In our conversation, Anthony shares the essence of Singing in the Wild, his five-day retreat that I've been on twice (17 years ago and more recently just a few weeks ago).

I had such a transformative time that I invited Anthony onto the podcast to share the genuine magic of this work!

Many of us were told, somewhere along the way, that we couldn’t sing. Maybe we were asked to stay quiet, to lip-sync or not to make too much noise; these moments can go deep and restrict us - that is, until we decide we want to go beyond those limits.

This retreat gently meets that wounding, offering a space where each person's natural, unique voice is welcomed, just as it is.

It’s not about performance or hitting the right notes. It’s about remembering what it means to express rather than perform, and reconnecting with the sacredness that lives in sound, loving presence, and connection.

What emerges is nothing short of magical. 

When we step beyond judgment and self-consciousness into pure expression, something shifts fundamentally in our nervous system. 

'The voice is not just a musical instrument,' Anthony explains, 'it actually IS the person.'

Through practices he calls 'radical relating', participants learn to be fully present with each other without fixing, advising, or turning away - creating moments of profound connection where the boundaries between self and other begin to dissolve.

This conversation vibrates with the truth that transformation happens not through technical improvement, but through authentic connection. 

Whether you've been silenced or simply yearn for deeper relationships with yourself and others, this work offers a pathway home to our most natural and authentic expression.

CONNECT WITH ANTHONY

Find out more about Singing in the Wild Retreat or learn more about Anthony's overall work, Real Voice >

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Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

have you ever tried to ‘let go’ of behaviors that no longer serve you, only to find yourself repeating the same patterns? 

You're not alone. 

The popular advice to ‘release what no longer serves us’ or burning our troubles away on the full moon simply doesn't work—and there's a profound psychological reason why.

What we're actually doing when we try to ‘let go’ is pushing away parts of ourselves that have been working diligently to protect us. These patterns began as vital coping strategies during times when our emotions felt overwhelming. By trying to reject these aspects of ourselves, we create further internal fragmentation and erode trust within our own psyche.

The healing begins with a simple but powerful shift: instead of pushing away, try welcoming these parts with curiosity and gratitude. 

By locating where we feel these patterns in your body and extending compassion to these aspects of yourself, you create an internal atmosphere of acceptance. When we ask these parts how they've been trying to help us and what fears they hold, something remarkable happens—they begin to feel recognized, valued, and integrated rather than isolated and rejected.

This internal shift doesn't just heal fragmentation; it creates a ripple effect that extends to your external relationships. As you generate more self-acceptance, you naturally begin to vibrate at a frequency that attracts more authentic connections. When we stop seeking validation externally and instead create that environment within, others feel drawn to our genuine presence. It's the ultimate paradox—by fully welcoming ourselves, we create the connection we've been seeking all along.

Ready to experience this transformation? I've created a guided practice available in the Sacred Womb shop for just £3 to help you to dissolve old patterns with love 

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Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

This guided practice serves as both a foundational womb healing technique to energise your whole womb center and a diagnostic tool to understand your current relationship to your womb.

You’ll learn to direct energy to each part of your womb system – the ovaries, tubes, the womb itself, cervix, and yoni (sacred space). 

As you breathe into each area, you’ll discover not just where energy may be blocked or flowing freely, but you’ll actively begin the process of re-energisation.

You can practice it indoors while sitting in a chair, though sitting directly on the earth can deepen your experience significantly. 

Whether you’re exploring womb healing for the first time or are a seasoned practitioner, this foundational practice serves as the cornerstone for reconnection with your seat of power.

This practice:

• Works to energise the entire womb system, including the ovaries, tubes, womb, cervix and yoni 
• Is designed as a standalone practice and is part of a 21-day womb healing journey
• Incorporates somatic resourcing through connecting to the earth and your energetic tap root
• Can be done anywhere, though sitting on earth, the beach, a tree stump or a stone enhances the energetic 
• Will energise your menstrual cycle
• Acts as a diagnostic tool to discover areas of resistance, old protection, stored emotions or disconnection.

If you enjoyed this practice and want to go deeper, you can download the complete 21-day womb healing journey here >

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

You may feel slightly faint or dizzy if you do too much deep breathing too soon. Don’t push yourself. Do what you can. Dynamic breathing gets your chi moving. If you feel dizzy, simply pause the practice, open your eyes and breathe gently, returning to the practice once the dizziness has passed.

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If you have comments or questions, leave a review on Apple or Spotify, or contact me on Instagram @the_sacred_womb

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

The phrase 'holding space' is immensely popular with those in therapeutic, healing, coaching, wellness, and women's circles, but what's really happening?

I've investigated this over the last few years with those I've worked with and colleagues, and it turns out to be mainly trauma-driven.

Holding is the opposite of what we're trying to be as we heal and become more present. The opposite of holding in this relaxed, engaged and present. 

We don't want to be holding anything! It creates tension, deflects from our presence, and has our energy too focused on the other person, which either consciously or unconsciously creates a reaction in them, of either infantilisation or resistance. Neither is going to help the process of becoming more present.

So it's really useful to question what's driving it, as ALL healing arts professionals have a trauma history, which is why our personal work is essential to facilitating the process of coming home to our true selves and meeting the world from a base of increasing love.

A big caveat to this is that there is no 'healed' point. All of the markers I talk about are on a sliding scale from a more fear-based, adapted way of being to embodying more and more love, and connecting with others from a sense of security and safety within ourselves.

In this episode, I talk through the following:

WHAT TRAUMA-DRIVE SPACE HOLDING LOOKS AND FEELS LIKE

• a sense of 'holding' in our body
• perpetually pushing our own needs to one side to take care of others, have a sense of self-sacrifice and hoping to be seen a certain way in return for our 'holding'
• viewing others as less than or feeling sorry for them
• trying to hold the whole group field or person with our energy
• feeling perpetually exhausted after 'holding space'
• attached to the outcome of other people's state of being
• finding it difficult to be vulnerable with people, either 1:1 or in groups in daily life
• can't feel our own body or emotions whilst 'holding space'
• feel unappreciated for all our efforts

WHAT'S DRIVING TRAUMA-BASED 'HOLDING SPACE'?

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE ON THE RECEIVING END OF TRAUMA-DRIVEN SPACE HOLDERS

WHAT WE CAN DO IF SPACE HOLDING IS TRAUMA-DRIVEN

A Guided Practice To Reclaim Your Energy & Come Home To Your Body >

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Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

In this episode I explore the concept of becoming a genuine adult, 
what it means to develop emotional maturity and a grounded sense of self, what that looks like and feels like, and how we can do it in a way that increases our range of experience and expression.

Often, we equate adulthood with age, assuming that reaching a certain number automatically means we have attained emotional maturity. However, the reality is much more nuanced. 

Many of us find that despite our chronological age, we may still operate from various younger emotional states—those triggered by past experiences, traumas, or disruptions during our formative years. To truly embody a genuine adult self, we must address these emotional fragments and develop our capacity to respond to the present moment with intention and clarity.

What is an Adult Self?

An adult self can be summarised as the energy within us that has little to no emotional charge from the past, and so, therefore, can be present.

This energy, or 'amount' of our consciousness that is present is available to experience situations more as they are now, and make choices as to how to respond.

What are the features of an Adult Self?

Here are some of the main features here, however, they aren't exhaustive, there are so many possibilities! This list is an example.

As a genuine Adult, we're able to:

• Be in the present moment
• Make clear choices taking into account intuition and cognition. 
• Identify when triggered (distressing charge/memories are activated)
• Self-regulate
• Implement consistent self-care
• Take responsibility for our actions, behaviours, thoughts - whole self and impact on others.
• Identify and communicate our own needs
• Play! (play is to opposite of, and antidote to trauma)
• Access, embody and express a range of states of being
• Identify and implement clear boundaries
• Willing to be in love-based, mutual relationships with others

I also explore what 'Leading our System' from our Adult Self means, the relief that comes from un-fusing parts of ourselves that have been mistaken for our personality and reclaiming those qualities that were once buried beneath coping mechanisms. 

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Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

Our attachment template primarily determines how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world, and to recalibrate it, we need to work where it was formed: from incarnation, conception, in our Mother’s womb, to birth and our first year. 

Our attachment template is formed by the time we get to about 1. Key events, memories, and ways of relating usually compound that template, meaning that patterns of relating keep repeating over time.

This leads to the development of what we might think is personality when it’s actually adaptive traits that keep repeating because they are trying to protect us from further pain. And because they were formed so early, these traits often feel like ‘that’s just who I am’.

When we identify these themes and patterns in our lives, we can also trace them into our Soul’s Journey and work with the whole root system of our consciousness. This all needs attending to to recalibrate our attachment template.

Whilst most of us won’t have a conscious memory of this very early and primal time in our lives, it is accessible once we are tuned in enough to our body and internal world. Everyone I have worked with can access this, we don’t need to be ‘spiritual’ – whatever that means! 

This is also not a solely cognitive process. Deep remembering comes from the body, the mind, and the soul, which can all be accessed through the body, our six senses, and by slightly altering our state of consciousness, which we all can do. 

I also find that doing this helps us to realise that babies aren’t born pure and open. By the time we are born, our sense of self has been developing for 9 months, the attachment template is formed, and we are bringing in themes from our Soul to resolve and reconcile.

My last caveat is I don’t channel anything for anyone when work – this is really important, as we do need a direct and embodied connection with what we remember, otherwise it doesn’t truly ‘land’ in our system and thus doesn’t actually recalibrate our state of being.

During the episode, I talk through the potential of remembering and recalibrating at the following key stages of coming into this life:

• Incarnation
• Conception
• Gestation
• Birth
• First Year

I want to remind and inspire those who are listening that it is possible to process pain that felt previously unbearable, once we are resourced and stable enough, we can remember, and we can unwind the adaptions in our system and come home to ourselves.

SOUL WORK TRAINING

Check out The Soul Work Training to integrate gestational healing into your practice.

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Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

If you've been wondering what is actually happening in your body during perimenopause and menopause — beyond the generic "your hormones are changing" — this conversation is for you.

I'm joined by Salena Walker, herbalist, naturopath and nutritionist, who has over twenty years of teaching experience supporting women's health. Salena brings something I deeply value: root-level understanding of why the body does what it does — and what we can actually do about it.

In this conversation, Salena walks us through:

— Why perimenopause is a natural transformation, not something going wrong — and why the way society is currently talking about it is steering us toward fear rather than understanding

— The endocrine system as an orchestra: how the pituitary, pineal, thyroid, adrenals and ovaries all work together — and what happens when one part of that orchestra slows down

— Why the adrenal glands are so central to this transition, what happens when they're exhausted (which, let's be honest, most of ours are), and how that shows up in our symptoms

— The drink, eat, think, excrete framework — starting with something as simple as water, and why constipation is quietly recirculating oestrogen back into the body

— Food as medicine: eating close to the garden, rainbow vegetables, what to let go of and why — including the question to ask yourself at every meal

— Getting the drama out of your head: the morning pages technique from The Artist's Way, and why our own internal therapist only comes through once we clear the noise

— Loving our liver and our routes of elimination — and why high oestrogen is usually recirculation, not something arriving from nowhere

— Three herbs we probably already have: sage (and the studies on hot flushes), rosemary (protector of the liver and the recalibrating brain), and fennel seed (gentle oestrogenic support, including for vaginal dryness)

— Two supplements worth looking at: B vitamins and magnesium — and why we need to meet our herbs and supplements halfway rather than using them like pharmaceuticals

And Salena's closing wisdom: it's like going through puberty — but with all the wisdom of being a woman.

I found this conversation genuinely moving. I could feel how much Salena loves the plants, how she understands the way the body communicates with itself, the way things flow and dance and talk to each other. I hope it lands the same way for you.

Salena's online course Hormones and Menopause is available at https://www.salenawalker.earth/menopause

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Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

Download the healing after abortion course: https://www.thesacredwomb.com/store/Healing-After-Abortion-Course-p658419675

I want to set up the context for this episode because it’s so important that you know I’m sharing this from a place of love, years of experience working with women, compassion, understanding and no judgment. 

My perspective is non-religious, non-dogmatic, and most importantly – comes from an experience of working in an environment of respect. 

Here are the main elements to consider when healing after abortion:

Identifying What’s Stuck

Themes and beliefs can get stuck when we’ve had an abortion. So that is where we need to start in our healing process because if we try and do the other steps before, it doesn’t work. Our starting point is to tune into the body and feel into what’s the belief about oneself that means we can’t come to peace with what happened. 

Once we identify what’s looping around, we then take our focus off healing from the abortion and work with the theme within our psyche; in this life, through our soul’s journey, and from any generational imprints.

Communing With The Spirit That Didn’t Come Through

Every woman I have worked with to heal after abortion – the spirit is okay, they’re not harmed. Knowing that they’re okay often comes as a huge relief, and helps bring a sense of peace and completion to the experience.

Recalibrating The Body

At conception, our maternal instinct gets activated and there’s an alchemical process that prepares our body for gestation, birth and motherhood.

So it’s really helpful to do some deep, slow bodywork to allow for the completion of that somatically.

Grieving

Having space to grieve with no time limit is helpful, and if your grief feels like it’s dissipating gradually over time, then that’s the natural process of it. 

However, if the grief keeps looping around, then it becomes a trauma loop in itself, and that’s when we need to get underneath it and have a look at what the stuck themes are. 

Self-Compassion vs ‘Forgiveness’

Forgiveness is banded around in the new age psychology world, and my experience of it is that forgiveness doesn’t truly exist. 

What I’ve discovered is that 100% of the time there is no judgment from source energy – NONE – because Source is love. Once we experience that for ourselves, the self-judgement dismantles, all the distorted beliefs about ourselves dissolve, and we can truly come to peace within. 

Energising The Womb Centre

We need to help our womb centre to re-energize because we’ve often pulled away from it due to the emotional, spiritual and physical stress we’ve been through. 

We need to have a good amount of energy in our womb to help our cycle clear out debris; physically or spiritually.

3 Ceremonies To Heal After Abortion

Miscarriage: 9 Guidelines To Heal Emotionally & Spiritually

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Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

To heal our womb means to dissolve all the ‘stuff’ we’ve been holding in there, restore its true purpose and reconnect the whole womb centre with the rest of our system.

To do this we need to consider six aspects:

• the physical womb
• the metaphysical womb
• gestation: time in our mothers’ womb
• the split of unified energy into masculine and feminine
• the collective womb
• detox and nutrition

This episode is an overview of these elements – and over the coming few months I’ll be releasing an episode going deeper into each aspect.

THE PHYSICAL WOMB: THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE
The menstrual cycle is a whole cycle, and its purpose is to guide us to embody our full range of states of being each month. This range differs during different chapters in our lives. So to restore the true purpose of the cycle, we need to be able to tune into the natural undercurrent of this cycle every day. 

THE METAPHYSICAL WOMB: THE ENERGETIC WOMB
The blueprint upon which the physical womb forms. It contains all the information about how we feel about being a woman:

• generational imprints
• subconscious beliefs from other lifetimes and our soul’s journey
• cultural & social programming

These beliefs can have to do with what it is to be a woman, disliking the subjugated position we’ve held in society is a big one, deep down for women. It often shows up as not wanting to be a woman, and that needs unblending from not liking the position women have collectively been in.

GESTATION: THE TIME IN OUR MOTHERS’ WOMB
During our time in our mother’s womb, we are alive, we are conscious and our attachment template, brain and nervous system are all forming in response to mum and our environment. 

This process incorporates not only gestation but also:

• The place we were at before we incarnated ‘between lives’
• conception
• landing in the womb
• gestation
• landmark events
• birth

This is powerful work and I will be releasing an episode solely on this topic.

UNIFICATION OF OUR MASCULINE & FEMININE ASPECTS
I have produced a full podcast on this, so I’ll just summarise it here. 

So basically, as women – when we restore our true masculine nature and unify it in the body with our feminine energy, it helps to restore and embody our internal authority, internal structure and ability to bring energy into matter.

THE COLLECTIVE WOMB: RESTORING OUR CREATIVE SOVEREIGNTY
Our metaphysical womb is connected to The Great Mother, to which all wombs are connected. Even if we don’t feel it, have turned away, or don’t believe it exists, the connection is there.

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Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.

I explore 3 core issues that I see over and over again in my work, particularly with women. I describe how each particular aspect shows up, the root cause, and what to do about it.

Perpetually Putting Others’ Needs Before Our Own

THIS LOOKS LIKE

A hypersensitivity to what others are feeling and what they possibly need. After very quickly and automatically scanning the other person, we quickly attempt to regulate, fix, and advise them (without them asking) into a state where we have some sense of safety or security.

When we have this pattern of relating in our nervous system, people often describe themselves as empaths or highly sensitive. However, the reality is that we’re hypervigilant.

I should add that our current societal structure rewards women for doing this! 

Over-Functioning In Relationships
believing it’s our partner that needs to get help

THIS LOOKS LIKE

Becoming fixated on our partner needing to change so that the relationship can work; where they can grow, what they need to do, believing that IF ONLY they would go to therapy, stop doing this or start doing that, then the relationship would be ok. 

If we’re genuinely doing our healing work, then we also need to look at why we are with someone who isn’t. That IS our attachment work. Parts of us that might be waiting or hoping for connection, rather than being able to assess if we’re still a good match. The perpetual trying to make things work is part of our attachment wounding and attempts to get a parent to love us.

So if you’re persuading someone to be nice to you, to like or love you, then it’s time to look at that perpetual try. Once that is understood and mostly dissolved, we can think more clearly, assess the situation as it is, and make a clear decision from our adult selves.

Staying in love-less relationships (particularly thinking it’s for the children’s sake), getting breadcrumbs of something that looks or feels like love, over-understanding a partner (you’re not his psychologist), we’re enabling the notion that he’s a little boy, and ignoring that we are also operating from a younger wounded place.

Trying To Get Unmet Childhood Needs To Be Met By Parents – As An Adult

THIS LOOKS LIKE

It’s the perpetual hoping, waiting, trying, longing for the love we didn’t get, and trying to get that from the people who couldn’t give that when we were young.

Yes, sometimes we humans do change, we do wake up. However, if your parents weren’t in a state of growth and development when we were children, the chances are high that they won’t be for the duration of their lifetime.

Sometimes, parents do awaken and do the work needed to develop themselves and have better relationships. In these cases, it comes from the parents’ decision. It doesn’t come from their adult children persuading them. It’s their decision entirely to look within themselves.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Melanie Swan is a Trauma Resolution Specialist, Womb Medicine Woman, Perimenopause Guide, and host of The Sacred Womb Podcast. 

With over 24 years of clinical and metaphysical experience, she supports women to resolve repeating patterns at the root, heal the womb, and navigate perimenopause as a profound initiation into their true nature. 

She leads the Womb Medicine Woman Training® and is currently writing her first book, Sacred Womb, Sovereign Woman.

The Sacred Womb Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.