Pleasure, Sexuality, and Birth: Reclaiming Your Body as Sacred

Introduction and Welcome

Britta: Hello folks, and welcome to Transformed by Birth, a podcast about the rite of passage through pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host, Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and an emotional deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here.

Today's episode is all about sexuality and pleasure, so cozy up with a cup of tea - I've got mint tea in my mug today - or take us along for a walk and join us as we explore the role of pleasure and sexuality in the journey from pregnancy and into parenthood. Let's begin the way we do by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do or just take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is in honor of pleasure.

Perhaps oddly, pleasure is a bit of a tricky topic. There are a number of awkward bedfellows in conversations around birth and new parenthood, including topics like loss, pain, struggle, surrender - lots of those pooh-poohed ideas in the over culture - but also among those are pleasure and sexuality. I notice in myself that I bristle a bit at the idea that is often talked about in some birth circles, that if we just change our thoughts or beliefs about birth, that we can create an experience that is only pleasurable. I bristle, in part, because I fear such an expectation sets folks up for wildly missed expectations and potentially even trauma. And on the other hand, I feel in my bones, or maybe it's actually in my womb, that I feel and know the connection between sex and birth, as well as the link between pain and pleasure. These conversations can be tricky to navigate, which is why I'm so excited to be joined by today's guest.

Sheila Kamara Hay is a certified trauma-informed, somatic female sexuality and empowerment coach and the founder of Ecstatic Birth. She specializes in an integrative approach to sexuality and pleasure to support clients in releasing blocks, feeling more and opening to their fullest sexual expression. She's a recognized visionary in childbirth education who has brought sexuality and pleasure to the forefront of birth preparation and support - not something easy to do, I might add. I don't want to have to traverse through these waters unaccompanied, and I am so grateful to have Sheila here so that we can wade through this turbulent unknown territory together. Plus, I have to say, how many times did I just get to say the word sexuality in this intro? That alone tells me this is going to be a juicy conversation. Juicy - get it?

Okay, well, welcome, Sheila. I'm so glad you're here.

Sheila: Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Britta. I'm really excited to be here, and so ready to dive into this conversation. It's big, it's important, and I'm so here for it.

Why These Conversations Are Challenging

Britta: I feel you. Let's link arms and walk in, because it's tricky. So why is this tricky? Talk to me about your take on why talking about sexuality and pleasure around birth, pregnancy, new parenthood is so riddled with landmines.

Sheila: I mean, it really is. There's lots and lots of reasons, and I think you hit on some of the major ones in the intro. First, this idea that, like, do women really need another standard to strive towards, to achieve, like, another kind of impossible standard? Are you kidding me? Not only do I have to just survive, push out a baby. Now I have to have an orgasm while doing it. Like, f you.

Britta: I want to high five you right now. That is a part of it. What else?

Sheila: So there's that. There's the fact that we don't understand birth as a sexual act, even though, like, duh, take a moment. Pause. Think about it. You create life with your sexual body. You birth life with your sexual body. Birth is actually the culmination of the sexual act, but we don't process it in that way. We see sexuality as very, very separate from children. We keep them very far apart - sexuality a little bit more in the shadows. Babies pure, sexuality, not so much, and to mix the two, can feel perverse. So even just saying the words "birth is a sexual act" is probably triggering a lot of people right now. It used to trigger me, even though I know it to my bones. I remember when I first started sharing saying it out loud, and have this inner cringe. Now, I can say it pretty freely, but this is a huge piece of the reclamation we need - to understand birth as a sexual act.

When you understand birth as a sexual act, then you can start to see, "Oh, wow. This is why this is so difficult," because what's our relationship to sexuality? What's our relationship to our body? There are so many different factors that go into that, but unfortunately, we know that a lot of women have experienced firsthand trauma. We also know that whether or not you have experienced firsthand trauma, that there is a cultural level of trauma around what it means to be in a female body, our ancestral inheritance, our family history. So it gets really, really tricky on the personal level.

And then on the more institutional level, our systems and structures are not treating birth as a sexual act. They're treating birth as this emergency that the birthing mom has to be saved from. They're treating her body as the object through which the baby's delivered from, not her as an active participant, not really honoring it as a rite of passage, not really honoring that this is an intimate part of female sexuality. And when people say to me, "How could you even say that birth could be pleasurable?" I'll say, "Well, okay, if you understand birth as a part of female sexuality, in the same body we all understand that sex can be highly pleasurable, highly painful - same person, same body. Unfortunately, most women can understand both ends."

Britta: And sometimes at the same time.

Sheila: And sometimes at the same time exactly. Sometimes at the same time, that challenging to grok idea that sometimes there's pleasure in some pain, and pain in pleasure. And then I'm gonna add in that folks in the LGBTQ community have also a whole potential landscape of trauma around sexuality that can also play into their relationship in birth also. So even if you don't identify as a birthing mom, there can be a lot of different aspects here.

The Challenge of Embodiment

Sheila: Yeah. So I think what you're really touching on is, what's our relationship with our bodies? What's it like to be in your body? What's it like to be connected to the sensations within? For a lot of people, being in the body can feel really scary, and there's a level of dissociation that happens. And I would argue that for almost everybody, we're not really raised and trained to be in our bodies. We're very much in our heads, our energies in our heads. We're constantly putting our energy out. So birth really requires us to be in our bodies, to feel the sensations within, to let our body guide us, to know how to move, how to express, how to allow labor to flow, and that's a real challenge for a lot of people.

Britta: Well said. And as you said that, and I don't know if the listeners, if you are feeling this as well, but as you said that, I actually took inventory of what was happening in my body right now, like the ability to just transit up into the head, even as we're sitting here across from each other while being on opposite sides of a continent, but being in that up here, and as you said it, it was just a moment to remind me to drop into my body, and I noticed my armpits getting a little sweaty, and it's a warm day here, but I've got the AC off because it's too darn noisy for the podcast, and just taking a moment to actually become embodied. And that really is important and a practice, isn't it? It's a practice, and it's one that can be challenging and confrontive and deeply healing.

Sheila: Yeah.

Somatic and Trauma-Informed Work

Britta: So talk to us about your work is somatic and trauma informed. Unpack that a little bit for us, like the coming into our bodies as actual supportive work for birth.

Sheila: Yeah, there's so much I can say here. So our body has so much wisdom, and it also holds a tremendous amount of memory - memory that we might be conscious of and memory that we might not be conscious of. So when you start a practice of consciously connecting to your body at the most basic level - sensation - this is how we understand what our body is telling us. You feel an urge to use the bathroom. It's coming to you through sensation. You feel hungry. It's coming to you through sensation. Most people are aware of these really loud, kind of primal sensations. But when you start to connect to your body, you'll find that there's a whole landscape of sensations. What it feels like along your cheek is very different to what it feels like along your chest and your fingertips and your legs.

Coming into the body and starting to connect with all of these sensations starts to give a feeling of - starts to cultivate a feeling of safety as best as you're able, that you can be present with the sensations, starts to cultivate a feeling of connection and trust and safety. Now, if there are things that have been suppressed, things that you haven't been wanting to feel, things that you have consciously or unconsciously been holding in your body but are avoiding the memory, those can come up too, because all of a sudden it's like, "Oh my gosh, she's here, she's present, she's paying attention," and then your body wants to speak.

And so the process of coming into connection with the body is really beautiful and wondrous. And it can be like getting to know a very intimate lover or a very intimate friend. And your body, I would argue, is your primary relationship. You're in your body your whole life. Your body is with you every second of every day. So cultivating this relationship, it goes way beyond birth. It's really a beautiful way to tap into what is true for you, what is real for you, what feels right, as opposed to what makes sense up here. And when you start to navigate your choices for birth, for mothering, for your life, from that place of body connection, you're tapping into all the different layers of wisdom available to you, including your mental and rational wisdom.

Britta: Right? It's not separate from - it can layer.

Ecstatic Birth and Individual Alignment

Sheila: Yeah. So for me, the work here is when you come into connection to the body, then you can start to tap into the wisdom of the body, and that can really guide you in navigating some of your options in birth. One of the things that I'm really passionate about sharing is ecstatic birth is not - it doesn't look a certain way. When you think about the feeling of ecstasy, I could say, when was the last time you experienced ecstasy? You and I, we probably have very different memories of what that was.

Britta: Right now, mine involves my grandson.

Sheila: I love that. And the memory that's coming forward for me is like jumping into a cold pool on a hot day. So that's a great feeling, very different, but still, both of those, you can feel the deliciousness in it. So it's not about giving birth in a certain way in a certain place with a certain person. It's none of these outer conditions. It's really about what's in alignment for you. What is right for you. For some people, a home birth is the best option. For some people, it's really not. And so when you come into the body, you can start to feel your way through these decisions. You can start to feel if a practitioner is in alignment with you or not, which, by the way, when you have your baby, your baby can't speak, you're going to be feeling, you're going to be guided by that inner sense of how to best care for your baby. So this is really invaluable.

Pregnancy as an Invitation to Embodiment

Britta: Would you say that - and maybe you see this in your work with the folks that you work with - that pregnancy is like an invitation to become more embodied? Is it a place where folks go, "Oh, wait, I have a body and now, what am I going to do with that" and move toward that and with your work, can then carry it into the rest of their lives? Talk to me about like, is it in pregnancy? Is it for birth? Is it for postpartum? Is it all of it?

Sheila: I think when a person gets called is going to be very different and highly personal to the person. But I do think pregnancy offers this opportunity, because your body is doing this wondrous thing. And gestation is something that really, you don't need all that much input into - it's just kind of happening, and it's amazing. And this whole human is being grown inside of your body. And so for some people, not all, it does have this activating factor of, "Okay, there is a looming due date, this amazing, incredible thing is going to happen with your body." And so it can be a really activating factor. And "Okay, I want to prepare. I want to get ready for this experience in the best way that I can."

Britta: Unfortunately, is it also - let me Sorry, I'll let you get back to that. But I'm wondering if there's also a way in which, when we're pregnant, there's so much change occurring quite rapidly in the body that kind of draws attention to the body in a way that we may have been able to ignore when we're not pregnant, and suddenly it's like, "My feet hurt, my back aches, I'm nauseous," and it's like, "Oh, I'm not just a head. I have this body that is saying, hey, what about me" as a entity filled with expressions of that pregnancy that are often called symptoms?

Sheila: Yeah, that's a really big point. So I wonder if that - yeah, you kind of can't ignore it. Can't ignore it, which, you know, like, "Oh, I'm hungry. I'm too busy right now. I gotta do something else. Oh, I'm tired. I just..." - we're so used to kind of being like, "Later," ignoring it, pushing it away. But to your point, it's like, you're pregnant. You can't ignore that. It's not going away. It's only getting stronger. It's only speaking to you more loudly.

Britta: I'm just unpacking this with you right now, but I'm wondering, I mean, that really is, it can be, I don't know, a very embodied experience when we're used to being able to cut off.

Sheila: Yeah, and let's talk about kind of the elephant in the room, which is the fear around what will happen to your body in birth. I think that can also be an activating factor. So for some people, they feel that fear and they just kind of put blindfolds on, dissociate. But some people, they see that fear and they're like, "Okay, bring it. I'm gonna meet this. I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna understand, I'm gonna prepare. I'm gonna make sure that my body is well taken care of, that I'm surrounded by the right people, that I've done whatever I need to do to prepare for this wondrous experience."

Pleasure as a Holistic Birthing Tool

Britta: But it's a lot. Okay, so I interrupted you, so I'm going to bring you back. So we were saying that folks may find it along the path of pregnancy. I mean, they can find it at any point, but when they start to practice embodiment, and they start to remember that they have a body, and maybe that's in pregnancy, they also may start pointing their attention toward birth. So take us to that next part of birth preparation piece.

Sheila: There's two ways I really think about it. Pleasure in childbirth. So I really like to bring us to this very basic place of pleasure is a holistic birthing tool, not this unrealistic expectation that you're going to be in labor and then there'll be this culminating orgasm and that's something we have to achieve. No, let's just put that aside.

Britta: I love that we're going to be like, hello. That's not what we're saying.

Sheila: That's not what we're saying. If it happens to you, I fully celebrate you - amazing. We're not striving towards that. We're not putting that standard on you. But I do think it's important to talk about what's possible. It is possible. If you don't know what's possible, it's not possible for you. So I really like to say, first of all, this idea of an ecstatic birth. It's an ideal, and ideals are meant to inspire us. So it's really opening up the possibility, which is what we're doing in this conversation, the possibility that childbirth can be pleasurable, can be transformative, can be empowering, can be blissful, can be ecstatic, can be orgasmic. This is true. It can be all of these things.

Now, how do you get there? Goes back to this idea that birth is a sexual act. When you think about sex, when you think about your biological design and sex, it's not that you feel nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden there's an orgasm when you're having sex. No. Pleasure is a part of the experience. The give and take of pleasure is a part of the experience. It helps your tissues engorge, it helps you lubricate, and it makes the sexual act so much more pleasurable. So same is true of birth. If you're going to look at pleasure as a holistic birthing tool. It's not just about having your labor and then expecting something, some kind of experience. No, it's actually about consciously using pleasure as a holistic birthing tool.

We know pleasure stimulates oxytocin flow. This is why doula care is so effective, because doulas are a pleasure tool. Gaze into my eyes, rub my back - the connection stimulates oxytocin flow.

Britta: All you had to do was say those couple of things, and I'm leaning into you, being like, "Yeah, okay, look into my eyes." You can feel it.

Sheila: You can feel it. And so there's such a wide spectrum of pleasure tools that you can use in birth to help you with the flow of your labor. That oxytocin is the governing hormone of labor. It determines the flow of your labor. It's what the pharmaceutical industry is trying to replicate with Pitocin. But Pitocin has none of the yumminess of eye gazing, stroking, hugging, cuddling, kissing, clitoral stimulation. It has none of the yumminess, but you can give yourself those things. You can ask your partner to give you those things. You can ask your doula to give you those things. So learning how to use pleasure consciously as a holistic birthing tool to support you in moments of intensity. We're back to this idea that pain and pleasure can exist in the same body. When you turn towards pleasure in intensity, you can actually transmute the intensity of sensation. You help your body relax, you help yourself get through to that space that's more expansive. So this is really beautiful, because it doesn't matter the circumstances of your birth. It doesn't matter where you are, who you're with. If you're using pleasure consciously as a holistic birthing tool, you're inherently elevating your experience. Because same experience without pleasure, with pleasure, it's already elevated. So that's the most simple layer.

Britta: Yeah. I mean, you just brought into my mind an image when you said, "Wherever..." I went to a cesarean birth in my mind, and I was picturing cesarean births that I've been at where partners rubbed and kissed foreheads and touched hands and whispered sweet nothings into the ear. And those were connections of pleasure, and I would even say sexuality like a connection of that secret sauce between a couple.

Sheila: Definitely, and we can feel the deliciousness of that when you're describing that. So that goes back to ecstasy is not a circumstance, it's how you feel. So how do you bring that into your birth, even if it's not the birth you were dreaming of, even if unexpected things happen, because unexpected things do happen all the time in birth. So having that orientation and training is really, really powerful.

Practical Approaches to Cultivating Pleasure

Britta: So how do you do that? How do you - I know this is your secret sauce, and your special seasoning. How do you support folks in developing a relationship to pleasure? So I kind of heard step one is acknowledging and redefining birth as a sexual act. Did I get that right?

Sheila: That's absolutely right.

Britta: And then start to get into the body. Tell me more.

Sheila: Yeah. So birth is a sexual act. The second would be claim pleasure as a holistic birthing tool. Whole spectrum of things you can do, some are overtly sexual, and some are not. So you can sing, that's a pleasure tool that opens your throat, which opens your cervix. It's not overtly sexual. You can also moan. Everyone expects a birthing woman to make sound, but you can learn to moan in a way that really opens your pleasure center. So there's a lot of - learn the whole spectrum of tools. And this is what I do in my ecstatic birth program called "Oh Baby" for expectant families, really introduce you to the wide spectrum of pleasure tools so that you can use them. You can get to know them. You can use them in your day to day as you're leading up to birth. You can use them for those moments where you feel like "I have no space in my belly." Okay? How can you meet the intensity of that sensation with pleasure? So that's another tenet.

Another tenet is learning how to open to the pleasure that's inherently available to you inside your body. So one is pleasure from the outside. Give yourself pleasure. The other is coming into the body as we were talking about - learning to connect to the sensations, learning to feel, learning to feel pleasure, learning your tools - breath, sound, movement, visualization, which, by the way, are the same tools we use for birth - learning how to use those tools to expand the pleasure in your body. So that's another tenet.

And then we go into the shadow side of birth. How do you dance with the unexpected? How do you disarm your fears? It's really important to look at those things, to look at your patterns. How do you deal with the unexpected in your day to day? Look at those consciously, what works for you, what doesn't. Starting to think about how to weave that into your birth management, how to make your partner aware of that, maybe make your providers or support team aware of that, and then this place of disarming your fears. It's really about looking your fears in the eye, rather than kind of closing your eyes, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Britta: Yeah, not that. That really works - not that, whatever you resist persists mentality like you actually give it energy.

Sheila: Yeah, and it lives in your body. So if you're avoiding it mentally, that lives in your body. And so in birth, all of this energy is pulsing through you. There's nowhere to hide from your own body and the fears that you're holding in them, so as much as you can doing the work ahead to disarm your fears.

Integration and Embodied Practice

Britta: Oh, so good. Yes, I love that one. And I do that in my own classes as well, because I think it's so important. So I'm hearing kind of a real theme happening here that is a lot about engaging in your life in a way that is embodied, that it's not a "read a book, dust off a couple of things and show up at birth ready for ecstatic birth," that there's something far more integrated in what it is that you're speaking to.

Sheila: Yeah, because you know you and I both know you can't birth with your head.

Britta: Well, we try. We do try. Boy, do we try. And in mythology, it does exist. Zeus gives birth from his head to the epic daughter of all daughters, Athena, who is all about wisdom and intellectual wisdom. So there's a whole thing we could unpack there, but yes, in modern over culture, there's such a preference for intellectual knowledge and intellectual preparation in the form of gaining information to be able to give birth from a body with information. And I understand the desire and the longing for information, because when we have fear, fear is hungry for information. I get that, and I also understand it, because that's what we've been trained throughout our society, is information, intellect, head. So there's an unwiring, or a rewiring, and an expansion, or maybe I would call it a rebirth - there you go - to include, and remember, the body. And that actually takes utilizing the body. You can't just do that with your head. You can't talk about becoming embodied with your head. That doesn't work.

So how - how do parents like if somebody is listening, how might they practice? What's one juicy suggestion you have for coming into a practice with themselves?

Sheila: Yeah, I mean, I offer a lot of different practices, and the thing is, it's not that hard. It's not that complicated. Most of the practices I share with my clients are 10 to 15 minutes a day. So just to start - create a 10 minute container to get to know your body, to be with your body, to feel your body. Even if it's as simple as putting an alarm on your phone, putting one hand on your heart, one hand on your womb, closing your eyes and letting your presence and attention land inside your body. So instead of your energy, your presence going out, looking at what's around you, feeling what's happening inside your body, noticing, as if you're inside your body, noticing what's happening in all the nooks and crevices along your torso and your limbs. Really, doing a body scan, but from within, and letting yourself just be and witness those sensations. I would say that's a foundational first step. And for some people that can feel like, "Oh, I can't - that's too much, it's too much." So do it for one minute. If it's too much, do it for two minutes. But what starts to happen when you connect to that body, your body in that way, is you start to notice the nuance of sensations, and you start to build this intimacy with your inner realm that's really beautiful. And then once you have that connection, once you really start having that awareness of what it feels like inside your body. You can start to bring in different tools again - visualization, breath, sound, movement - to start to notice what happens to the sensations in your body with these tools in different ways. And just build the practice like that, but foundationally. Just close your eyes, feel, be with your body. Start building that relationship.

Britta: Yeah, wow, that's a lot just in its own right, and starting small. And if that doesn't work, find something else that does, and just begin the relationship or restart the relationship using one of these tools or practices.

Safety and Boundaries in Body Connection

Sheila: And I think it's important to talk about safety too, because for some people, it doesn't feel safe to come into the body. It doesn't feel safe to connect to the body. So moving at the pace that's right for you, seeking support as you feel you need it to really build that foundation of safety is key. And sometimes that intellect really helps with that. If you have information, if you understand why you're doing what you're doing, it gives you permission to explore those spaces. Whereas if you don't have that mind on board, it can feel like more of a struggle to connect in that way.

Britta: Okay, and so, what are some indicators for folks who may be wanting to do this but find some resistance, like, what are some indicators of finding safety or of not finding safety and needing to take a different approach. Are there ways that we can know when we're touching the edge of growth or touching an edge of "I need to do something very different."

Sheila: Yeah, I would say if you can't, if you feel perpetually dissociated, even if you keep trying to come in, then that would be one indication. Another indication would be if you start to feel, but that feeling feels so overwhelming that you lose your sense of being able to witness yourself in it, that would be another indication.

Britta: And then that's a time to get other support.

Sheila: Yeah, and then sometimes it's just a matter of being really gentle and patient with yourself, where we tend to be kind of mean to our bodies, "Oh, get this done. Come on, move it. Let's power through," all of that mentality. And the body really doesn't respond to that at all. So sometimes it's just a matter of reorienting how you're relating to your body. If you're finding that you're trying to drive your body to something or achieve something, I would invite you to just let go of that and just be, as you would with a small child - curious, patient, gentle. If one practice doesn't work, try a different practice. Sometimes it's really hard for people to go into that surrendered state. So a more active practice can be a way in - a movement practice can be a way in. So just having that sense of curiosity, of what works, what feels good.

Reclaiming Body Ownership in Postpartum

Britta: I love that, that being guided by curiosity feels so important. And what you just said about that tendency to be really mean to ourselves - it breaks my heart, and I know it intimately. I think being in a body in this culture, with social media, it's tough to be in a kind loving relationship with ourselves, and when you spoke about how when we kind of try and force ourselves into something, our body revolts, and that makes me think of birth as well as postpartum, like the amount of pain and suffering that I've witnessed or been shared with, from folks I work with about that unkindness to ourselves in the postpartum. What is the relationship to pleasure and sexuality in that postpartum period when we've gone through this experience of giving birth, whatever that ends up looking like, and we want to find our doorway back to our body if we feel like we've left it?

Sheila: Yeah, I really want to throw sexuality into the mix with that as well, that place where we can be so mean to ourselves. And this is going to answer your question, and I'll go into it a little bit more, but I think it's really important to say that for a lot of us, we've been taught that our bodies exist for somebody else, whether that's our partner's pleasure or our babies for feeding and nurturing. We haven't really taken that journey to claim that actually, our body is ours, first and foremost, primarily ours, and we are the guardians of our body, and our body is a sacred vessel through which new life comes onto the planet. So that is the first layer of "Okay, I am the keeper. This body is not here to serve you or you or you. It's not here to feed you. It's not here to pleasure you. It is here first and foremost as my sacred vessel, and it is my obligation to care for this body, first and foremost."

Britta: Sheila, that's kind of radical, isn't it? Sadly, that makes me want to cry, but it's kind of radical in a culture that is claiming bodies to gestate babies, even after their brain dead, and the energy of nursing as the only option, even when it's really hard for some folks, that the ways that the wagging finger comes in to tell us that our bodies are not our own, really quite plentiful. And so to hear you say, "First, remember this," is quite tender.

Sheila: It is tender, and especially when I think of a new mom, because we have these babies, and we love them so much, and we want to take care of them, and we want to nurture them, and we want to feed them. And so this is why postpartum, so many of us can fall flat on our faces because we forget that actually their well being is intricately intertwined with our well being. So when you self sacrifice, self sacrifice, you're taking both of you down. And the same thing comes with intimacy and sexuality. Feeling like I've heard so many new moms say "I just didn't have desire. But it was the six week mark, and my partner was waiting, and I felt obligated, and it was really painful, and I had to grit my teeth."

Britta: I've heard that too. It's heartbreaking.

Sheila: It is heartbreaking. And when you go down that rabbit hole of gritting your teeth and doing this thing for somebody else. Ultimately, what that does to your body is your body says "You're not listening to me," and it starts to shut down even more and even more and even more. And before you know it, you have no libido and no interest and a whole lot of anger inside of your body that you're not even aware of. So for postpartum, this place of body connection, one of the things I'm most proud of with my work is, yes, it's preparation for birth, but it does reverberate out into motherhood. So all of those gifts that you get in preparing for your birth, you can carry them through, into postpartum, into motherhood, into your whole life. And so having that awareness of your body, your sensations, what your body needs, having that intimate relationship, and knowing that this is the source from which everything else that you're creating emanates, reorients you so that you know that feeding yourself, sleeping well, whatever it is, saying no to sex if that's your truth in that moment, or saying yes to sex if that's your truth in that moment, but really doing it from this place of inner alignment is so important.

Practical Steps for Reconnection

Britta: Yeah, I love that. I remember one of my teachers gave me an assignment, an embodiment teacher that I worked with gave me an assignment of taking a bath or a shower in an awareness of pleasure, where it was just "get in the shower or get in the bath and make it about feeling what I was feeling." And I write about that in Transformed by Birth, in the postpartum chapter for birthing parents, around that feeling of "I've got to get back into my sexual energy," and I often talk about that the doorway is actually through the place of first being back in your body and being able to expand the capacity to feel again. And it can be scary, especially if somebody's had a really hard birth, to be able to come into that space of feeling their body again, feeling embodied. And I love that you're speaking about start there. Start there with yourself.

Sheila: Yeah, because even those places, if you've had a hard birth and you've had a challenging whether it's physical or emotional, when you allow yourself to feel those places, breathe into those spaces, express from those places. It is very healing. It doesn't - it's not locked in you in the same way. And so one of the practices I do with a lot of clients is when you locate a contractive place within you. So if you're pregnant, you've got lots of places that feel tight, uncomfortable, whatever - simple practice of just being in that sensation, your awareness in that sensation and breathing into that just for a minute, shifts everything. And what I loved about what you shared Britta, is you probably had to take showers anyway.

Britta: I did, on occasion, have to take a shower.

Sheila: Right? So the assignment that she gave you was so beautiful because it wasn't actually like you had to do a whole other thing. It was really about training your attention, training your awareness, training your connection to sensation. And that's something you take with you everywhere. Your breath is something you take with you everywhere, moving your body, your sound, your expression, that's something you take with you everywhere. And so when you train to learn to feel more pleasure, orient to pleasure, receive pleasure through your senses, that's a source of nourishment that is available to you anywhere you go, wherever you are, your baby's in your arms. Take a whiff of that head. Oh, pure bliss. So it changes - if you orient like that, you can see how it completely can transform even your postpartum experience, because, let's face it, new parents don't have time to do a whole other thing.

Britta: Oh, absolutely not. But the orientation, your breath is still with you, your awareness is still with you. You can use those and open that capacity to be nourished by this energy flow.

Receptivity and Spiritual Connection

Okay, this is so juicy, but you're making me think also about opening to that nourishment from self and that there is also that practice of being able to open to receive from others, that often in birth, we're like, "I want my partner to do XYZ and this and that, and I want them to do this perfectly" and it's all external focus about what we want them to do, rather than partially relearning and practicing, actually figuring out how to receive, which is also a challenging piece, which can be very powerful and helpful in postpartum, because we need help. We need to receive help. And sometimes, as modern women in the Super Woman era of life, where it's like, do everything ourselves, we're super capable - that can be under trained as well. And I'm hearing in some of what you're sharing, the importance of that practice as well. Did I get that right? Am I hearing that in what you're speaking to?

Sheila: Yeah. I mean, receptivity has so many layers to it. I think you're speaking to a really important one - you can have so many layers of support in the people around you in your immediate realm, but even beyond that, and then you can also - let's just talk about spirituality for a second. Because birth, sex, spirituality, we really need to reclaim how all of these are intertwined. And so then there's these realms of receptivity to the spiritual realm too. And we talk about surrender in birth. We talk about surrender in life. What does that really mean? There's also an energetic surrender in your receptivity and allowing kind of the fabric of the universe to flow through you and hold you and tend to your inner realms. And that energy flow again, is deeply blissful, deeply loving, deeply orgasmic. It's really about learning how to tune in and receive that.

Britta: I just want to give a beat for that one, because that landed very profoundly, that openness, and I loved how you spoke to the connection between surrender and openness, and that is connected, and then in that is also sexuality and spirituality, the opening the channels, opening the heart, opening the body, to be in that space of receiving whatever connection to spirit looks like for you.

Sheila: Yeah? I mean, you know this better than anyone. Birth is so sacred. It's that moment, that rite of passage. And in a lot of spiritual traditions, it's a moment of sacred prayer because the channels are wide open in the body.

Britta: Yeah. And it makes me think of how for many people, going to a particular place helps them connect or open spiritually, whether it is a building that is connected to their spiritual relationship, or nature, or that there are habits that can come in that are reminders of that place of opening, and how that feels like it would then also have a place in birth.

Sheila: Absolutely. So like visualization. What you're speaking to is our capacity to really receive through our visualization. So if you have a place where you feel so safe that you can really surrender, and you can take yourself there in your mind's eye, you can actually feel that in your body, and you can surrender in your energetic body. You can feel that in your channels, that kind of laying open and surrendering. So you can bring a lot of those tools into birth as well. I mean, Hypnobirthing really revolves around this idea of, "Okay, where can you visualize? Where can you take yourself?"

Creating Sacred Spaces for Birth

Britta: Yeah, it's powerful and you can also utilize those practices to help you be very present where you are, where if certain things help you feel safer, what are those things or to help you feel more open? What are those things that you can bring with you to your intended birth location or have around you, if your intended birth location is home or those various different pieces, and which makes me think, and I'm giggling a little bit, because I bet you know what I'm going to refer to here. But there is this fabulous video out of Italy about a couple who are being treated, getting set up to have sex, the way that is typically done for birth. So they're in a hospital room. They're being stripped down and put in paper clothing. They've got the bright lights on. People keep coming in as soon as they start to kiss and connect. And then they're like, "Well, wait, what's happening? You're not getting hard, you're not coming." They're having these engagements about, "Why isn't this working?" And it's so fabulous, I'll find the link and put it in the show notes. But it does speak a little bit to the disconnect between what place, the relationship place has to how we feel about certain things and that it can be tricky in a brightly lit room, very public, strangers coming. I mean, maybe that's some people's thing, but it's not necessarily everybody's thing to suddenly have that feel erotic or sexual or pleasurable. It can feel scary. And so are there things that you recommend for helping create sacred space that points in the direction of facilitating the pleasure cycles, the sexuality, connection that openness and surrender that you found helpful, or folks you've worked with have found supportive?

Sheila: Yeah, I think the first step is just becoming aware of what your parameters are. So if you're birthing at home, you have a lot more flexibility and free rein than if you're birthing at a hospital or maybe even a birthing center. So if you're not birthing at home, really just first getting clear on what are the parameters? Can I dim the lights? Can I bring music? What are kind of the rules that you need to abide by? And I think in what you just shared, it becomes very apparent that our systems and structures aren't actively supporting birth as a sexual act. So it's important that we know this, and for people that choose to give birth in a more institutionalized setting, to have that knowledge, to have that information, and to still make that choice, if it's in alignment for them.

Britta: If it's a choice at all. Some people don't have choice.

Sheila: And so just understanding your parameters, then you can just get creative. Think about all five of your senses. What do you want to see? What do you want to touch? What do you want to hear? What do you want to feel? What do you want to taste? If you're allowed to. And start to think about what you can bring into your birth environment to give you pleasure with all five of your senses. So it could be a poster that motivates you in those moments when you're stuck, it could be a song that really speaks to you or a whole playlist, it could be a lot of different things, essential oils, diffusers. I've heard of people bringing in like the firefly lights to birthing centers. You can really get creative once you know what your parameters are, just get creative with all five of your senses. Ecstasy is a feeling. So going back to the example you gave of the C section, where there's connection, where there's love, where there's touch, you can really bring a lot of those feelings into a wide variety of circumstances. So I never want anyone to feel like, "Oh, I don't have the choice. I can't birth in this way. I have to birth here." Okay, all right, so that's where you're birthing. Let's now figure out how we can make this the best experience possible, how we can make this sacred, special. What's important to you? Do you want to feel love? How do you want to welcome your baby? What are the emotions? What are the sensations that you really want to call in and then start to get creative about how you're going to integrate that.

Britta: I love that. I love thinking about all of the senses, because there tends to be a lot of focus on turn off the lights. Well, that's just one. We've got so many other things. It made you - you brought to mind a client that I had who was deeply, deeply connected to her dogs and was birthing in a hospital, and her biggest concern, not concern but sadness about birthing in the hospital was that her dogs couldn't come, and so she brought the blanket that the dogs lived on with her, and part of my brain is like that blanket smells like dogs, but for her, it's comfort, love. It was more than what it smelled like. It was the smell, it was the touch, it was the symbolism, it was the vibe and the spiritual openness to love through her connection with the dogs. That's exactly it, in a random way, but it worked for her.

Sheila: And I think this really goes back to this place of your body as a sacred vessel. And we think about that moment of getting married. We know that it's a sacred moment, and we want to think about how can we delight ourselves with all our senses in the celebration? And we have no problem. "I want that food, I want that dress. I want these people here. I don't want those people here." No problem. Bring some of that discernment into your birth. Your birth is sacred. It's a sacred moment. Your family is expanding. You're bringing life into the world. How do you want to feel? What do you want to wear? What do you want to hear? How can you delight yourself?

Britta: How can you delight yourself? Now, that's a question I don't often hear around birth, so I think we should let that be a period at the end here. But so Sheila, you and I already spoke about the fact that we could talk for eight hours. That's how we started, before we started recording, is knowing we were going to hit a point where it was like we had to end, but you and I could go on forever. So knowing that it's an incomplete conversation and a rich one, nonetheless. What is - is there anything else you want to share with listeners, and where can they find you? And what are your offerings? Dish the goods.

Resources and Contact Information

Sheila: Thank you. So my website is ecstatic-birth.com, and you can find me on social media under the handle ecstatic birth. In general, I have a ton of complimentary resources. So if you're an expectant mom, birthing person, you want to know how to train, prepare your body for birth, go to my website. I have a free master class for parents. You can get started there. If you want to go deeper, I have a digital program. I take you through the training, step by step. You have access to so many different body practices. We do it together. If you're a birth professional, we really, really need you. We really need more people that can hold - that are not afraid of birth as a sexual act, that don't inwardly cringe, but can really hold the tone for that. I have complimentary resources, also a master class on my website. And for those of you that are like, "Actually, I really want to support this type of birth," I do a practitioner training, which is really an embodiment training. And I also teach a ton of pleasure expansion programs, resources. I get a lot of birth professionals, new parents, new moms in those programs, just to stay in connection to the body, stay in connection to pleasure. So that's all available on my website, which is ecstatic-birth.com.

Britta: Ooh, I love that. I'm getting so excited for that. So as we begin to bring our conversation to a close, I like to end with one question. So are you ready for my one final question? Okay, what's one thing you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel or know during this profound period of their lives that they may not be thinking about?

Final Wisdom

Sheila: I think it's hard to pick just one. The one that I think is most important for expectant families, new parents, to know is there's no right answer. "Right" in air quotes, there's no right answer. It's what's right for you. And so the right answer tends to come from that head place. "What makes sense? What do the experts say? What do people think?" It's all a very intellectual exercise, the right answer. Starting to drop into what is right for you, what is the right answer for you, what is the right choice for you, what is the right choice for your family? What is the right choice for your baby. This applies to birth, this applies to parenting. This applies to everything. So that comes from a deeply embodied place. You can feel that alignment. You can feel what feels right. It's not a place of what makes sense, but what feels right. So letting go of that kind of outer standard and thinking, "Oh, I have to do this, because this is what I'm taught, or this is what I'm told, or this is what society teaches me," let that go and really start to connect to what is true for you, what is right for you, and forge your pathway in that way and really care for your family and raise your family in that way.

Closing

Britta: Sheila, that was beautiful. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to be with you today. Thank you for giving us your time and your wisdom and your heart. I've loved it, and thank you listeners for sharing this time with us. If something today impacted, supported or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produce this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for the podcast and these juicy conversations like today's, please follow rate and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join us on Instagram at transformed by birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of transformed by birth. Now let's gather what we want to take with us from this episode in an inhale and with our exhale. Let's blow out the candle until next time bye. Friends.