Episode 5: Birth, the Nervous System and Somatic Healing with Psychotherapist Anna Siebert

Anna Siebert (somawomenswellbeing.com.au) is a somatic psychotherapist, former doula and childbirth educator, and the founder of Soma Women’s Wellbeing in Canberra. She has spent decades working at the intersection of trauma, the nervous system and women’s health.

Anna is a woman who has sat inside the system, been failed by it in ways that should not happen, and built something extraordinary in response. 

Her three births are all incredible and all taught her something deep. The first ended in birth trauma and postpartum psychosis. The second, a planned home birth, ended with a torn pelvis following an intervention she did not consent to. The third, a forty minute labour during COVID lockdown, she caught herself. 

We cover a lot of ground in this episode. We talk about what the nervous system actually does during birth, and why the maternity system as it currently exists is fundamentally designed against women’s physiological needs. Bright lights, strangers, direct questions, the smell of a hospital all trigger a threat response that slows labour, diverts blood away from the uterus and puts both mother and baby under physiological stress. 

We talk about why women go along with things they did not want, and why they feel shame about it afterwards. Anna explains what actually happens in a female threat response, shaped by estrogen, oxytocin and decades of social conditioning, and why compliance in the birth room is not weakness, it is a nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do when safety feels threatened.

We talk about what birth trauma actually is. Not the story your mind tells about what happened, but the incomplete response your body is still trying to finish — sometimes years later. Anna explains why talk therapy has limits when it comes to trauma that lives below the level of language, and what somatic therapy can reach that thinking alone cannot. She describes a concept know  as spontaneous cognitive reappraisal, the shift in meaning that emerges naturally from the body when trauma is resolved rather than talked around.

And we talk about why Anna built Soma. A response to something she kept seeing in her therapy room: women who could not get well because what they actually needed was not another one-on-one session. They needed community. Safe ways to move their bodies. A place to land. Soma is that place — a women’s wellbeing centre in Canberra offering yoga, Pilates, somatic therapy, sound healing, acupuncture, massage and women’s circles, with community care places available for women who cannot afford full fees.

What this episode covers:

• What is somatic therapy
• Nervous system and birth
• Why women comply in birth 
• Birth trauma in the body
• Postpartum psychosis recovery
• Polyvagal theory pregnancy

CONNECT WITH ANNA

somawomenswellbeing.com.au

Instagram: @somawellbeing_cbr

Soma Women’s Wellbeing is located in Canberra. Yoga, Pilates, sound healing, somatic therapy, acupuncture, massage and women’s circles. Community care places available for those who cannot afford full fees.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Somatic Experiencing: a body-based trauma therapy developed by Dr Peter Levine
• Polyvagal Theory: the science of the social engagement system and nervous system regulation
• Ehlers Danlos Syndrome: a connective tissue disorder affecting joints and connective tissue
• Spontaneous cognitive reappraisal: the meaning-making shift that follows trauma resolution in somatic work
• Soma Women’s Wellbeing Winter Roots programme: community donations to Beryl House supporting women experiencing housing insecurity

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the Women Who Guided Me podcast. I've met some unbelievable women along the way, and I can't let them go. I don't want to let them go. Like, I want to keep talking to them and I want to put their voices out there. And that is something that's really beautiful about the journey is you actually get to grow your village of wise women before the babies here. And I think I think that's a really nice experience. Hello everyone. My guest today is Anna Siebert, a somatic psychotherapist, registered counsellor, former dualer, and the founder and owner of Soma Women's Wellbeing here in Canberra. So Soma is a multidisciplinary women's health centre built on the belief that community, movement, and belonging are not optional extras for healing. They are actually the foundation. And Anna has spent many years working at the intersection of trauma, the nervous system, and women's health. And what she's built at Soma reflects everything she has learnt along the way. You can find Anna at Soma Women's Wellbeing.com.au. I will link everything in the show notes. Anna was drawn to this work through her three transformational births. The first was traumatic, the second, orgasmic, but ending in injury. The third one, she caught her baby herself during COVID, and each one drew her deeper into understanding what women's bodies are capable of and what the system too often gets in the way of. In this conversation, we go deep into the nervous system and what it actually does in birth. Anna explains why calm is not always what you want or why appearing calm isn't always calm. Why being under threat in birth literally reduces blood flow to your baby, and why women so often go along with things they didn't want to and then spend years feeling ashamed about it. She also shares how the female nervous system responds to social threat in ways that are rarely talked about and almost never taught in birth preparation. Anna is clear that with the right preparation, women can build the nervous system capacity they need to meet birth. She talks about what that actually looks like, the difference between strength and softness, what it means to have access to all parts of your autonomic responses, and why movement practice, community, and embodied birth preparation are not optional extras but the foundation. Before we begin this episode, I would like to acknowledge the Nanawal people as the traditional custodians of the land on which I am talking to you from today and pay my respect to elders past and present. I honour the enduring wisdom and cultural practices of First Nations peoples whose knowledge of birth, nurturing, and community care has been shared across generations. All right, let's get into it. Alright, everyone, welcome to another episode. I'm joined by Anna Stebert, who is the owner of Soma Women's Wellbeing and a psychotherapist. Anna, can we start off by asking you what drew you to this work, the birth work and the somatic work?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I mean, I think it was really I'd always had an interest in maternal health. So even when I was working in public health, or even when I used to have a big dream of becoming an obstetrician, that fell by the wayside pretty quickly when I realized that obstetrics was not going to be what I imagined it would be. And I worked in public health and international development for a little while and had this really keen interest in maternal health. And I don't really know where it came from. I think it had just always been there. And then when I became pregnant for the first time, suddenly being confronted with the system was an experience I hadn't been prepared for. And I became aware around 25 weeks pregnant that the hospital had misdiagnosed me with a condition that I don't have and firmly believed that both me and my baby were in danger. And I kind of threw myself into all right, I've got to understand how this all really works. And I remember maybe around I was in a an online mum's group for babies due October 2012. And as we, you know, somebody was like, I'm freaking out, I don't think I can do this. And I just spent all of this time like supporting her and you know, giving her affirmations and whatever, and helping to unpack what was going on in this like group type, this Facebook group. And somebody was like, Anna, you should be a doula, which had never really crossed my mind before. And then after the experience of my first birth, which was equal parts, ecstatic, incredible, beautifully transformative. Like it was a an experience I was not prepared for. I mean, I was very prepared for it, but I didn't expect it to happen. The and then contrasting that with the treatment I received at the hospital. Um, and I knew that we could do birth differently. And I wanted to be a part of that. So that kind of got me that's how I started in in the birth world and in initially as a childbirth educator and then as a dualer. Um, and then it became really obvious that the some of the traumas that my women were experiencing actually stemmed much further back. Um and so that's when I kind of branched into uh the psychotherapy and counseling side of things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Yeah, awesome. And how are your subsequent births after your first?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yeah. The second one was a home birth. Um and in Adelaide where I was birthing, it's it's act it was at the time pretty easy to get a home birth, a publicly funded home birth for low-risk women, which I was not so easy for anyone else, but all three tertiary hospitals offered publicly funded home births through the birth center. Um and I called up a different hospital. They're very heavily zoned based on where you live. And I said, if I have to go back to that other hospital, I'm gonna free birth. So I like I really need to ship me into the law program. And it turns out my husband's cousin who worked there at the time, she's a midwife, she had already put my name down in the on the program. Yeah. So I went in for my first antenatal, saw the head obstetrician, and he said, Wow, what a straightforward, amazing first birth you had. Have you considered a home birth? And I said, I have, and I really want one. He said, Great, that's a good you're a really good candidate for home birth. And it was a it was a pretty amazing experience. It was actually orgasmic. Definitely didn't expect that one coming. Very fast birth. It was only three hours. Whoa. Yeah. But we still had this horrible experience where my beautiful midwife, with all of her good intentions, just as my baby was crowning, she was really getting past the pubic bone. The I stood up, which I now know is how my body likes to give birth. I stood up for my first birth, stood up for the third birth, and there was this kind of like power that rose through my leg muscles and just like stood me up. I wasn't conscious. And the midwife must have been scared that I would drop her in the pool or drop her on the ground. I don't, I don't really know. She's a very good, skilled midwife with really good intentions. So I imagine that she was doing it out of like care and unit protection. And she put her hands on my shoulders and she just pushed me right down. And as a person with a connective tissue disorder, um called Aylers Dan Loss syndrome, I am too flexible in my joints at the best of times. And that combined with where my baby was actually tore my pelvis. Um catty did it quite badly. And I didn't know this, like, I just remember this like line like cracking, which I now know was like representative of what was happening in my pelvis. Um and I remember her saying, You have to get your breathing back, you were doing so well. I can't, because the pelvis you couldn't. So immense. And I had to lie, I had to lie back to do the last, you know, little bit. She came out pretty quickly after that. Um and then I mean, I'm sitting there waiting for her to breathe, which can take a while with water births. The it's the breath on the face that kind of takes gets the baby to take their first breath. I saw the air in their face. And I was just about to blow on her when the midwife freaked out and grabbed the oxygen thing, and like anyway, she screamed, and it was it was not a really nice experience. Um and the the intensity of that pelvic tearing and it being done to me, like it wasn't something that just really happened as part of the birth. Yeah. Again, I was just sitting there going, what is like, how did this happen? Everything was so amazing. And with lots of reflection, I realized that the system that we're in is not, does not allow space for trust. And that's not to say that all births go without complication. That's just not true. Even in the most supportive, like best actual best practice birth communities, we have C-section rates of about three percent, three to four percent. It never gets seems to get below that in all risk models, that is. Where they really believe in birth and have set the conditions up to support physiological birth and appropriate birth preparation. Those communities that never really seems to get below three, three to four percent um of C-section. So there are hands-down mums and babies that would not be making it if it weren't for C-sectionals. And then in those communities, we have up to sort of like another five to seven percent of interventions required to support a SAPOR. Um, and so it's not to say by any stretch of the imagination that having an awareness of risk is unimportant. But the risk perception that we have and the inability to allow women to do what they need to do, I think I realized how pervasive that was in a beautiful MGP with incredible midwives who you know really did have the best of intentions and were very scared to even see that that was playing out in that in that situation. Yeah, it was it really, it really hit me. Yeah, as this kind of reflection on the new year that we have by birthing in. And then my third birth, much, much later, surprise pregnancy in 2020, which was quite a time to be pregnant. Yeah, um, I knew, I just knew it was going to be a fast birth. I I had I have very good intuition when it comes to my body and birthing. In my first birth with no pri-birth experience, I knew that I was about to give birth. Um, and the midwife that we had at the hospital, you know, didn't believe me, was actually real rude and gave me a very aggressive DE and was like, oh yeah, you're about to have this body boost. You're right. In my second birth, as like a play, because you know, my midwife and I had a great relationship. She was like, you know, how dilated T Tim PR? And I was like, I think I'm three cent we're like woman.

unknown 11:35

How did you know?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Um and um and yeah, with this last baby, I just knew she was coming fast. And you know, there's also the pattern, the first labor was only six hours, second one was only three, this one, you know, I just I just knew it. And I remember my mid midwife saying, Yeah, you might you never know. You can't predict these things. Just because your other ones were fast doesn't mean this one would be fast. And um initially, midwives were allowed to, you know, you could kind of get around the fact that they're not allowed to attend women in the birth center at home by if they were between you and the hospital, you could go and check on them. And so we kind of had this test plan that she could just make sure that I was between her and the birth center to be able to come and check on me because, you know, I was very short that I was not gonna make it. And then so many women were accidentally on purpose not going to a hospital during COVID that they made a rule that the midwives are not allowed to do with something. And so at about 36 weeks, yeah, she said to me, There's no way that I can come. And I said, Well, what am I gonna do? She says, Well, you're just gonna have to hope to make it. And I remember thinking, that's that's actually not a thing. I'm not going to naked I'm low. Um, and so I had to kind of plan for this like reluctant pre-birth with every intention of getting to the hospital at some point if I needed it, but just knowing we should have gone too fast, and she did. It was a 40-minute labor, and we lived at the time like 38 minutes from the hospital. Um, and so by the time I'd collected everything and got into the car, I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

So did your husband deliver? I did. You did.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

I did. I caught her myself. That's that's awesome. Actually, in hindsight, in hindsight, it was actually a really good thing that we were at home because I did have another connective tissue kind of issue. And being so stretchy and being my third, and I had been advised by many professionals not to have a third baby because of all the complications that happen with people with my condition. And there are actually photos of it of me in labor because here's the like other amazing thing. I had this woman who wanted to get into birth photography and this really lovely, highly intuitive person. And she called me at 10:30 the night before and said, I know it's really late, but I've just made a cheesecake and I wanted to know if you guys are awake and want some. 10:30 at night. Yeah. I'm like, sure, I'm wide awake. I'm not sleeping tonight, I think. And so she came down and I didn't know that she'd woken up that morning knowing that the baby would be born. And so she was so confused that by 10:30 she hadn't heard anything that she just didn't. So she came over and she's sitting there. So she, you know, we've got these photos of me and Labor. Um and you can actually see that her bottom is well below my pubic bone. Yeah. Which is, you know, a problem in terms of like the baby coming out. And so what started to happen was my pelvis started to dislocate. And the pain of that was so excruciating, I actually left my body. And before I left my body, I remember having this panic of like, you need an epidural, you need a C-section, this is bad, something's really wrong. And then I was like on the ceiling, completely dissociated. And then there was this other part of me that was like, What are you doing? Get down from there, get in your body. No one's coming to save you, you're gonna have to figure it out. Yeah. And as I really felt into my body, I could feel the dislocation and that like the tearing of all the fibers. And yeah, I did know what to do with all of you know the births that I'd attended and my knowledge of the anatomy and how this is all functioning. And I laced my fingers together and I used counterpressure to gently guide her up and over and back into the pelvic brim. Yeah. Once she was kind of safely inside and that whole process had ended, the pain just disappeared and I collapsed to the floor for a little bit of a pause before, yeah, five very powerful contractions and she was out. But had I been in hospital, I know from my conditioning, I know from that altered state that we get into at that point where, you know, we're kind of in that flow state, and there's not necessarily that enough hypervigilance, which is good. There's not necessarily enough of that kind of alertness to be checking out what's wrong. That's not the state, the the brain state that we're in at that part of labor. So I would have absolutely called out to the midwife and said, This hurts. And she would have responded with, yes, you're having a baby. Yeah. And it would have been very difficult for me to explain to her what was happening, and I could have ended up with a very, very bad injury because it was all happening so fast. So if I hadn't been able to get on it really quickly. Yeah. So yeah, really powerful. All three births, very powerful, different ways. None of them went super smoothly. All of them had incredible positive aspects to them, and all of them had some major challenges. And I think that's really important for a lot of people to know that even on textbook, like on paper, all my births are textbook. It's not necessarily smoke-friendly.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, you totally own that earth. Like, I what's like remarkable to me is throughout the whole process you were really connected with your inner wisdom and what your body was doing, and it was only because of external pressures that you were moved into a space that wasn't comfortable. How does a woman like maintain that sense of self and connection with her body when there's so many different external influences, whether that's her midwife, doctors, even her partner, how can she like connect with that sense of self?

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I didn't in the first two births completely. The first one almost not at all. And that was catastrophic for me mentally. I ended up with psychosis from the trauma that I had on that earth. Yeah. And, you know, as like a continuation of that story, when I reached out for help for both my DP and in Adelaide, it's we call them cast nurses, not match nurses. I was completely dismissed and yeah, told that no, you just need more sleep, which was probably true.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

But nonetheless, a bit more complex than that.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, yeah. Nonetheless, I was not in a good place and really desperately needed some professional help, but I'm one of the lucky ones that got through. In that first birth, I completely put myself in the hands of the midwife and the team, and it it didn't go very well. The my experience in hospital was was not great. Um and I didn't know at the time how traumatized I was as a person. I didn't know how much healing I had to do. I didn't realize that I'd had such massive experiences. Some of the ex some of my traumatic experiences from my history I I didn't yet have access to. Like they know they were really neatly tucked away. And other ones I didn't know were trauma. That was just normal for me. Um and so I didn't have a very intact sense of self. In fact, I would probably argue I didn't really have much of a sense of self when I gave birth the first time. Um and so there wasn't really anything for me to kind of stand in. I didn't have an internal sense of strength. I knew I could survive things, but that didn't translate to me feeling like I had any agency. I certainly didn't have a voice. Um yeah. And the second birth, I'd done a lot of healing. I knew in the first birth, I knew that I needed to prepare physically, and then we had done that really well. I had no real idea about the emotional, what was spiritual preparation. Second birth, I'd done some emotional healing, um, but I hadn't found a somatic practitioner for my own healing yet. Um, I was beginning to study somatics by this point. And yeah, even then I didn't have that ability to, you know, when that when my really lovely midwife put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down, I didn't have the strength or the awareness or sense of of my own body to be able to stand back up and say, no, this is what I need. I I really want to stand up. I just trusted that she's better than me.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

I think most women would would be in that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah, that's what I've seen too, it as much as a dollar. And I think we're conditioned, we're really conditioned to do this, to outsource our knowing, outsource our our you know, anger is a really big having healthy access to your anger is a really important part of having a sense of self. And a lot of women are denied anger from a very young age. Yeah, so there's a there's so many moving parts to to being able to have that sense of self. And by the time I had the third baby, I knew, but that didn't mean it wasn't distressing when my midwife was telling me that I had no choice but to prove it. Even though absolutely there was a part of me, if I'm honest, there was absolutely a part of me that just wanted to prove it. That just thought, you know, all the way through like how good would it be if I'm like all by myself because I know what I want and I don't want any other influences out there. But there was also a part of me that does know that things can go wrong in birth, and I wanted to have access to that support should the need arise. But you know, I think I think all of the work that I'd done, if I'd been in this situation for births one and two, I don't think I would have had the strength to just stand firm and know that the baby was coming and that I could do this, and uh that I was going to know what I needed when the time came. Um I probably would have just like got in the hospital and then I would have been giving birth on the side of the road and you know the roads to that hospital are either 80 or 100 kilometers an hour from our house. Yeah, not safe.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

No. Do you think you would have learned those things about yourself and had that evolution if you didn't give birth?

SPEAKER_00 21:57

I I don't not in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

No. Oh. This is the opportunity that birth presents.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And in terms of birth preparation, you've mentioned preparing for b your first birth by understanding how birth works, maybe like in an intellectual way. But what is it wh how do you think a woman could prepare for birth in a really intentional way that connects with like what her values are and what her what she really wants as an outcome?

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Well, the the short answer is it depends.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Which is a bit unhelpful because but I mean the honest reality is that that every woman is different and there's not a right way to prepare. I wish there was. That would really make things a lot easier, but just like we can't convey about birth itself. We can't convey about preparing for birth. We absolutely need to understand the role of the nervous system in birth. Having access to all parts of our autonomic responses and having the ability to regulate through them. And regulate does not mean calm, right? We're not looking a calm birth is not a good birth. For some women, a calm birth means a very dissociative birth. Um, a quiet birth also is not necessarily a good birth. For some people, yeah, totally that's true for them. And for some women, this really primal, yelling, like powerful roar, that last birth, the lot those five pushing contractions, which by the way, I had no tearing, no grazing, like nothing. Five contractions and it was out. And I was roaring like an animal, holding on to my husband's jumper and just like roaring into his chest. And it was so powerful. And having been in somatics for so long by that point, and having done so much of my own work, I had this little like this little analysis moment pop up as this was happening. I thought, this is the fight response. And um, and yeah, that's when I like it was the final piece into why Western women have so much trouble birthing. And it's it's because we don't have the capacity to regulate through us our sympathetic nervous system. A lot of us don't have available enough of the boundary setting and the aliveness and the warness and the power that comes with the sympathetic nervous system. And partly that's trauma, partly that's conditioning, partly it's the kind of education we get around the sympathetic nervous system. We're told that it's our fight or flight system, which is just not true. Fight or flight can be one part of it in under certain circumstances, but it's not the whole of our sympathetic response. And so, yeah, we want to have aspect, we want to have access, sorry, to a healthy functioning parasympathetic nervous system and a healthy functioning sympathetic, and we want to have real strong connection to our social engagement system. Um and uh yeah, that's a that's a huge part of it. Another thing is we want to have good strong muscles. Um most of us in the West spend our life sitting down at work, but we don't have good strong birthing muscles, which are like you know, squashing muscles. There was this one doctor in Japan who also recognised this kind of pattern. And so as part of his birth preparation, he had a couple of traditional Japanese huts like transferred to uh next to the hospital, and all the women had to like chop wood and they had to like clean by hand and they had to like fix things, and it wasn't because he was using them for slave labor, it's because he recognized that the traditional movements that we've always done in life are the same muscles we need for birthing. And he said that that made a a really strong impact in how easily their bodies could birth. We tend to associate being strong for birth with like repetitive gym movements, which is not necessarily a strong moving body, and we need to move and birth.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yeah, I've I've spoken to Lo Matthias about this, who's an internal pelvic health specialist. I think a lot of people do associate the strength of birth with that, like I've got to do gym, I've got to do Pilates, which can be helpful, like no shit. But another aspect of that is like, yeah, the squat strength and but also softening.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Like uh and learning because we're in a culture where like being hardened to life is like value to like being strong, fit, but in order to like part of the surrendering process in birth is like a softening.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

And I think that gets missed a bit in our culture.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

In a healthy functioning nervous system, we have readiness for something to happen. We do the thing, we finish the thing, and then we come down and we have this like letting go process, a softening process that leads us into rest. And then we want readiness for like the cycle to continue. And this coming down, the softening, the letting go, the relaxing. Um a lot of women are too tense, they're so braced, and there are many really good reasons why this is the case. But what we what we want is to be able to engage and disengage, and you know, that's also that's also nervous system. We want to be able to come on and move, and we want to be able to let go on and relax.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah. And we need to have access to all of these responses in both safety and danger. Um, so we, you know, can do what we need to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah. That's that's that's really well said. Into if someone's listening to this and they're like just found out that they're pregnant and they're like, oh my god, I have to like learn about my nervous system and like what could they practically do in like nine months?

SPEAKER_00 28:06

I mean, there there is a lot you can do.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Um see a somatic therapist.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Definitely, definitely see a somatic therapist is really helpful. But even somatic therapy, like it's becoming such a hot topic and it's becoming so well known, but it doesn't really have any regulation in terms of like what is somatic therapy. And some people call themselves somatic therapists because they ask people where they feel things in their body. So having somatic therapy sessions, definitely very helpful. Birth preparation that's very embodied, that's going to naturally start to teach you about your like on-off system. Learning to explore what aliveness feels like, learning how to respond to movement, learning what want to move feels like, and being able to do something, and then you know, really following that pattern, anything that allows you to have readiness, move and do something, find completion and safety, rest relax, find readiness again is gonna be teaching you intuitively about your nervous system. If you if you can't access readiness, right, you just like have to force yourself to do things all the time, you never feel ready for something, well then that's where the missing piece is. If you can't go, well then for you that's that's the missing piece. If you can't find completion again, you know what I mean? So the every always has that has this um really important role in keeping us well and balanced. And um, yeah, wherever the bits that are missing, that's what we need to kind of put in, and the bits that are working, we want to enhance them as much as we can.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

So it's like a a body awareness in the everyday, but also potentially finding a movement practice that's right for you, whether that's yoga, dance.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

As a way to connect with those sensations as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

And what's really great about a yoga or a a dance practice, if you find it in a community, is that you're also building that social engagement system. And that's critical for having really good um like regulation through the different systems. Maybe uh should I explain a little bit about how the systems work and then that Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

I mean, oh my god, we could go for another hour, but uh just do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Just I'll try and keep it for like five minutes. Um we we know we know about fight or flight, and we know about rational digest, and people say, Oh yeah, sympathetic fight or flight, and your parasympathetic is retina digest. But actually, our sympathetic nervous system is our moving nervous system. It gets us going, it gets things done. And that can be in safety or danger. And in danger, we have various different responses, some of which are fight or flight. Does that make sense? Yeah. So sympathetic is our moving system and it's much more complex than just fight or flight. And our parasympathetic is our less moving system, it's our slowing down system and uh or our not moving system. And in safety, that can look like rest and digest, you know, allows us to slow enough to rest. It allows us to um, you know, those moments when we are uh like really nicely connected with a friend and you just feel kind of heavy and slow. That's you know, we've got that beautiful slowing down, same for sleeping, and that's what allows that beautiful peristalsis of our guts, the push-pull action that moves everything along instead of it just shooting through. And in danger, it's part of our collapse response. Yeah, but anyway, I'll talk about that in a second. And then in the middle, coordinating all of this, we have our social engagement system. And the social engagement system, I could go into all the neuroanatomy, I won't, but it involves our head turning muscles, it involves our eye turning muscles, which are part of our orienting system, the striated muscles of our face with the vagus nerve, but also our facial trigeminal nerves, the glossopharyngeal nerve and the vagal nerves around here, too, through our tongue and our voice box. The purpose of it really is to communicate our internal state to everybody else. So we're kind of sharing our inner world through the movement of our expression of our face and the you know, the tension of um all of these muscles. And we have mirror neurons in our own muscles. So when we look at somebody, those same muscles that are being activated in that person activate in us. So when I am smiling and I'm genuinely happy, everybody who's watching me will those muscles will light up in their own face. And if I go really flat, then everybody else is gonna start to feel a little like can you feel that? Yeah, yeah. It's this beautiful biological imperative that says we are designed to regulate and be co-regulated, and we do that through this communication. But what it's also implicated in is our health and our healing and our creativity and presence to ourselves and the world around us and other people. And when we have good access to our social engagement system, it uses those other states to support our enhanced life. So our mobilization system or our sympathetic nervous system can be used to create things. You know, if you're if you love to make stuff, you have to move, right? So there's your sympathetic nervous system. If you love walking up mountains and one day you're feeling like you're really like in the zone and you're gonna push yourself to get up there as fast as you can, and that just feels really fun, like a game that day. There's your sympathetic nervous system, or when you're at a wedding and it's you know 11 o'clock and the bridal party really need to get going, and suddenly that song comes on and everybody gets this forge of energy. Yeah. And you that adrenaline feels supportive. It doesn't have the same effect as if you were being chased by a tiger. And then because we have access to that social engagement system, when that song is finished, we just naturally can come down and we laughing and we're smiling, and we're like, oh my gosh, I'm getting so old, I have to so spent, you know, or like if we have energy, we maybe we are back in the dance club, whatever. The the point is that it's swinging us between, gently swinging us between more movement and less movement, depending on what serves our greatest life. You know, when it's time to eat, we are meant to be slowing down. Yeah, take away the safety, and suddenly the whole system's geared up to get us back to safety. And it will do that by moving us, so using that sympathetic nervous system to move us towards or away from the threat. And when this happens, in the threat response, the blood is diverted away from our non-vital organs. And this is really important for birth because the uterus is a non-vit. So when you're under threat in birth, your baby is getting less blob. And that is gonna make, it's gonna make the contractions more painful and less effective. It's going to cause extra stress to the baby because in a contraction, anyway, we've got less blood as the blood vessels kind of get compressed as the uterus goes down where the placenta meets the uterus, those blood vessels do get compressed. And that's where we get that beautiful deceleration of the heart for the baby. It's protective because they're not getting as much oxygen, so they're going to slow down their heart rate so they're baby as much blood, and then the contraction's over, it gets nice and bouncing again. And any all the muscles, all the blood is diverted to our muscles so that we can run faster, fight harder, you know, just be stronger, defeat whatever the threat is. And of course, to our heart, brain, and lungs to keep us alive. And in testosterone-fueled bodies, it can look more like fight or flight. That's very true. That's towards a moving away. But in estrogen, progesterone-dominant bodies, it's not necessarily partly because of how these hormones function in our body. Estrogen has us prioritizing everybody else's needs for vitamin, for example. And in birth, we have very high levels of oxytocin, which is a very connecting hormone, a bonding hormone. So we're not necessarily going to move to a physical fight. But also the conditioning that says girls don't fight, girls don't get angry. Um, and so when we move towards the threat, it does tend to be in a more social way. And so we are looking to get the threat onside so we're not in trouble, or looking to get the threat onside so that they make better decisions. Or we are looking to try and make the threat feel better by taking away their stress for the sake of everybody else. Or we withdraw socially or emotionally, we shut down and evaporate. And so this whole, or we'll move towards people that we perceive can mobilize on our behalf. And if this goes on for too long, or if it becomes too strong, we can then move into a collapse response. In a true collapse, that's like a fainting. And in that case, our blood pressure plummets and blood is still diverted to our heart-brain lungs, but kind of nowhere else. In a functional version, if we're really used to this kind of dynamic, we become really what's the word? Really compliant. Yes. And really low. Like we don't have any don't have any energy. Like there's nothing. I just say, and so this has massive implications in birth. How we respond to stress and in particular social stress really matters because it literally commands us. And all of this happens outside of that cortical awareness. So our cortex or our thinking brain, which isn't all that available in birth anyway, isn't actually part of this whole process. So you can't think your way out of this kind of situation, which is why standard therapy approaches don't seem to make that much of a difference, because we're not dealing with that part of the processing brain. Yeah. It's not a rational decision. It's not a cognitive decision, wouldn't linearly think about this way. X plus Y, who said it just kind of happens. And then the aftermath, women are often very confused. How come I didn't stand up for myself? Why did I go along with what they why didn't I say something? I knew that that's not what I wanted, or I knew that's not what was right for me. Which is absolutely what was playing out in my first two births. And, you know, for a long time I had a lot of guilt and shame around that. And I felt like I'd let my babies down and I'd let me down, and probably harder in the second birth, because by then I had knowledge about what could be possible and how the responses work, but I didn't yet have enough of the healing and the nervous system integration to be able to do any differently.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

I think that guilt and shame around not speaking up for yourself or not, you know, being determined enough to get the birth that you wanted, and like, you know, feeling guilty for potentially a perverse outcome with your baby is so like I hear it from so many women, I'm sure it's like resonating with a lot of people. But the whole system does not support a woman's nervous system. Like they actually had very little chance there. Like you think of like hospital lights. Um, I remember when I was walking into the hospital, like I was in transition and like everyone was asking me questions, like, and that was taking me out. Right so uh it's it's it you're really up against it sometimes with the system.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

But that's it's really cool to hear about how it works and like if someone understands a little bit more about how this nervous system works, and it's not necessarily the binary thing of parasympathetic, sympathetic, which we've all kind of grown up with learning about. Uh yeah, that nuance is like really important to understand, I think. And in terms of oh, you go.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

And I think you raise a really good point that the system is not set up to support this. And and that's that is a really important point that I when I was running my childbirth education classes, I would talk about this a lot. It is not about exiting the system when that's not an appropriate choice for you. There are many women to birth in hospital that do need access to medical care. The point is that the system that we currently have is fundamentally designed against our physiological needs. The things that our body needs in birth for birth to flow smoothly are literally not there. And many of the things that would stimulate a threat response are there. And when you understand this, it allows you to then make different decisions. Like, for example, if you know that bright lights and direct questions and presence of strangers are all gonna detect are all going to elicit a threat response, then you can ahead of time, you can be like, okay, well, then what are some of the things that would counteract that for me? If if I want the lights off and they're not gonna turn them off, do I feel comfortable putting on a mask or sunglasses? Or, you know, what are the things that you want? Maybe they're not comfortable for you, that's fine. But you want to ask yourself these questions. If I don't want to answer questions, what are some ways that I can have those answers ready for them? Or can I delegate my husband or my daughter to ask answer these questions on my behalf? You know, do I have enough familiar things to counteract the foreign smell and sight of the hospital?

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yeah. And I I I think that's part of intentional birth preparation and making sure your partner or support person is across those things as well, so they can advocate.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Like for me, it was I didn't want to be around anyone, I didn't want to like the lights were insane, so we just turned all the lights off, and I was just stayed in the shower by myself. Um and you know, sometimes like you can have all the preparation, you're like, oh, I think I'll respond like this, I'll think I'll respond like that. And you end up doing something completely different, and that's yeah, the birth takes us unpass me when I get yeah. And like we're running out of time, but I I maybe another time we can talk about like when things don't go to plan, how that actually stays in the body, yeah, and why talk therapy can be helpful to an extent.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

But to actually shift those feelings in the body, because you could have like, hey, I've had a textbook physiological birth, like and m society really thinks this is incredible, but it doesn't feel good in my system.

unknown 42:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

But everyone's saying how amazing it was.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Or the opposite, like everyone's saying how traumatized I should be, but I feel amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

And a lot of it's simply, if I like condense it into a 20-second response that we can elaborate on another time if you want to, is that when we are under threat of any kind, the brain communicates to the body particular responses that we should do in order to get us back to safety. And if those responses are intense enough and they don't get to be completed, the brain gets confused and continues sending that message as if we're still living there. And this is some of the, I think, the misconceptions around, you know, cognitive approaches versus somatic approaches. In somatic approaches, we are very much working with the brain. The brain is what is commanding all of this to be happening in the first place, and is what's causing all of those ruminations and the intrusive thoughts and whatever. The bit that's in the body are those messages of the bits we needed, things we needed to do or things we needed to have that weren't available at the time. And that poor body is stuck in that response, whether it be in a collapse. Response or in a hypervigilance response or in a like it, you know, whatever it might be. Um, and this causes pain conditions and it causes autoimmune decisions, autoimmune conditions, and bowel issues, and this sense that I can't get myself back. I've been broken, and we're not broken, we're never broken. We are so incredibly powerful, but there is in in a lot of trauma, there is a sense that we have been broken. And it's just that our brain and body are stuck in a situation that did actually finish, but we haven't realized it yet. And so it's only really engaging with the body that we're able to finish that. And then our beautiful brain, with all of its meaning-making capacities, is able to see the situation completely differently. And we draw new meaning with this beautiful spontaneous cognitive reappraisal, we call it in somatic experiencing, that we've been trying to get to with all of this cognitive work. We've been trying to think about it differently, trying to be great, trying to blah, blah, blah. They're suddenly all available and in this much deeper, richer way because they've spontaneously arose from the women connected to the emotions and the you know bigger picture of it.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Yeah, it's beautiful. I love somatic work, it's so powerful. Could you tell us a little bit about Somer and what what what you've created?

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Yeah, I'd love to. It's my baby. I had wanted to create a women's health center for such a long time. Yeah, probably like 15 years. And had gone through various evolutions of what it would look like. Definitely did not expect that this is what what I would end up with. But the final straw that kind of pushed me to make it was I just finished an incredible session with a client. We'd done some very deep trauma healing. But as she was walking down to reception, and I was working in a gorgeous clinic, I love all of those humans, but it was only one-on-one therapy available. So very Western way of doing well-being. And as she was walking down to reception, I was suddenly filled with this fury, this knowledge that until this woman had something more to her life than work and home and trying to get better from the many traumas she experienced, she was never going to feel well until she had a community, until she had safe ways to move her body, safe places to come. It was only ever, we were only ever going to be healing trauma. And that's not the purpose of trauma work. I mean, obviously we want to cure the trauma, but we want to be able to support women into their fullest sense of self. Um, they're most alive, most available for whatever they want to do. And I realized that movement and community needed to be at the um at the center of that. So we have uh yoga, Pilates, sound healing, meditation, tai chi classes, women's circles, these like gatherings of of women and safe ways, responsive ways to move your body. The yoga movement, really all about learning to listen to how your body wants to move that day and how to how to like how to stop when you've had enough. And a yoga class naturally follows that beautiful nervous system regulation that I talked about. So we have the readiness to do the class, we move our bodies, and then because we've moved and that adrenaline has switched off, we can come down and to rest into savasma and we've got the readiness to kind of finish the class with them. And that's kind of like the main thing to gather women with no hustle, no pressure, no mirrors, you know, just really reconnecting with yourself and finding that aliveness from within. And if you want more than that, so there's always going to be extra challenges in life. And sometimes we do need a little bit of support. So the one-to-one therapies we have are in a junk. They we have massage, acupuncture, energy healing, attrition, lots of psychotherapy and somatic work, obviously. I feel I feel like I've forgotten someone, and I'm really sorry if I have. What about Tarot? Oh yeah, yeah. We actually just had tarot, and I'm actually people are loving this because tarot is not about somebody else like telling you what's going on in your life. When these cards come, you have this resonance with this, like it's connection with your in and on and your yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

I've got a book in with Susanna. She's yeah, she's awesome. She's pretty great.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

So yeah, that's Soma. And we have, we're a social enterprise, so we exist to give back to the community. Um, and so we have in our yoga, like we have a our standard membership, and then we have a pay it forward membership where you can pay a little bit extra each week, and that then offsets people who are in our community care who are genuinely unable to afford classes, like they would be choosing between food and yoga, which is just not a choice that people should have to make. And I've been there too many times, and I just I want to kind of erase this like this floor, yeah, or lift the floor, I suppose. Or like right now, we have this like program Winter Roots where the invitation is for women to keep coming back to themselves through winter because naturally we tend to fall away from those practices that help us. And so every class people come to, we're donating a dollar to Beryl House, which supports women who are experiencing housing insecurity. But then on top of that, we have these community moments as part of the program. And then for every hundred community, we're calling them seed. Like if you if you post one of these moments, then it's a seed, and every hundred seeds is an extra dollar. But we'll give back to the women then on top of that, like reward them for uh prioritizing themselves. So it's just like a really different model. It is so different. The civility is at our center, and women being well is the whole purpose. Yeah. In a world where men's bodies are the standard, and all of healthcare has emerged from studies of men, especially men. When I was doing my very first undergrad in the med school Adelaide, none of the studies included women because our menstrual cycle would ruin the data. And so we have this entire legacy of healthcare not being appropriate for us. It doesn't match our bodies. And I wanted a place where our bodies were at the center for once.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Yeah. And you have, firstly, such a beautiful thing that you're creating. Like on you, like should be so proud. Like it's it's friggin' awesome. You do have a hormonal for focus as well. Like you have your hormonal reset packages, like it really is about understanding the impact of hormonal changes as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Yeah, exactly. And our life cycle, every phase of our life, we have different needs.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

And most of our women are either press part and perimenopausal or post-menopausal. And I'm really proud that we've made a space that's safe enough for women who are usually ignored or feel like they don't have a place to connect to really do that. And I think one of the things that's missing is this understanding of how each of these phases of our life has a purpose. I mean, the right of the passage of perimedical is a community, and it's like a wild ride. But it I I only suffer when I'm out of balance, and I think that's really important.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, thanks for sharing about Soma, and we'll link everyone. So if you're in Canberra and you want to check it out, it's a super in inclusive environment to walk into, like, no pressure. Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks so much, and I think we're gonna have to have another episode one day to talk about other stuff, but that was awesome. There's such rich, rich knowledge there. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the women who guided me. If you haven't already, make sure to follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook for updates and behind-the-scenes moments. For show notes and more information about today's guests, visit our website, you'll find all the details there. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share it with a woman you know who might need. And if there's something you'd like me to explore, a question you want answered, or a wise woman you think I should meet, I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with me anytime on Instagram or through our website. Until next time, thank you.