Birthing Freedom with Serena Oliveira

Birthing Freedom with Serena Oliveira

By SERENA OLIVEIRAAlternative HealthHealth & Fitness
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Birthing Freedom with Serena Oliveira episodes

  • Interview with Lyle Povah: Running with Joy!

    An autumn equinox interview with Lyle Povah, who's worked in prisons and hospitals for the last 30 years. He's an international musician, drum circle facilitator, yoga teacher, and researcher who uses music and movement to bring people together and promote well-being. 


    While the rain created it's own beat on his touring trailer (yes you can hear it in the background!) with 100 drums in tow, we chat-jammed about the power of freedom and intuition. Lyle shares his journey of working with children, families and in community during challenging times, with the intention of bringing more joy into the world. I caught up with Lyle about 250km into his 1,500km fundraising campaign. In addition to the power of music and it's therapeutic healing benefits, we explored the process of trusting one's own path in love, joy and connections.

    Lyle shares his take on the meaning of freedom and how "Joy, and the expression of joy is freedom. When we're joyful, we feel well...Joy is like the yeast in bread. When it is present, all of the other ingredients rise up to allow for that expression. Joy is the key!"

    He is the founder & executive director of the Rhythm of Life Society, a registered charity which recently launched it's first fundraising project, the Drum Run Adventure Tour. Lyle's mission is to run between 25 towns and cities across the province in the span of 3 months.

    Follow Lyle as he travels around BC-(yes in autumn!) to raise funds for the BC Children's Hospital. The tour ends on November 18th 2023 in Vancouver after touring Vancouver Island, the Highway of Tears, the Okanagan & the Lower Mainland.


    In this episode, we smiled a lot as we explored these gems:

    • 1:20 -Music sessions in the hospital, healing benefits and spontaneity
      • 2:45 -The organic process of group creation, being heart centered for healthy collaboration and the creation of a legacy project
        • 5:40: -How joy can have a visceral connection to freedom.
          • 8:00 -The foundation of joy in team and community building and the benefits of being heart centered.
            • 9:30: How anger, fear or challenging feelings can be explored during difficult times and the importance of nourishing practices for healing.
              • 12:20: Working with families with sick children in hospitals and holding space for others through as a "guest in their home"
                • 16:33: Collaboration with staff and families and the impact of joy in the hospital
                  •  19:20: What brought Lyle to this work and the impact of intergenerational healing, ease, and love
                    • 21:00 : About the tour, travelling the highway of tears and community connection with 3,000 km of driving and 1,500km of running.
                      • 24:00 Health and sovereignty in the Baby Boomer generation and relationship to masculinity as a musician.
                        • 27:20 Working in the downtown eastside in the 1980's and the impact of the AIDS epidemic on patients The relationship to the feminine and masculine and the impact of working through stigma and following intuition in Lyle's generation with the node of honouring care, love and devotion in community.
                          • 29:30: The importance of countering violence in our everyday culture with authenticity and vulnerability in the role  of the masculine.
                            • 30:10 What listening to the pulse of intuition means and how vulnerability helps to access it for everyday life and big projects. Being heart centered in decision making.
                              • 32:20 Intuition and how to confirm if you're in the flow and on your best path-How unforeseen incidence, meetings and material assistance can be issued from intuited decisions: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has beauty, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" 
                                • 34:40 Advice for those who are struggling and how to hold space for those who are in a challenging place. The power of finding our own answers from within.

                                  • To learn more about Lyle's other project here: ⁠https://www.drummingandhealth.com/⁠

                                  41 min
                                • From Pain to Power

                                  What is resliance and how can we tap into our struggles, our blocks and use them to flourish? This episode explores my own experiences and research in health and how we can use pain to tap into power.

                                  Oh the soup of life, with all that comes with it! The fear, anger, stress and the many manifestations of pain that you may want to avoid, resist, escape, judge or ignore…it may feel like an easy go-to, but all this does is keep this energy ball trapped. Surrender and holding space for pain, allows you to heal and to be open to all that transforms with your creative flow!

                                  Holding space and witnessing this over the years has taught me SO much in my practice-about the expansive,

                                  transformative potential of sitting and facing uncomfortable feels.


                                  30 min
                                • Love Your Crown

                                  The hair industry in the US alone is over 9 billion $/year. But what about it's energetic connection to us? Is it alive? Yes! It is much more than dead kerotin.

                                  In this episode we'll explore the energetics of hair, and the importance of embracing our "Crown" through everyday awareness, connection and routine. Intuitive and stylist Cindy Foley shares her experience of nearly 3 decades as a professional stylist, naturalist and her knowledge of hair magic. She joked about how I specialized in the sacral chakra in my birth work with my hands, while her hands work the magic of the crown.


                                  The Crown Chakra is the energy center of universal knowledge and spiritualism which connects you to the divine. The Crown influences the brain and the nervous system, as well as the emotions and the level of understanding and enlightenment. We conclude this episode with herbs and gems that can help you stay open and grounded in your crown element.


                                  How to find Cindy:

                                  Instagram:

                                  @carbonhaircompany
                                  @cindy_foley_in_the_forest
                                  @thegatheringoftheones


                                  Shop Owner, Master Hairstylist Red Seal Journeyman, Educator, B.A., B.Ed. 

                                  Cindy has been doing hair since 1996 (26 years) and spent five years as a Cosmetology Teacher in Alberta. Her specialties include curly hair, cutting long-lasting wash and wear styles, reading and understanding each individual’s hair and sculpting it uniquely for you. She loves creatively painting balayages and highlights full of natural colour dimensions. Cindy specializes in curly hair and long hair, modern shags and awesome fringes and face framing styles. Helping you to love your hair and feel beautiful is what she loves to do.

                                  Cindy is also a passionate artist and painter, inspired by nature, who loves sacred geometry, chakras and bees. Recently in December 2021 she published her debut children’s book called The Gathering of The Ones which can be viewed at www.cindyfoleyartist.ca 


                                  38 min
                                • Pain to Liberation

                                  This episode is to remind you that every woman, every person is limitless in our desires... In our access to freedom. 

                                  Igniting the power of what turns you on and exploring your longings is brilliant. So let’s journey together and I’m going to share important strategies that apply to an empowered birth that also apply to living a badass life. In celebration of my son's birthday and my doula practice, I present to you, 5 GEMS that I learned from childbirth which apply to everyday living.

                                  True freedom is and continues to be uncomfortable. We have been calcified in who we are…and birthing ourselves comes with endless possibilities-it is a cracking open and softening all at once.

                                  Possibility is an invitation. Birth is impossible to predict, even under the best management and clinical interventions. You never know what lines up to define your story. I am here for folks to explore fear and to go beyond it.

                                  Love is freedom. Love means I will never fully understand you, but I’ll keep coming back again and again….it means walking away, it means we're going to keep working at our differences, to embrace, what changes us, what we need to learn and grow together….it means to stay curious and open all at once. Revitalization of our culture begins with redefining sovereignty. What if sovereignty is to love fully? What if loving was the most revolutionary act we could do?

                                  16 years ago I attended my first birth-9 months later my son was born. After these 5 gems, I share a personal story of choice. I will also touch on teen pregnancy and so that’s your head-sup. Many of our choices influence and change our lives forever. My desire to be his mom changed me forever. 


                                  25 min
                                • Can Peace, Presence & Pause become your next Superpowers?

                                  This episode shares the wonders of finding PEACE, PRESENCE & PAUSE and how they each manifest in their own power.

                                  Peace looks different for each of us, and so for one peace may mean a social media fast. To another it’s finding community and entertainment. Or to find one’s self worth by being alone. To another it’s being in a world with less militarized violence. Finding peace is a huge can of worms and I explore it openly while exploring the importance of pranayama, Shakti and our connection to the natural world.

                                  How do you cultivate the gift of perception? Presencing can mean being in a soup of all the feelings, as much as it can mean removing yourself emotionally from a situation. This can be important so you can see it from all angles. This can help you to be both fair and analytical.

                                  Pausing is so essential to tap into your own vitality and health while you feel assurance and clarity in all that you do. Pausing helps us to be more grateful, to embrace radiance where it’s needed. To tap into our life force.

                                  "Freedom and wonder create our trust. I’m here to stomp and dance with the rising dust of a deep remembering. Stirring up the ancestral healing that comes with renewal and revitalization of ourselves. We give birth to a new version of ourselves every day. "

                                  -Serena Oliveira

                                  18 min
                                • Embrace Your Creative Emergence
                                  Affirming your power-how subversive can it get?! We have each inherited and have been given tools, strategies and insights to lead our best lives. And we each have unique relationships to how we explore the spaciousness that we need to lean into life. What if all of a sudden you were given a new lense to see the world? We’ve all had that feeling, that inner knocking and desires for alternative possibilities. What if you could learn how to deeply listen and understand what your intellectual, physical, spiritual and emotional needs are and how you can best meet them?
                                  To greet this late winter new moon, I am planting seeds of how to pay close attention to your inner workings, your own need for community and the dance for trusting your ability to know what's best for yourself. And to trust the flow. Quote Shared: “Give me a daughter with your stubborn heart, or your even temper.
                                  Give our children your dark-bright eyes, or your enchanted smile.
                                  So that even when we are gone, the world will find within them all of the reasons why I loved you”
                                  إعطني إبنة لها قلبك العنيد أو حتى طبعك
                                  إعط طفلنا عيناك السمراوين اللامعين أو إبتسماتك المسحورة
                                  لكي حتى و بعد رحيلنا، سيجد العالم فيهم كل الأسباب التي أحببتك لها
                                  -Nizar Qabbani
                                  12 min
                                • Reclaiming Sovereignty through Dance Music w/ DJ Handsome Tiger
                                  As we dance our way through our unique lives we each find our best ways to grow, heal, love and to celebrate ourselves. In this interview with DJ Handsome Tiger you'll get a glimpse into a musical approach to sovereignty and the manifestation of creative flow.
                                  He is an Anishinaabe Métis, North African, Vancouver-based producer and DJ who's monikor comes from the literal translation of his Arabic name Hussein Elnamer. Named in CBC music’s 6 Indigenous artists you need to know in 2021 and CBC’s Reclaimed artists to watch in 2020- this year he has his first full length album coming out called First People.  He has many inspirations and he dives into what that means to him as a music producer and touches on his work with Nagamo, a curated music database of original compositions from indigenous composers. 
                                  This interview echoes the theme of collective creativity for ancestral healing through music and dance and how we can each define and reclaim what sovereignty looks like for us in our own chosen systems of life and so much more. The history of dance music is both rich and complex; rooted in the bravery of BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ people and the diverse process of reclaiming and reviving culture through music. DJ Handsome Tiger is known for mixing many flavours of sound system culture and global bass sounds including dubstep, grime, dancehall, afrobeats, rap and more to light up any dance floor. 
                                  His production blends traditional sounds from his culture alongside other Indigenous sounds, interwoven into the contemporary sounds of electronic bass music today. Quickly becoming a Canadian festival scene favorite with appearances at Bass Coast, Shambhala, Rifflandia and this year's Envision in Costa Rica.
                                  How to keep track DJ Handsome Tiger-go follow him:
                                  HANDSOME TIGER
                                  @handsome.tiger 
                                  Spotify – Handsome Tiger
                                  Nagamo Project:
                                  Nagamo
                                  30 min
                                • Somatic Awareness while Dying
                                  Imagine saying yes to death when you've been told you only have a few weeks left to live. This is a conversation about what it's like to know you are about to die, after you've gone through radiation and cancer treatments. 
                                  Intro: How our friendship impacted me and how our easy way of sharing led to an exploration of dying and how there's also possible somatic cultural meaning in embracing the prognosis of imminent death from cancer. 
                                  Could cancer be a symptom of civilization? 
                                  This is an imperfect way of sharing what the dance of dying looked like for her, in a hot tub, outside on the West Coast. You may need to crank up the volume for this.
                                  xo
                                  Serena
                                  Music Credit: Night by Ayla Nereo
                                  24 min
                                • Nature’s Brilliance: Trees as Teachers
                                  In this episode I explore briefly some teachings of Ram Dass and Gabor Mate and how the importance of tapping into the power of nature and to be a general guide to be more accepting and vulnerable to lean into each other.
                                  Join me on a simple philosophical wandering with the topic of trees and how the relationship of a forest community can reflect our own potential culturally. Taking the time to observe and be with them, trees can be amazing teachers and an essential part of our healing everyday. Trees don't judge each other, and can help us make room to welcome vulnerability and the complex flow of healing. While some enjoy the shade, others enjoy the light and that diversity is essential to the survival of the forest. And yes some compete but there's an underlying network of collaboration that leads to balance. A simple embodied practice to accept and appreciate others in general is to watch trees growing together.
                                  “Everything in nature grows only where it’s vulnerable. So a crustacean animal like a crab inside a hard shell, it can’t grow. It has to mold to make itself very vulnerable to grow. A tree doesn’t grow where it’s hard and thick, does it? It grows where it’s soft and green and vulnerable. Vulnerability is absolutely essential for growth and for vulnerability (to grow) you have to let go of those defenses, such as being right.” -Gabor Mate
                                  13 min
                                • How to Build Unshakable Trust

                                  Welcome to sovereign, creative pathways to nurturing unlimited potential. A podcast journey of growth and renewal as we navigate our amazing potentiality towards living our best lives. I've transitioned from my off grid life and I am back with a weekly gift for you all. This is the first show of many more to come that revamps this message in a bottle.  


                                  How do we build trust in both our personal and professional lives?

                                  I dive into 4 Ways to explore trust: 

                                  1. Exploring trust is a creative process to help you to navigate towards reaching your full potential. 

                                  2. Don’t sacrifice who you "could be" for "who you are". 

                                  3. Know yourself & discern. 

                                  4. Trust is a unique style of expression. 

                                  The Birthing Freedom podcast explores the everyday brilliance in our minds, hearts and souls as we speak with experts and incredible leaders every week. I am your host Serena Oliveira, lifecycle doula, wisdom leader, entrepreneur and sovereignty researcher. Life is simple, and like love can get complicated. Join me as we dive deep into embracing our everyday power and become what I call emboldened thinkers. I believe that expansion and education is the root for more joy, love, and depth in connection.

                                  20 min

                                About Birthing Freedom with Serena Oliveira

                                From the publisher's feed

                                This podcast showcases the vulnerable transformation that comes with lifecycle changes and collaboration with visionaries around the world.