Embodied Mother Podcast

In this deeply nourishing episode of the Embodied Mother Podcast, Genna shares the powerful story of her transformation from medical student to intuitive mother, her journey through two sovereign births, and the deep spiritual awakenings that unfolded along the way. 

Genna and Laura explore themes of autonomy, embodied trust, gestation past 40 weeks, ancestral healing, and the unseen forces guiding us—like mermaid and Neptune energies.

Genna opens up about navigating the path from allopathic medicine to alternative healing, how Kundalini yoga and Kabbalah supported her journey, and the power of pausing to meet fear with compassion. This episode is a medicine bundle for mothers, birth workers, and women reclaiming their intuitive knowing.

✨ Themes: sovereign birth, intuition, spiritual initiation, gestation past 40 weeks, mothering as medicine, feminine wisdom, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Kabbalah, trust, surrender.

Connect with the sacred, hear Genna’s wisdom, and be reminded of the beauty in birth and becoming.

Genna is a wife and mother to two young boys, with a background as an occupational therapist who went on to study medicine before stepping away partway through to follow a deeper calling — one that blends science and soul. She is a devoted student of Kundalini Yoga (and trained as a teacher), Kabbalah, homeopathy, flower essences, and pre- and perinatal psychology. Genna weaves these threads into her daily life, mothering, and mentorship. She is passionate about the primal continuum — from preconception through early motherhood — as a gateway for profound personal growth and generational healing.

Connect with Genna on Instagram here

Check out her Substack and the article The Power of the Pause here

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Laura x

In this heartfelt conversation, I speak with Nicole Schlögel – a former NHS midwife with 18 years' experience – who has since stepped away from institutional midwifery to support undisturbed, physiological birth outside the system.

Nicole shares her journey from hospital to home, from protocols to presence, and from midwife to wise woman. We explore birth as a sacred rite of passage, the myth of informed consent, fascia and bodywork, and the deep imprint birth leaves on both mother and baby.

🌿 Topics we cover include:

• Nicole’s path from NHS midwife to independent birth worker

• Fascia, aromatherapy & hands-on support in pregnancy

• The myth of informed consent & midwife autonomy

• The quietude between labour stages & altered states

• Supporting breech babies & physiological birth

• Trauma, imprinting, and the somatic body

• Returning to wise woman traditions in modern birthkeeping

  
  

Nicole Schlögel is a former NHS midwife turned fascia therapist, aromatherapist, and birth educator. Based in Belfast, she now supports women through her clinic Essentially Birth, offering fascia-informed massage and movement sessions in pregnancy and postpartum. Nicole co-teaches Born Through Yoga, a body-led birth preparation course, and this October she’s hosting The Fabric of Birth — an in-person fascia workshop for practitioners that will take place at The Little Yoga House, Belfast.

She writes regularly on Substack about fascia, birth, and leaving the system behind. Her book 7 Secrets Every Pregnant Woman Needs to Know Before Giving Birth was an instant bestseller on Amazon and it offers an honest guide to birth both inside and outside the system. Nicole is also working on Justine, a historical novel based on the life of a 17th-century German midwife.

To access her fascia release services, visit essentiallybirth.com or email [email protected]

To book a space on The Fabric of Birth, visit https://www.essentiallybirth.com/offers/bXETFr2i/checkout

As a listener of the Embodied Mother Podcast, you can access one of four Super Early Bird discounted places.

She is @essentiallybirth on Instagram and Essentially Birth on Facebook.

On Substack she's Nicole Schlögel, The Consciously Uncoupled Midwife, you can subscribe via

Nicole Schlögel | The Consciously Uncoupled MidwifeEssays on Birth, Midwifery, Fascia & Finding Freedom

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Laura x

On Irish land, Laura sits in sacred conversation with birth keeper Ailtín Rose—weaving story, ceremony, and the quiet power of undisturbed birth.

Laura speaks with Ailtín about restoring the sacred nature of birth, supporting undisturbed physiological labour, and holding women through life’s powerful thresholds. Though not a biological mother, Ailtín brings profound maiden energy to her work, offering intuitive, ancestral, and holistic support to women birthing both within and beyond the system.

She shares her journey from academia and yoga into holistic midwifery, including immersive training at the Da-a-Luz School in southern Spain. Living in community, she learned to embody the role of the wise woman – honouring ceremony, holding space, and tending to birth as a rite of passage.

This episode is a rich exploration of the descent of Inanna, the quietude in labour, the power of community, and reclaiming our ancient ways.

Topics Covered:

• Ailtín’s path to becoming a birth keeper

• Living and learning at a holistic midwifery school in Spain

• Why she no longer uses the word “doula”

• The myth of Inanna & the initiation of motherhood

• The sacred pause – quietude between dilation and pushing

• Freebirth and undisturbed birth outside the system

• Ceremony, community, and postpartum care

• Managing fear and honouring sovereignty in the birth space

• Ireland’s maternity landscape and the return to village care

• Ailtín’s original birth poetry and her vision for the future

Ailtín Rose is a birthkeeper from Ireland who is lovingly tending to thresholds and walking the path of traditional, holistic midwifery. 

After hearing the call to be of service to women for many years, Ailtín finally decided to step into the realm of birth work. Little did she know her calling would completely transform her life as it led her down a path of remembering the ancient ways of tending to women in birth and beyond. 

For Ailtín, birth is a sacred right of passage and an incredibly important initiation for women becoming mothers. She wants to see that mothers are supported during this time, that they are trusted to know what is best for themselves and their babies and that they are at the centre of their care. 

Ailtín is now working with women and families all over Ireland in their pregnancy, birth and postpartum periods. 

Connect with her on Instagram here

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Laura x

In this first part of a powerful conversation, Laura Guinnane sits down with her teacher and friend, Jess from The Matrona—a former labour and delivery nurse turned holistic birth educator. Together, they explore the sacred journey of healing, sovereignty, and self-trust in womanhood and motherhood.

Jess is first and foremost a mother, and she loves mothers. Jess is a teacher, homeschooler, homebirther, home healer, homesteader, home cooking, home learning … I think you get the point. She’s found that bringing things back home potentizes  them.  

Jess has been at the feet of birth since 2007, she started as a nurse assistant in the labor and delivery unit while getting her RN license. Jess worked as a labor and delivery nurse for 10 years, her career was dramatically ended when she was terminated for following the law of informed consent. She has since let her nursing license expire, realizing that most hospitals do not care about mothers and families. 

Jess is the director of programs at The Matrona, she loves sharing her stories and helping students understand all the options available to families. She takes students on a journey from the most medical based interventions to the most holistic. She loves to witness families design the perfect birth for their unique family and wants to see every family ask themselves..

Is the hospital really the best place to have a baby? 

Find Jess birth work on instagram here

Find Jess on homesteading on instagram here

email [email protected]

🎙 Topics covered:

• Jess’s path from hospital-based birth work to holistic, embodied healing

• Healing from PCOS and infertility through food, rest, and emotional awareness

• The importance of language, belief, and the stories we tell ourselves

• A deeply vulnerable account of her first hospital birth as a nurse and new mother

• Navigating birth trauma, postpartum anxiety, and the medical system’s limitations

• The sacred necessity of rest, cyclical living, and listening to the body

• The difference between managing symptoms and truly facilitating healing

• Nature, homesteading, and herbs as allies in women’s wellness

  
  

📚 Mentions & Teachers:

• The Matrona (Quantum Birth & Holistic Midwifery) https://www.thematrona.com/

• Wild Power by Alexandra Pope & Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer

• Spinning Babies, herbal medicine, homeopathy

✨ This is Part 1 of a deeper unfolding. Jess will return to share the rest of her story, including her empowered freebirths, reclaiming birth outside the system, and more radical wisdom on living in alignment with nature, truth, and the feminine body.

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Laura x

In this solo episode, I’m coming to you from a very real, very raw place in my luteal phase, back in Ireland after cultivating a slow pace of living in the north of Thailand, where I’ve been based more permanently.

I share what it’s felt like to return to the fast pace of life here after months of intentionally slow, yin-centred living. Since landing, everything has unravelled—my cycle, my rhythm, my sleep, my energy. I talk openly about solo parenting, the loss of space, the overwhelm, and the feeling of forsaking myself just to keep going.

This episode is about the descent—the part of the cycle where the mask comes off. I speak about how the luteal phase shows us what’s no longer working, and how that inner autumn mirrors the season I find myself in as a woman in her forties.

I also reflect on what I’ve learned from Jane Hardwicke Collings about perimenopause, late motherhood, and the share my own personal experience of the importance of hormones like oxytocin in helping us connect when we’re running on empty.

This isn’t a polished reflection—this is me, in it. Luteal, tired, stretched, but still here. Still showing up. If you’re feeling the weight of it all too, I hope this episode reminds you that you’re not alone.

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Laura x

In this deeply nourishing conversation, Laura welcomes her mentor and friend Adrianna Zaccardi—a feminine embodiment guide and postpartum educator—for a heart-led exploration of the energetic rite of passage from maiden to mother. Adrianna shares her lived experience of descent, chronic pain, and healing, and the initiations that prepared her for motherhood.

They speak candidly about:

• ​Archetypal transformation and the journey through the underworld
• ​Patriarchy, pain, and feminine reclamation
• ​The importance of slowness, rest, and soul-led timing in a mother’s evolution
• ​The spiritual potency of pregnancy and conscious conception
• ​Why the “embodied mother” is the mother the world is starving for

This is a poetic, honest, and multi-layered offering for women navigating the thresholds of identity, spirituality, and self-mothering.

Adrianna Zaccardi, mother, midwife of the soul, a somatic guide of the Feminine, and a postpartum doula and educator.

Through connection to the body, with embodied movement, dance, archetypal rites of passage, her  written transmissions and more recently as a postpartum doula and educator, Adrianna acts as a grounded and loving bridge, serving the feminine essence within women; she nurtures a generation of sovereign women, mothers and children.

Adrianna is known for her wisdom when it comes to grief, the underworld and the darkness. She supports you on your journey - in the greeting, acceptance and integration of all aspects of self - guiding women as they alchemise bodily wisdom and step deeply into truth as embodied, mature women.

After nearly a decade of living in London, United Kingdom, Adrianna returned to her hometown Melbourne, Australia in late 2022. 

At the time of this episode release, Adrianna is months away from the birth portal. She eagerly awaits this experience, and who she will become on the other side of this rite of passage. 

https://adriannazaccardi.substack.com/

https://www.instagram.com/themotherservice/ 

https://www.instagram.com/adriannazaccardi/ 

📚 Books and teachers mentioned:

• ​The Way Out by Alan Gordon – healing chronic pain through somatic tracking
• ​Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel – exploring unmet maternal needs
• ​The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock – feminine myth and psychological wholeness
• ​Maiden to Mother by Sarah Durham Wilson – archetypal initiation for women
• ​Wild Feminine and Mothering From Your Center by Tami Lynn Kent – pelvic wisdom and body-based mothering
• ​Teachings from Marion Woodman, Jane Hardwicke Collings, and Maya Luna

Work with Me: Join The Embodied Mother 1:1 container to deepen your connection to cyclical living, embodied wisdom, and feminine archetypes.

You can reach out for a discovery call to feel into whether this is aligned for you right now. It’s a co-creation, a remembering, and a rooting into your body’s wisdom.

https://calendly.com/lauraguinnane/free-discovery-call

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Laura x

In this personal episode, I share reflections from my current late luteal phase in Ireland after a long journey from Thailand. Amid jet lag, motherhood, and cyclical shifts, I revisit the roots of this podcast—my path from martyrdom to embodied motherhood.

I read a Substack essay inspired by a transformative teaching from my elder midwife, Whapio, exploring the profound teaching that women are the ancestral sex. Read here.

We journey through biology, mysticism, and feminine physiology—into the sacred spin of the ovum, the ancestral body, and even the possibility of parthenogenesis.

What does it mean to choose divine union over submission?

To honour the spiral wisdom in our bodies and biology?

Tune in as I unpack the sacred science of the feminine and our need for reciprocal, respectful relationships with the masculine.

Work with Me:Join The Embodied Mother 1:1 container to deepen your connection to cyclical living, embodied wisdom, and feminine archetypes.

You can reach out for a discovery call to feel into whether this is aligned for you right now. It’s a co-creation, a remembering, and a rooting into your body’s wisdom.

https://calendly.com/lauraguinnane/free-discovery-call

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Just keep spinning,

Laura x

Welcome to the thirteenth episode of Embodied Mother Podcast — a sacred number of the Goddess, honouring the thirteen moons and thirteen menstrual cycles in a lunar year.

In this powerful and deeply evocative episode, I read aloud Herstory by Jane Hardwicke Collings — a sweeping remembrance of the ancient feminine, from goddess-worshipping matriarchies to the centuries of persecution, suppression, and silencing that followed.

We journey through the myths and truths of women's wisdom traditions, blood mysteries, midwifery, sexuality, and the brutal dismantling of female power under patriarchal rule. I share my own initiation through my 13th postpartum bleed, and reflect on the collective trauma and memory encoded in our wombs, bones, and lineage.

This is not just history — it's Herstory. A remembering. A reclamation.

Link to the free Herstory eBook by Jane Hardwicke Collings here
Content warning: This episode includes references to historical violence, sexual trauma, and systemic oppression.

Divya courageously shares about the rage she experienced postpartum when she realised she was suffering from PTSD from the birth of her daughter, and alchemising her story through creating her podcast ‘Birth Agni’.

How this birth birthed her on her path of supporting women and families as a childbirth educator and traditional birthkeeper.

She shares how the sacred path of breastfeeding healed her connection to her daughter.

Another common thread we see, I too experienced this healing process of reconnecting the mother baby dyad through breastfeeding, cosleeping and skin to skin.

She weaves in stories of women birthing at home and how birth work reignited her connection to God and connection to the Power that is speaking to us, connecting and guiding us.

Divya is a Childbirth Educator and Lactation Counselor who was set on the path of birthkeeping by her teacher KL Goode , a traditional midwife of over 50 years. She has supported families in their birth along with her Guru and everything she is today is because of her. Divya is a mother of a 6 year old daughter whom she calls a gift for she changed her life for better. 

Divya is working to bring awareness about physiological births through her Podcast 'Birth Agni' which features birth stories from India.

This is a rich weaving of an embodied mother’s rage to redemption! Embodying her inner Kali and finding her voice in all aspects of her life ❤️‍🔥

Ways to reach out to her

Insta - @divyakapoorvox

Website - www.birthagni.com

Podcast - https://episodes.fm/1507595600

Work with Me:Join The Embodied Mother 1:1 container to deepen your connection to cyclical living, embodied wisdom, and feminine archetypes.

You can reach out for a discovery call to feel into whether this is aligned for you right now. It’s a co-creation, a remembering, and a rooting into your body’s wisdom.

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me ⁠[email protected]⁠

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

With love,

From one Embodied Mother to another.

Laura x

In this episode, I explore the ovulation phase of the menstrual cycle—often referred to as the "inner summer"—through the empowering lens of the Embodied Mother archetype. I reclaim her from the outdated narrative of self-sacrificing martyrdom and instead illuminate her as a symbol of creativity, sensual embodiment, and radiant magnetism.

I offer insights and practices to support you in aligning with the potent energies of this fertile phase—whether or not you're trying to conceive. With a blend of physiology, archetypal wisdom, and spiritual depth, this episode invites you to meet your cyclical body with reverence and curiosity.

Topics covered include:

• The ovulation phase as the “inner summer” of your cycle

• Reframing the Mother archetype beyond martyrdom

• Understanding hormonal and energetic shifts during ovulation

• The priestess ovum as a symbol of feminine spiritual wisdom

• How to track ovulation using fertility awareness methods

• Aligning with lunar rhythms and seasonal archetypes

• Embodiment practices for sensuality, confidence, and magnetism

• Ways to honour your creativity and visibility during this phase

  
  

This episode is an invitation to anchor into your body’s wisdom and meet the ovulatory window not just as a biological event, but as a spiritual and creative opportunity.

Work with Me:
Join The Embodied Mother 1:1 container to deepen your connection to cyclical living, embodied wisdom, and feminine archetypes.

You can reach out for a discovery call to feel into whether this is aligned for you right now. It’s a co-creation, a remembering, and a rooting into your body’s wisdom.

✨ I’d love to hear from you—how are these episodes landing with you? Would you like to share your story on the podcast? Contact me [email protected]

Find me on Instagram at ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

If you’ve experienced a caesarean birth, I offer 1:1 online support to guide you in your healing journey. Through birth story listening, scar tissue remediation, and somatic reconnection, we work together to support your return to wholeness and embodied presence. You can email me at ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

You can follow my musings on motherhood on Substack ⁠⁠here⁠.⁠

Support the Podcast

Please leave a 5 star review, share your thoughts, or reach out to me. Your words mean the world to me.

Until next time, may you feel the fullness of your ovulation, the softness in your face, the spin of your priestess ovum, and the deep knowing that you are enough — exactly as you are.

With love,
From one Embodied Mother to another.

Laura x

🔗 Referenced episodes:

5. Reclaiming The Red Tent: Rest, Ritual, and the Magic of Menstruation

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3YqYNmrw3dcTexx5lDczv8?si=2844f6e2567b46cd

8. The Follicular Phase: From Rest to Radiance

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5GaqAGsQlshWygBDQccAgr?si=e68d5a5ff52747ed