Verana is the owner of Embody Your Birth in the San Francisco Bay Area. She serves as a full-spectrum doula, childbirth educator, Archetypical Astrologer, and creativity ally. She is also a poet, dancer, songwriter, and traveler of the globe. Her work as a doula and astrologer are deeply interconnected. Guided in her work by the collective dream for whole and healthy relationships  in our families, communities and with our Mother Earth, she is committed to walking beside her clients and students, whether in the labor room, classroom or exploring the natal chart to create safe and brave places where empowerment, capacity and deep inner trust can emerge.

Website: https://www.veranafaye.com or follow her on Instagram @verana_faye

Highlights:

Britt Fohrman is a doula, embodiment coach, birth educator and photographer. For more than two decades she has been holding space for women standing at the threshold of life’s most profound transitions: becoming a mother; healing from illness, injury or loss; stepping into sexual power and opening to new beginnings.

She weaves her training as a VITA Method Sex, Love and Relationship coach with her extensive training and experience in yoga, meditation, Hypnobirthing, Buddhism, Tantra, Shamanism, plant medicine, dance, and holistic healing to guide her clients to live aligned with their desires, inner knowing and authentic values. Her premier online course, Preparing Your Vagina for Birth offers a transformative and feminist approach to the childbearing time.

Highlights:

Having given birth recently at the age of 49, Britt shares insights of her phenomenal journey to motherhood.

Learn how ceremony is the reason she is well and joyful even while moving through much adversity. Ceremony supports her capacity to traverse life’s big portals and rites of passage. Britt shares how ceremony is her way of praying, her language of healing.

How her Jewish upbringing introduced her to the experience of stepping into holy space and feeling a connection to her ancestors.

Britt’s choice to work with Ayahuasca; how it facilitated her connecting with healing energies, helped her find her power and recover from a decade of debilitating Lyme disease.

Yoni Shakti, the Power of the Circle, and getting what you need.

Website: https://www.brittfohrman.com

Instagram: @thejuicyladies

Maritday Rodriguez is a Doula, Maven, Ceremonialist, and Keeper of Ancient Ways, she walks the path of her Taino ancestors, embracing their indigenous heritage and practices.

For over 25 years, She has immersed herself in teachings and practices related to women’s empowerment, nutrition, energy and herbal medicine, holistic skincare, natural health, and reproductive wellness, specializing in Life Cycle Doula services covering Fertility, Ante-Partum, Prenatal, Birth & Post-Partum aspects.

I had the pleasure of meeting Maritday and experiencing her wisdom and love of life when she attended my Birth Spirituality and Healing Coach Certification training in NY. She lives in New Paltz, New York in the beautiful Catskill Mountains. Her websites are www.amaritday.com and www.mhvdoula.info.

Maritday’s interview:

Ariela Sharon is a  spiritual childbirth coach and ritualist, living in Jerusalem. She brings a deep understanding of the divine feminine and Judaic spiritual wisdom to her birth work. This interview contains many nuggets of practical ways to integrate spirituality and ceremony in our birth work and lives. Each of us, podcast hosts, has a Jewish blood lineage and it was very precious to learn more about the jewels in our history. At the time of this interview, Ariela was 6 weeks postpartum from a beautiful home birth.

The following are some of the nuggets of this Interview: 

Website: https://www.arielasharon.com/

In this interview with Elizabeth Theriault, ASW, MPH and perinatal ceremonialist from Petaluma, California, we discuss how the enormity of growing a life and the grief of not being met or supported by our culture called her to the inner connections and community that ceremonies offer. She describes how her husband who was a ritualist designed a blessing ceremony for her and the power the altar that was created by her friends had in their lives up to 2 years after the birth. We also discuss the kinds of ceremonies we can do with our children and how open they are to this.

The following are more of the nuggets we discuss:

• Deciding to become a mother and feeling the enormity of growing a life in her, the grief of there not being a lot of holding or container to hold, meet the feelings I was holding inside about this. The mismatch and isolation between the culture and our own inner experience as moms.

Website: https://ritesofpassagepostpartum.com/

In this conversation with Gena McCarthy, RN, Perinatal Psychotherapist, Certified EMDR provider, community organizer and developer of integrative health programs and networks for nearly 40 years, we explore the importance of spiritual and psychological preparation to move powerfully through the transformative initiatory experiences that pregnancy and birth and motherhood offer. Gena shares compassionate practices and insights that honor our sacred feminine power, connect us with the Great Mother, and support healing from a difficult or traumatic pregnancy, birth or postpartum. 

Some highlights:

How she was able to move ‘under the radar’ as an L&D Nurse and offer guided visualization for women on bedrest in the hospital with challenging health complications, and frequently saw symptoms subside.

The influence of several books and teachers in informing her growth personally and professionally; The Tibetan  Art of Parenting by Anne Maiden Brown, the writings of Sobonfu Some, respected teacher of African spirituality, and Angeles Arrien, cultural anthropologist.

How her birthing experience informs her work and community ceremonial practices, The experience that brought her into knowing that we are capable of experiencing enlightenment and pleasure in birth.

The importance of safety in ceremony for overcoming fear and healing trauma. Gena shares several EMDR tools and practices for grounding, what to do if you are triggered, and healing trauma without having to feel the trauma.

For information on Gena’s workshops and sessions: www.birthspiritualityandhealing.com

Sandra Lloyd is a Shamanic Hypnotherapist, birth worker, and ceremonialist. She received

Sandra's path of healing service has been informed by two separate diagnoses and recoveries

We take a powerful journey starting off with the story of how ceremony came into Sandra's life.

To find out more about Sandra and her powerful work you can go to her website

This Podcast shares stories of practice and wisdom from perinatal ceremonialists living in our communities and all over our earth.  These stories are of women returning to an understanding and honoring of their own power.  They help us welcome our babies as the unique precious beings they are and support them to be ready to continue the weaving of our future world. They promote safe passages for birthing families in these times of disconnection.

Gena McCarthy 

www.birthspiritualityandhealing.com

Sandra Lloyd

www.sandralloyd.net

Elizabeth Theriault

www.ritesofpassagepostpartum.com