I love that you tied that in. It's very timely because we just taught them all of that last week. So many of us are taught to relate to our room with shame. And this is kind of a continuum. of the conversation I had with Anna from Sacred Birth International of this like, you know, shame and fear and disgust, which is usually part of that first journey into our first bleed and that like really massive life change. So if anyone wants to deep dive on this topic as well, listen to the previous episode talking about this with Anna. And so what do you notice in your own practice about how people carry these cultural messages about their reproductive body?
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness. It seems to be very widespread, right? Because like you said, it's cultural. So we have this shame around the actual physical aspects of it. We have the shame around bleeds being dirty and we need to hide our tampons and our sleeves because people can't know that we're bleeding. But I think there's also something that connects to the body in the sense that we learn in our culture and the expectations of our culture is that we are supposed to perform the same way regardless of where we are in our cycle, regardless of how we feel. Don't get me started, Jillian. Right? There's these expectations. And then the issue with that is if we're not connected to our cyclical nature and realizing that, oh, okay, we actually do have these cycles and we're not meant... to perform the same way in that someone who was born a man, That is a 24-hour cycle. So a system that is created by men for men does not work for women. But if we start to apply these and we don't know our own cyclical nature, we can start to shame ourselves for not being good enough. Like, oh, well, today I'm tired, but I have to still do it. And then we start to hate our bodies. We start to hate our womb. We start to have... Resentment. Resentment towards our bleed and our womb and... Like look at all the women's health issues that we have now. It's all a sign of us being so disconnected from the truth. So disconnected from our bodies. So disconnected from our cyclical nature. And so that is what I see when I work with people and we breathe into the womb. There's so much shame and resentment there. towards their bodies in the cycle or they think well it's just a baby maker and other than that it's super fucking inconvenient am I allowed to curse on this oh my god have you met me
SPEAKER_02:yes in fact at the beginning of every episode I do a whole paragraph about like put your headphones in y'all because we talked dirty okay cool yeah no it's um to share because i promised throughout my chat with gillian i would share some of my own breathwork experience and i was feeling like such a strong presence i call it my ghost womb because she's gone but i still carry the power of her and energetics and even though that was not my intention like because i've gotten mostly right with her for being like i'm really sorry i let The system, take you from me. But I was shocked that in my first session, halfway through, that every bit of energy felt like it was an epicenter from my womb. And it wasn't even directing energy there or consciously trying to breathe into the area. And it was just this hot ball of gold in my... womb area like a below my belly button and it was so powerful and like how quickly in my second session with you that it was like automatically like my womb and my hands both started like they ignited kind of like as soon as my breathing started and I say this to everybody here because if anybody wants to explore breathwork not that you're going to have obviously the same experience as me and you're not going to have the same practitioner wherever you are in the world but I was so excited like how autonomic it almost was to once you drop in and like start kind of intentionally and powerfully breathing that it immediately kind of like ignited the center of my woman-ness and however you want to identify with your womb space. So I just thought that was really cool how it was just like such a passive thing That's the wrong word. You know what I'm talking about, though.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_02:Like, it just, like, they came, like, so linked as soon as I was doing something profound and intentional. And I didn't have to be like, all right, now let's give some love to Ghost Womb. She was like, bitch, I'm here. Thank you for breathing.
SPEAKER_01:That's so cool. And you know what may not be the same for everyone. Some people, like, you've done a lot of work on yourself. So it might be easier for you to... tap into that right away, whereas Some others may have a lot of protection around the womb. So it might be a little bit harder to connect with and access that because there's a lot of layers in the body, a lot of ways that we've learned to protect our womb.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And our womb just screams louder and louder. Like everybody here who has to go through multiple sanitary products in an hour every period and their last 14 days and fibroids. And firstly, this is not your fault. do not hear anything I'm saying is victim blaming this is the product of trauma on our body and the fact that we're in this resistance battle and she's just going to get louder however your womb identifies it's just going to get louder and louder and louder and that translates as her dis-ease translates to disease and I just think it's so powerful. Grey's friends They all started, like, Gray's always like, oh, ask my mom if you have something going wonky with your period or pain or like you don't know what to do and I'm always like get right with her like get right with your womb like fall in love with her fall in love with your with your body with your cycle with this you know whether you choose to have children or not like so much of it is we think that it's like about reproduction and so all these teens around me are like yeah but I don't want kids so like why can't I just get rid of it now and how glibly like they're just like way waiting for their hysterectomies. And, um, it's just such like, that is, I'm like, then you're, you are always going to struggle with, with your menstruation. Like if you hate, if you hate this part of you, um, or you find it, um, like that it doesn't have a function if it's not going to be housing babies instead of like how profoundly we're connected to the environment and the world that we live in through our cycles and the seasonal cycles and the moon cycles. We're magic.
SPEAKER_01:It's our magic. Absolutely. I love how simple that is. Just get right with your womb. That's really, really beautiful. It does make me sad to hear that this is the perspective that you're hearing a lot of people of individuals just wanting to get rid of it because they don't see any other use for it. That's really kind of heartbreaking to me that It is so common.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And no surprise, which is why I try to save as many folks' uteruses as possible, because no surprise, the hysterectomy, it doesn't actually alleviate anything. My pain stayed the same. Then now all my organs collapsed into my pelvic floor. There's so much. I actually do free one-on-one conversations. If anybody ever... is like can you tell me about hysterectomies like the good the bad and the ugly i'm so happy to jump on a call with you so that you can make a truly informed choice because it's a surgery we minimize and it is a very very very big deal and there's lots of things that people don't know including for example how short your vagina becomes and if you're in a hetero environment that could be like relationship destroying because they cut out your cervix most of the time and then cauterize it, which means you lose significant length. This dyke didn't really care. But these are the things that I was like, oh, wow, somebody should definitely tell you that before you have a surgery because that could really impact your relationship you have with your sexual partner. There's a lot of informed consent missing from our medical system. So much. For sure. So much. So you're doing... God's work. This is amazing. I probably have at least three calls a month where people are like, I heard you do this or I read a blog or you were interviewed somewhere and you said you'll talk for free about people's uteruses. I was like, for sure. My goal is not obviously to talk anybody in or out of a surgery but I do want you to really understand that it's the most common surgery in North America. The numbers are staggering of I think don't quote me because now I'm mixing up my facts but I think one in ten women have a hysterectomy before they're 40 I have to double check that stat somebody double check and then write to Kelly if that's wrong fact check all my birth nerds out there anyway it's very glibly just like oh we'll just take it out and it's not it's a very big deal
SPEAKER_01:yeah because the energetics are still there yeah if you like energetics is often underlying things that become physical so if we just cut things out the energetic root is still there the unprocessed emotions are still there yeah
SPEAKER_02:not
SPEAKER_01:to mention the
SPEAKER_02:endometriosis is still there
SPEAKER_01:which is the reason for most people well and how often do you see people with endometriosis going back again and again and again for more removals they need to remove more organs they need to cut more things out yeah so they're not dealing with the root cause yeah which you know at that point a lot of people are just so desperate to be out of pain yeah
SPEAKER_02:and pain is pain is terrible i lived with chronic pain and through my healing work i would i'm pain free at this point i mean like i do physical things so my body sometimes is revolts against me
SPEAKER_03:yeah
SPEAKER_02:you're doing your roller derby yeah i hit concrete at high speed so i have pain but i know why i have that pain yeah i'm sport injury pain but i don't have chronic pain um and i existed with chronic pain Um, and so sometimes I find it irritating when people say that. So I'm sorry if that made you grumpy because I know when I've lived with chronic pain, I was like, well, I'm really fucking happy for you. But I just, I say that because I didn't have any medical intervention to deal with my pain. That was prescription free. That was like, honestly, just dealing with my shit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, okay. So how can breath work as you know, speaking about healing, how can breath work be a tool to gently like reconnect with the womb or the pelvis especially folks who have a history of trauma or medical harm, because I think medical harm does so much damage that we don't talk about.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's breathing gently into our womb, using... Using breath patterns like a functional breath where we're just breathing in and out of our nose can be really helpful because that's also going to support our nervous system. But also just Breathing into our womb, being present with our womb, even physically holding our womb as we do this work and listening to her. Listening to the memories, the images that the womb wants to show us. Listening to what she needs and starting to come back into relationship because as we breathe and as we stay present, which many of us, we're so busy that we can't even listen. So when we start to drop in and we take that space and we start to flow the breath into that, not only are we working at like an emotional level, but physically we are moving lymph, we're moving blood flow, we're opening up space in our fascia to make more room for the womb to exist. Culturally, we've been conditioned a lot of the clothing is tight and we're conditioned to hold our bellies in. Not this dyke. If it's not loose with elastic waist, it doesn't exist in my closet anymore. I know, right? And for me, that's been a big transition that I've made too is getting rid of all of these tight clothing that's restricting the movement. The womb needs space to exist. And so, Once we start to open that up, like stop holding our belly in throughout the day, like not just during breath work, but during our daily lives, we can start to offer more space, like let the womb reclaim the space that she needs. And
SPEAKER_02:even when like, we're not taught with say even like, let's go with menstrual pain.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_02:I watch again I live I live with a teen and I watch her like curl into the fetal position and just get like not move for the day and just like writhing again if that feels comforting and you've got a hot water bottle and you're liking it but like it's not providing relief and it didn't it doesn't even cross her mind to say like lay on her back in a hip opening or to like dance or to like stand in the shower and like sway or like swing her hips which we know can dramatically support sensation management and so like we're we just get like rigid and more and more like tight and small as we yeah you know what I mean
SPEAKER_01:oh totally one of the practices that I really like to do when I'm on my bleed is I like to breathe into all of the different organs so I'll start and I'll breathe into my ovaries and you can use visualizations of light going into them visualizing them expanding filling with blood even honey can be really beautiful to work with almost at a homeopathic level, calling in the energy of honey and expanding, letting them fill with blood, letting them fill with lymph, with nourishment, and then I'll go into the uterine tubes. A lot of times people don't even think about the uterine tubes. And then I'll do the same with the uterus, with the cervix, and the whole womb space, the whole pelvis. And you would be amazed at how much pain will subside when you just offer this intentional, consistent breath and presence in your body.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's powerful. And some of the hypnobirthing techniques are like imagining your hand has a glove. I always picture it like a sparkly Michael Jackson glove. you can picture it however you want. And then I like run it over the areas that hurt. Like I still have my ovaries and I can tell which side I ovulate on.
SPEAKER_01:You're almost doing like a little bit of Reiki.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. Well, cause that's, there's like a lot of kind of, Reiki-esque tools in hypnobirthing. But like, you know, just really supporting. So you're doing it from your visualization, you're doing it from the breath and from the external with your hand being your own healing agent. It's amazing. Okay, I just thought of this. If folks have a history of, say, sexual abuse or incest or, you know, any kind of sexual trauma, if they jumped into breathwork, like how much... I know obviously everyone's different, but from what you know of who's providing certifications and trainings for folks, how far could a breathwork practitioner take someone if they're not also working potentially with other forms of therapy? I just want to have a little safety caveat in here that
SPEAKER_01:just popped in my head. Yeah, I mean you definitely have to be careful. You have to be able to know how to resource safety in your body. So a breathwork practitioner could teach you how to do that. So one of the big elements of breathwork practice and of energy alchemy is emotional balancing. So it's important that if you're going to breathe into an area of your body or go into emotions and trauma in your body, that you know how to also find safety in your body so that we can balance the two. So that could be just... noticing as you feel the sensation or the trauma in your body you could say okay well where can i find safety in my body And so depending on a person's trauma, if you do have the ability to kind of find pockets of safety, you could go in and work with some type of somatic practitioner. But you definitely want to make sure that you know how to resource safety in the body.
SPEAKER_02:So if somebody hasn't quite reached that point, they should probably continue with some of their other, say, talk therapy or some other work until
SPEAKER_01:they've got to a place? Well, I would do them at the same time. Make sure that you also have a place to diet. yeah but then also just being very transparent and open with who you're working with about where you're at and how how these things have impacted you what your current tolerance is how how it affects you when you go into it so that they can have a more educated perspective and like well-rounded perspective of how to support you so when i'm working with individuals who have a lot of trauma that's very heavy and and it takes them like pretty and like into a lot of darkness when they go into it is i try to i try to make sure that the patterns that i'm going to use the way that we're going to breathe is very, very intentional. So it has to really support the nervous system. Like I'm not gonna take somebody who has a lot of unprocessed sexual trauma into more intense breath patterns. It's going to be very, very gentle. Like maybe where we breathe in through the nose and we breathe out really, really slowly. Because by lengthening that exhale, it's going to bring us into the rest and digest state of our nervous system. Whereas somebody like you, for example, who has more experience and has the ability to resource, we can go into more activating breath patterns in your journey because I know that you have the ability to hold that and to resource from within. So it's really about the breath patterns that you're using, the pacing and the depth and the way that you're breathing and that can really help.
SPEAKER_02:That makes sense. I just wanted to always offer a little bit of safety precautions for folks before they jump into something that they may or may not be ready.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think a big part of it too is there are a lot of breathwork practitioners and not everyone has done trauma-informed training. So maybe just... making sure that the person that you're working with especially if you do have a lot of unprocessed trauma is making sure that you're working with someone who is trained specifically to work with trauma so that they're not just guiding you through an activating holotropic breathwork experience because that wouldn't be supportive for everyone
SPEAKER_02:yeah That's a good point. It might
SPEAKER_01:be too much.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. What would be a couple questions that you would recommend they ask a practitioner before working with them to draw out that information without necessarily disclosing their history of sexual trauma or physical trauma?
SPEAKER_01:That's a good question. I would ask what their training was, and it wouldn't hurt to just ask, do they have experience in working with this particular issue? I mean, you don't necessarily have to out yourself by saying that, but I do think it's important to... ask directly if they have experience with that because if they don't if they're not comfortable or maybe they don't have their own embodied experience or experience in working with somebody else they just may not be in a position to hold you through that experience
SPEAKER_02:yeah also check out how they talk and like what they post about on their social media check out their websites um like for example if somebody has said one time on their site that they work with um like celebrating all bodies but you go through their channel and everything is like thin and able-bodied then they're probably not going to be able to support you if you say live with a disability or live in a bigger body and so like people will tell you more about themselves and what they you know the representation of the information that they're sharing so if they don't share using trauma-informed language or trauma-informed issues that's that's also probably yeah
SPEAKER_01:yeah I mean we have to use their own discernment and kind of feeling it, which I know, you know, for everyone, depending on where you are, you may, you may not have that level of discernment yet to kind of feel out someone's energy and that, but, but yeah, checking out all of the resources and a lot of people do offer like complimentary calls where you can feel it out in, in a zoom call or something like that, where you can Get a better sense. Because a lot of, usually our bodies know, right? We get in someone else's energy and we can feel like, is this a fit or are we like, I'm pushing my fist together right now.
SPEAKER_02:Another gesture
SPEAKER_01:that I wish you could see.
SPEAKER_02:We're signing the whole podcast. So there you go, y'all. Oh man. Could you very briefly walk us through a simple breath practice or visualization that supports healing or reconnecting with the womb? Like so people can like get their head around what does this look like?
SPEAKER_01:Do you mean like a guided practice like right now? Well, you don't have to do it. Just to explain what you could do. Yeah. Yeah. So I would go into what I suggested before about breathing into the different organs. And that doesn't matter if you don't like if you've had any organs removed that's totally fine your body still has the energetic imprint so you can breathe into it but just breathing in and out through only your nose slowly maybe it's five or six counts in and out almost like an ocean breath if you're familiar with yoga like an ujjayi breath you can have a little bit of sound to it But as you breathe in, you wanna visualize your breath going into your organs. You could do your whole womb at once, or you could do different parts of the womb. But just breathing, sending your breath and your intention there, and then when you exhale, softening the edges. Because each inhale, we're gonna kind of reach out and feel those edges, and then we just soften the edges and let it re-land in the body. And how are people, does
SPEAKER_02:it matter the position they are? Do people benefit more from lying down? Props, what could people expect?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you want to be comfortable. So I would... use as many props as you need to feel comfortable. Laying on your back can be nice, just with your knees up, feet flat, because then you're softening and bringing the tissues together in the belly and the womb space where it's not stretched out, if that makes sense. So that will help to create some more... space for movement i guess but really you can use any like yoga props any bolsters that help you feel comfortable the main thing is you want to be comfortable doing it some people could even do it uh almost in a reverse position, kind of like a puppy pose, if you think of yoga positions. And that pose is also really good because a lot of us have retroverted uteruses. They say it's common, normal, whatever you want to say in the medical system, but a lot of our uteruses are completely out of alignment. They're back, they're towards the rectum, not where they're supposed to be. And so sometimes doing those inverse positions and just taking some some breaths and softening can support the body in softening a little bit closer to its natural alignment
SPEAKER_02:yeah your favorite restorative yoga pose man I love restorative yoga one of our students was a restorative yoga teacher and so as a thank you after her graduation she gifted me four sessions with her man it's like a notch above a nap but in like the best way like so many props and like so comfortable um so you know get under your blanket and lie somewhere that feels really good um you don't have to be like sitting or in kind of like any you want to be warm you want to be warm
SPEAKER_01:and comfortable blanket
SPEAKER_02:yeah yeah um I was laughing to Jillian because my hands and arms go numb when I do breath work and I was trying to pull the blanket up but I couldn't feel the fabric so I to just like using my forearms, like drag it up my torso
SPEAKER_01:because I couldn't feel my hands and arms at all. Yeah, the physical body can kind of dissolve a little bit when we're doing breath work to where you can only feel the energetic. So using our physical body can become very bizarre and we can feel almost like our... Like we can't feel our hands or we can feel them, but we feel the energy of them. So we don't actually feel our fingers.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. They were just, they were like, not like they didn't exist. They were just like a buzzy sparkly feeling at the end of my hand or my arms. Um, what is something you wish every doula or body worker or like helper healer, um, anybody that's like either has or supporting folks with a womb, like, what do you want them to know about the power of breath?
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. I just want them to use it. Like our breath is our life force energy. It's a way to connect in with everything. It helps us on a physical level. It helps us on an emotional level, an energetic level, a spiritual level. So I think it's just to start using it. It's such a powerful tool and it's always available to us. It's available to everyone. Like, everyone can breathe. Well, everyone should be breathing if we're... If you're listening, you're breathing. Everyone can breathe intentionally.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it can be so supportive for anyone doing birth work and doulas. I mean, how often do you see people in the... in the birth rooms and they're trying to use intentional breathing. But of course, it works a lot better if you practice these things before. Practice
SPEAKER_02:makes permanent. And ironically, our traditional... traditional, not traditional as in like ancestral, but like what's happening in practice-based care is the complete cutting off of the breath in birth. So most of the time we're in these positions that are scientifically proven, not to mention like lacking safety and they're uncomfortable, but like this jamming your knees to your chest and holding your breath while pushing down this Valsalva maneuver or purple pushing, which we talked about. talk about, um, it's, you know, the, they say it's 10 seconds, but they'll like take a deep breath in. They're like, okay, mama, push, push one. That's so good. Hold that. Hold that. Hold that to keep going. No, no, no. Three. And I'm like, yo, we're at 45 actual seconds. And if that birthing person isn't breathing, guess who else isn't breathing baby. And so I'm just like, it seems so counterintuitive to be like, Stop breathing. And so, you know, really getting to know how you feel when you breathe. I nudge my friends all the time and I'm like, you didn't, you're not breathing. Like if we're talking or they're feeling stressed, I'll be like, yo, I haven't heard you breathe next to me in like 15 seconds. And they'll be like, oh yeah, I have multiple friends. They're like, oh yeah, I forgot. I forgot to breathe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's so common, right? And the cool thing about our breath is our breath is directly connected to the way that we're feeling, to our emotional experience. So there are different breath patterns. You'll start to notice this if you observe yourself throughout the day, is you breathe differently through each emotion that you have. And so... By shifting our breath and working with our breath, we can alter our experience. So holding the breath is... I mean, there are times, as you've experienced, the breath holds. Oh my God, it's so good! When they can be very, very beautiful. And I mean, maybe you know more about this, but I do feel if we have to push to that level, level of all of the straining that you see with traditional birth, like maybe we're just not ready yet for baby to come out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're supposed to breathe our babies down because it happens on its own. Like we don't actually need to push.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a function, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, folks in a coma will birth a baby. Wow. They're just breathing down. So like you don't even have to be conscious to... give birth. It's an autonomic function and all of our muscle groups work in unison to continue to contract and then contract that baby right on out. And so, yes, of course, all of it is signs of rushing and trying to get it over with faster. Now, this is something we could talk about all day, but I want people to be able to find you and connect with you. We're going to have links in the show notes, but what are some of the things that people can do in real life with you as well as virtually?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I used to do some things virtually and I've just been having issues with Zoom. So I canceled my Zoom subscription. So right now, all of the stuff that I'm doing is in person in Annie Ganesh. I do lots of private breath work, Reiki treatment, sound healing, and then we have tons of community healing. I really feel like Having community is what we are missing. And it's a really important piece to a lot of our healing journeys to be witnessed and held in community. So we do a lot of different community sessions as well. And we try to do them in like fun, different ways. Some of them we incorporate animals. So we do Reiki on participants as they get to hang out and cuddle puppies or lambs or goats and, you know, Cute, cute, cute. Yeah, right? So it's like healing on so many levels. But I do a lot of that and then I book like private retreats and that. Right now I'm not virtual at all. I won't be in the future. If
SPEAKER_02:someone wants to fly you to them, will you go? Probably. Great. So if anyone wants to fly her, she's available.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I want to go somewhere hot.
SPEAKER_02:So if anyone listening, preferably like maybe Bali or like I wouldn't be mad at Costa
SPEAKER_01:Rica. Yeah, I would love to. That is something that I plan to do eventually is... is traveling and doing retreats in warm places, going on deep dive retreats. Yes, please. I've signed up already.
SPEAKER_02:I'm number one on your sign-up list. I'll connect with all the ways that you can check out Jillian, and if you guys want to chat with her, she'll have her website, her email, and her socials there. Highly recommend. Jillian, thank you for being on the podcast. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:thank you so much for wanting to bring me here. I didn't know that you talked about me on other ones I'm going to have to go look at them I'm so curious
SPEAKER_02:I always do my like what's happened over the week and oh okay beautiful yeah and every time I was like don't worry she's coming up in a few weeks it's coming up in an episode so I highly encourage both practitioners and folks who might be going through their own reproductive journeys right now see what's available in your community for breath work and go interview them so you can have them on your resource page if there's somebody you fall in love with please send them over to our free doula directory and those are all practitioners that doulas have vetted that say like they're great and it's really awesome to have just one big database Jillian I'll have to make sure you're on it and so you can always send them over so that other people that might live in I don't know wherever you are Baltimore or I don't know I always pick Baltimore anywhere in the world They can join that free directory there on the homepage. Thank you so much, Jillian. And thank you everyone for listening. And I will see you next week in Hot and Brave.
SPEAKER_00:Want to keep hanging out? We have created a free mindset mini course to help change makers and birth workers find bliss in their business. You're not in this alone. Let's build together. Head to www.babomia.com slash bib to grab your space and a free retreat. Once again, go to www.babomia.com slash bib to grab your spot. We will see you next time on the Hot and Brave podcast.
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