In this introduction to dissociation, Gordon talks us through:

• What is dissociation
• How do we know if we’re dissociating
• Starting to relate to what we have pushed away
• ‘Separating to connect’ & finding ways to respond to the patterns of reaction, rather than just reacting
• Low arousal dissociation and high arousal dissociation
• Why dissociation is there for a reason
• Creating a sense of safety before connecting to what was previously too much to feel (creating a mis-match)
• When and how dissociation dismantles
• A scale of dissociation and how it can manifest in daily life
• The difference between re-membering whilst present and becoming lost in the experience
• Normalising dissociation and how we can start thinking about it in our mental health systems.

ABOUT GORDON BARCLAY

Gordon Barclay was an NHS consultant psychiatrist in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland until 2019, now works privately in Glasgow and is an active CRM® Trainer and Supervisor, and has a special interest in the treatment of psychological trauma and dissociation.

Contact Gordon on [email protected]

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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.

A medicine poem about the last chapter of menstruation and the myth of the peri-menopause struggle.

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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.

This is a Medicine Poem. The words come with an energy with the intention of shifting consciousness. Become the poem and see where it takes you...

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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.

You have a name. But is it actually yours?

Most women are born with their father's surname. If they marry, they take their husband's. Somewhere in all of that — a woman's own lineage, her own name — never existed. And most of us have accepted this so completely, we've stopped noticing it entirely.

In this episode, I sits with a question that's been brewing for a while: why, in a world where women own homes, own land, vote and lead — are we still giving up our name?

This is not a lecture. It's not a criticism of any woman's choices. It's an honest, direct, quietly radical conversation about a cultural programme that's been running so long it's become invisible.

I explore:

— Why women don't have their own lineage name — and what that's quietly saying to our daughters and sons — The distinction between what we've changed as women, and what we haven't — The story of what happened when she told a man she was going to keep her name (and what his response revealed) — How she chose her own name — and the shift in empowerment that followed — What Spain does differently, and why it matters — The alternative: both names, equal lineage, equal weight

Before you listen, I asks just one thing — let it digest. Sit with it for a few days before you react. Let your system dream on it, and then see how the world looks.

This episode is an invitation, not a prescription.

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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.

These are some of the key ways I support the health and vitality of my menstrual cycle with nutrition.

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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 First Period is a portal to our unique gifts, creative sovereignty and cyclical power, and how, as adults we can revisit our first blood, retrieve our Maiden self, restore our natural gifts and recalibrate our menstrual cycle!

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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.

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.

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.

Uma Dinsmore-Tuli is back on the podcast to talk about her latest initiative; The Yoni Shakti Movement.

Their crowdfunding campaign is now complete and they raised way over target, so this campaign is going ahead!

We Talk About:

• The overt and covert ways women are abused in Yoga
• What enables covert abuse to happen and how it can be woven into the very fabric of yoga teacher training
• The culture of ‘by-standerism’, bullying and normalisation of abuse
• Corrections, being lined up like soldiers and everyone doing the same thing at the same time
• Devolving power of our bodies to people outside of us – where a woman’s body or cycles get in the way of the yoga practices
• How women of colour are treated and the yoga stereotype of skinny, white, rich yogi (nothing wrong with that, but that is what’s widely promoted).
• How our own shame of menstruation is keyed into and twisted.

How Do We Weed Out The Disempowering Teachings In Yoga?

• Hear the voices of the survivors and allies
• Talk about this in a safe space and get support
• If everyone knows about it, then the perpetrators have nowhere to go
• Be educated to see and understand bystander culture

Uma has put together:

• Womb Manifesto
• 13 Warning Signs
• 9 Calls To Action

What We Can Do Practically

• Read the campaign kit and get it to your local yoga teacher
• Share information in the Yoni Shakti Movement Facebook Group – so we’re building a living network so that we actually have each others backs!

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.

On this incredibly important topic, Britt describes that sharing our story in the presence of a compassionate and skilful witness can be incredibly powerful medicine for healing trauma.⁣
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AND…⁣
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From a nervous system perspective, telling a story the way it happened chronologically can further install the traumatic narrative in the brain and make symptoms worse.⁣

In this episode Britt shares with us what usually happens when a trauma narrative is told in order and gives really clear guidance on what to do instead.

We talk about:

• Euphoric Recall and Traumatic Recall
• Telling stories in a healing way vs a re-traumatising way
• Dissociation as a helpful coping mechanism
• Setting the structure for sharing stories in a skillful way
• Tools to use if you’re an over-sharer
• A great question to ask the group leader if you’re thinking of joining a women’s circle

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.