'Soft & Fierce: Facilitating Instinctual Boundaries For Birth & Motherhood'

​ (Artist:  @mindfulmamamentor /Hunter Clarke Fields)

soft and fierce

soft and fierce
​
soft and fierce

The enormous journey for a mother from pre-conception to the postpartum can challenge and rearrange her on every level of her being. It will highlight her entrenched ways of doing life, and also her default ways of managing stressful situations. 
The Appease or Fawn response is known to be rooted in early trauma as a way of protecting ourselves when feeling psycho-emotionally or physically vulnerable. This attachment imprint of the ‘good child syndrome’ within family dynamics is usually the result of cumulative moments of not having the need for security and safety sufficiently met in childhood rather than the result of a definable traumatic experience. It is often reinforced through cultural conditioning where submissive behaviour is encouraged in females. 
Fawning can be activated in challenging moments during the perinatal journey as the person’s automatic survival response. All too often, it leads to the birthing family handing over their inner authority and submitting to the agendas of others, in particular maternity care systems. Along with the Freeze response, it is under-recognized as a protective survival pattern of birthing mothers when overwhelming challenges arise in pregnancy, birth and the postpartum. Unlike Fight-Flight responses, both Fawning and Freezing can be hard to pinpoint. The birthing person’s true boundaries can often be seriously compromised in either of those survival states. When these distress signals are not accurately picked up by doulas and other perinatal professionals, there may be lost opportunities to prevent trauma in birthing families.
Our fast-paced, box-ticking lifestyles do not promote access to our instinctual intelligence or agency. And yet, this as we know is what’s necessary for normal physiological or undisturbed birth to become a reality. Birth preparation that focusses on true embodiment of a primalnature, facilitates the understanding of our protective patterns, and cultivates clear boundaries with access to inner Yes, No and Mayberesponses can help couples get ahead of outworn protective patterns from their past and step into parenthood with greater confidence and ease. 
The presentation will explore some of these themes and culminate in a simple process for tapping into a felt-sense of instinctual boundaries which can be shared with the families you support.

Nisha Gill

Nisha Gill draws from her work in the fields of trauma, birth and female embodiment to create a unique suite of services for families along the perinatal continuum. 
As a Somatic Experiencing® (trauma) Practitioner, counsellor, embodiment teacher, birth educator, and previously a birth and postnatal doula, Nisha applies a range of bodymind approaches to the resolution of trauma as well as birth preparation and postnatal care for families. Her special focus is birth, developmental, sexual, pre & peri natal, medical and surgical traumas and their prevention.
The common thread through her all her work is an emphasis on our profound mammalian heritage as humans. Nisha supports women to cultivate their instinctual boundaries for pregnancy, birth and parenting via Primal Mama® practices and other embodiment processes. 
Nisha’s overall mission is to facilitate perinatal experiences for babies and their families to the blueprint of birth which they can then carry into their lives from this formative time. She delivers trauma education to birth professionals, body-centred practitioners, sexuality coaches, and families. Applying a neuro-physiological or Polyvagal lens to trauma, Nisha supports birth workers to value more wholly their therapeutic presence with the families they serve in minimizing trauma and promoting resilience.
Website: feminineinstincts.com.au
Instagram: feminine_instincts
Facebook: Feminine Instincts - Trauma I Embodiment I Perinatal
Birth Trauma Awareness

Speaker Sponsor ~ Hygieia Health

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Hygieia Health Ltd is a not-for-profit organisation, a wing of the School of Shamanic Womancraft. We are dedicated to the prevention and treatment of birth-related and perinatal trauma.
We are dedicated to the sacred work of birth and the impact it has on the physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of women, their families, and birth workers. We believe that “Peace on Earth begins at Birth,” as Jeanine Parvarti Baker so poignantly stated. We strive to provide birth workers, obstetricians, midwives, and doulas with the knowledge and skills necessary to care for themselves and others, and to return birth to its rightful place as a profound rite of passage.
Our mission is to support women on their journey to childbirth, ensuring that they receive safe and trauma-free birth services and support. We aim to raise awareness of the occurrence and consequences of birth trauma and provide women and birth workers with the tools, education, resources and support they need to prepare for, and experience, a safe, positive birth.
​https://hygieiahealth.org/

Retracing, rekindling and reclaiming inner knowing
​for more attuned birthing in our modern times