Embracing our innate birthing wisdom can lead to profound healing and empowerment for both mothers and babies.
Today, I have Catalina Clark with me, and she shares her journey from traditional midwifery to supporting women who are interested in free birth, challenging conventional notions about childbirth along the way.
So, whether you're expecting, curious about alternative birth practices, or interested in women's health, this conversation will offer you fresh perspectives on one of life's most fundamental experiences: childbirth.
In this podcast episode, Catalina takes us through:
- Who she is as a midwife of healing.
- What is Freebirthing?
- Exploration of birth as a somatic experience.
- Distinction between a "midwife of healing" and traditional licensed midwifery
- Her personal birth experiences and somatic journey.
- Physiological aspects of birth.
- The importance of completing healing cycles.
- The changing landscape of birth practices.
- The legal aspects of midwifery and birth support in different states.
And so much more!
Catalina Clark is a woman, mother, daughter, sister, midwife, and student on the healing path. With 10 years of experience in birth, she has found her way home to supporting women in alignment with the natural world and the power of physiologic birth. As a midwife of healing she continues to walk alongside all those with the willingness to step into the unknown, to untangle stories of the past and return to their hearts.
Connect with her:
Instagram: @catalina.clark
Website: www.catalinaclarkbirth.com
Email: catalinaclarkbirth@gmail.com
Connect with Aimee Takaya on:
Instagram: @aimeetakaya
Facebook: Aimee Takaya
And watch the podcast on Youtube @aimeetakaya
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Free Your Soma, Stories of Sematic Awakening, and How to Live from the Inside Out. I'm Aimee Takaya, and today I have Catalina Clark. She is a midwife of healing, a home birth midwife specifically, ceremonial breathwork, and women's work facilitator.
And we are going to be exploring some of her personal somatic journey regarding birthing and specifically also the concept of rebirthing and what that is, why it's important to know about it as a potential option. And then also kind of looking into the way that birth and the service of birth has a somatic foundation. It's meant to be experienced through our bodies and in connection with one another.
And there's been decades now of having lost that. And many of us are now remembering and coming back into that as a very vital part of this whole birth process, which really is the foundation of how we all came into the world.
So, we're going to have a conversation today and explore all of that. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast, Catalina. We met in person at a couple of events in Joshua Tree not too long ago and hearing your message that you're sharing online and the things that you're talking about. I feel it's really important for more people to be having this conversation. So welcome.
Every day, there is a forgetting, and every moment, there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your Soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love.
C: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here today too, and to share in this experience with you. It's something that I'm really very passionate about, and very excited to be able to share it in this way and from this embodied place of really my own personal experience. Because as a midwife and as a birth worker for the last 10 years, I really had a big shift since my free birth and since becoming a midwife and since really even understanding the languaging around somatics, which was not something that I had access to or had come into my awareness until these last several years.
A: Yeah. I mean, I feel the same way in terms of I think more and more people are discovering the word somatic and it's this beautiful language, as you said, that we might have not had before to talk about these experiences that we're all having as human beings. We're all having a somatic experience, whether we call it that or have words for it or not. But there's something really wonderful about finding the language and being able to actually convey and communicate these experiences at this level.
So thank you. I would love for you to share with our listeners a bit about, you know, as a midwife and, you know, as a midwife or as a normal, like free birth, where is it that you sort of stand in your midwife journey right now, like what kind of service do you provide as a midwife in the spaces that you work?
C: Okay, I'd love to start by really rooting into and grounding into what it means for me to be a midwife appealing and why I call myself that versus a licensed wife or a certified professional midwife, where a title that doesn't fully resonate with me. And that I've come to really this deep understanding of what it means to be a midwife of healing.
And for me, what that means is to be a midwife, because we can think about it this way, a midwife does not deliver your baby. A midwife doesn't give birth to your baby. A midwife doesn't do the work for you.
And a healer doesn't heal you. A healer heals themselves and holds the frequency and the resonance of their own healing and is a reflection back to you of your innate power to find that place for yourself and to hold you accountable in your becoming and to also see you and love you and accept you for who you are in that moment, who you are becoming, who you have been.
And so for me, that is my journey of really loving myself at every stage of the midwife, the mother, the birthing person that I have been in the experiences that I've had and how I have come to practice from this lens today. And the way that I practice is with very deep trust and very deep reverence for women, for the birthing process, for trusting in women to know what's best for them. So my philosophy when I'm working with a woman or a family in any capacity is that I don't know what's best for them.
I don't know their destiny, and my work is to stay very curious and open, and willing to go with people on their journey. And it's changed me from a really more midwife-led practice to a mother-led practice. And there's something common you'll hear in midwifery is patient-centered care or mother-centered care. And although I thought that was what I was doing in the early days because it's because it is seems so different than what's happening in the hospital, it feels like it's such a better option.
But there is still a lot of midwifery that is very much wrapped up into the medical system and into the medical model. And so my approach is very different in the way that I come from this other lens of innately trusting women to choose for themselves what is best for them instead of telling anybody what to do or how to do it while at the same time meeting people where they're at, offering gentle guidance when asked upon, and not needing to be needed.
Like my clients guide me. I'm not actually a birth guide or a pregnancy guide. I don't tell people what to do. They tell me what they need and I support them in their unique individual needs and situations.
A: That's a beautiful distinction. And I think that the type of woman who's going to resonate so much with what you're saying is going to be someone who has already been working on their innate trust of themselves and trust of their bodies for a while. Like you're calling in a certain caliber of person because that person who's hearing this and going, oh my god, I need to develop that in me.
That's something I am working with is that trust in myself. They're possibly the type of person who's not going to really want to do the whole hospital birth thing or doesn't really want a doctor telling them what to do with their body. You're speaking to something really wonderful here that I think more and more people are waking up to, which is that they don't really want to be controlled and they don't really want to be told what to do.
They want to be invited into that deeper level of trust. So it's a beautiful way for you to show up where you're almost, in some ways, there may be a person that you're helping to them deeper initiate that trust with themselves by showing up as not their guide or their teacher, but as their helper. And that offering of your assistance versus that sort of parental situation. Right? Right.
C: And that's where this control and authority comes in and who is really the authority in the room in the birth and that person is and should always be the mother. However, in a system where women are giving their power away to a system with the thought that they're going to take care of me and they're going to make sure I'm all right and my baby's all right, but at what cost and that cost usually comes at the mother.
And as much as birth, which I'd love to talk about is quite possibly the ultimate possible experience for self-healing through the body. It is also an opportunity or an experience that can lead to great trauma in the body when we give that away and lead to disconnection and disassociation.
And so that is why I hold it with such reverence because it is such a delicate balance for each and every single woman and their their somatic experiences throughout their life that have led to their birth and that have led to their choices. So it can either be a huge moment for healing and integrating and connecting and coming back into the body, and it can also be a trigger for more trauma.
A: Oh yeah, no that's that's extremely true that it can we've kind of like a portal that takes you you know into another dimensional reality of like who you are, you know who you're becoming or who you have been. Like I've worked with a number of women in the last year who had you know somatic experiences that were like vibrations of their birth experience.
Like they had their birth experience and then three years later it's still affecting them in some way. That feeling of not being an authority in their own body, you know of having kind of this you know medical experience that may have been traumatic.
Maybe some of them, you know, bled out. I had one woman who was like you know had a hemorrhage and almost died and I know that you had something that's not that experience maybe I can't remember, but you had a similar kind of like near-death experience in your birth experience or post-birth experience right.
But these things can like vibrate out into the rest of our lives and what you're pointing to is it can be a source of great healing, and it can be a source of great turmoil as well. Did you know that your muscles are holding on to thoughts, memories, and feelings? If you have a tight neck or back you're not just getting old you're experiencing a build-up of tension from the life you've lived.
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C: Right and that's where holding this reverence for physiologic birth and realizing that a lot of the reasons why most of the reasons why these complications happen are due to interventions in the process of physiologic birth.
In the disruption of the nervous system and the hormonal system from functioning in its optimal, most design precise, extremely advanced technological way that our bodies operate and yet also so simple like we just don't interrupt the process and normally usually things go well and this is why we have all survived as humans in these bodies and as women and otherwise well if that system didn't work I don't know that we would be here in the way that we are on this planet.
And I do strongly believe that it wasn't because of the forefront of modern medicine that saved women and babies from themselves, but this is the story that we have been ingrained with most of us from our own birth experiences in a time where hospital birth was almost 100% now we're at like 95%.
So, we're still talking about a home birth as a very small subset of the population and we're talking about free birth which is maybe a 1% or less so we're still talking very small so we're talking on like the cultural programming level these are rites of passages and initiations that are being removed and in traditional cultures who have maintained initiations and rites of passage.
I see these as embodied experiences where you meet yourself and you meet your edges and you meet death and you meet fear and you have all of these experiences to orient to stress and to life and to death and to the body and to the mind and birth is an opportunity to do that and yet it's been really dulled down.
And I don't want to take away any woman's experience because that's her experience and if she had a profound healing experience in her birth in a hospital or via a cesarean that is also a choice and that is also a possibility and that is also an option but it has to do with how we're approaching our birth and the care providers and how we're treated in the choice of our experience.
A: Right well and I think that you kind of just pointed to this a bit we can sometimes get very moralizing with ourselves especially about like not doing it right you know in terms of like oh maybe we have this vision of a perfect birth and it involves you know things we've read about or things that when we check in with our body our body's like yes that's that's the kind of birth I want to have.
And then whatever ends up happening may not look like that it may not end up being that picture of what we wanted to have, you know, and yeah, women who you know do their best to try to have a vaginal birth but because of you know the hospital and the whole system that they have there they end up in a cesarean they end up you know with all these interventions and then recovering from that like how do we destigmatize that.
Like you know at the end of the day this was the experience that perhaps your soul was meant to have was this experience of maybe being disempowered and now having to find a way to find your way back to your body or connect again in a different way than you know what you thought was going to happen or as you mentioned some women might have profound healing experiences around medicalized birth and how can we like allow space for all of that to exist right?
C: I think there is a space for that to exist, and I also think it's important to note that what I mentioned earlier about if a woman's plan is to have a physiologic birth, then we have to ask ourselves what do I need to do in order to make that happen for myself and what is the environment that is going to support that experience and so entering into a hospital system, a medical system that does not innately support physiological birth is not the right place to choose birth.
But many women choose or end up there for one reason or another, and we make excuses or compromises for what we really want. And I say my insurance will pay for it, my partner is nervous, my parent is nervous, I'm nervous and so instead of it's kind of a way of opting out or or self-sabotage also in a way just to paint the picture of the other side like no woman is a victim in their birth.
Every choice that we make leading up to our birth and every choice that we make in our lives will affect the outcome and it's our decision of what choice we're going to make and there is no good or bad or right or wrong choice there's just the choice and the choice to take full responsibility for the choice we made.
A: Right and it's a tricky thing too with like sometimes there's beliefs that people have that are going to keep them in one frame of reality you know about how their body works or how this is going to be and then maybe later or at some point or maybe never they like break out of that belief and see like oh I actually did have choices I actually did have options.
But at the time my view was so small that I couldn't see that you know like I've heard a number of women you know where their doctors tell them something like your pelvis is too small and like your bones will not expand to like allow the baby's head to come through so you have to have this this area and then they just believe that they take that on as like that's the reality of my body my body's not built to allow a baby's head through my pelvis well the thing is is that your bones can move they can move and expand in the moment that they need to based on what your musculature.
And your body is doing you know so this idea that it's fixed in this way is just not true you know but someone might perceive that and that is the lens they're looking at it through and they don't see another option you know so I think that's why kind of the conversation we're having and then also just the message that you have was about educating people what their options actually are what their bodies are actually capable of right?
C: And I do believe that women choose their place of birth, their type of birth, their birth based on the state of consciousness, the place they are in their healing journey. There's nothing I can say to a woman to make her choose to have a certain type of birth, and I would never tell a woman to do that either I'm not afraid to present information that might seem radical or very unknown, or someone might be skeptical about or questioned or or turned away from and if they are then that wasn't for them, and that's fine.
A: yeah, I mean, think that the idea with freedom is that we have, you know, knowledge of the options we have at least knowledge of them we know that it's this is a way that things can be done, you know it's we're not very free if we don't have choice and a wider range of vision of what's possible that's not freedom that's like that's like you know red pill or blue pill that's like binary right and so it's you know fascinating also what you're saying about the transformation that birth can be and how that can I guess keep going on in a person's life right in both directions.
Like birth can bring up the things that are unhealed, and they can also show us further healing of those things or move us into a completely new realm of possibility for who we are going to be right, and I mean that's a huge thing about just stepping into motherhood in general is like you're not going to be the same person right can you speak a little bit maybe from your own experience about who were you before your birth experiences and who are you as a result of your birth experiences.
C: So, in my first birth experience, I suppose I had a somewhat unique experience because I had been a doula for at least five years at that point, and I was a student midwife at the time, so I was very deep in my studying of birth and of midwifery and I was the best midwife client. I was the good girl. I did all of the things that you are supposed to do in midwifery care. Let's just say I did all the things that I told my clients to do, and I did this in both pregnancies actually where I kind of like tested myself like what if I practice what I preach and do all of the things how will that affect the outcome of my birth and my postpartum and my experience throughout pregnancy.
And for the most part that went well however, throughout the whole time I was I was midwifing myself from the outside even though it was it was me midwifing myself as a midwife from the outside versus being really fully tuned in to and when I did have those moments of no I don't think I really want to do this thing. I would get reinforcement from my midwife of like well why don't you want to know what's the harm why not you know it's good information don't you want to do a scan to, do you think it would help you connect with your baby more?
So these are sort of subtle yet powerful ways that midwives can sort of plant these seeds of telling women what to do, and I see it as subtle means of like coercion and control and manipulation in a way of bringing it back towards them and what they would feel comfortable with or what they would feel would connect them with their baby and not really reflecting back to me.
So I had that experience in my pregnancy, and that set me up for my birth which I also outsourced a lot of things to my midwife, but not because she was pressuring me to do them because I was midwifing myself and I was like I need someone to check my cervix to tell me I'm in labor. I need someone to break my water because I'm nine centimeters, and I'm just ready to be done. And I know I'm a midwife, so the risks are very low and then when it came time for the birth, my baby was not small, and she took a long time to emerge, not a long time within the normal range but more than what a midwife would feel comfortable with seeing the head on the perineum emerging for several minutes.
And so there was a lot of hands-on support. There was people touching me. People touching my yoni. People touching my baby, trying to help guide the baby out for fear that the shoulder might be stuck, which is considered to be a potential complication of birth and a serious one if indeed, the shoulder is actually caught on the pubic bone. And so what I realized somatically after processing my birth is like and I think this may be many women's experience is that I didn't actually birth my baby.
Somebody pulled my baby out of my body, and there was not the physiologic process of birthing the baby out of my body. Although I was at home, although I was unmedicated, there's still there was something missing from me in the postpartum processing, and then my baby was born not breathing at the time, so I didn't actually have the near-death experience during my birth. It was after my second birth, but at this point, he was a she was a breathing.
And I actually had had a miscarriage in my early 20s actually was an abortion, excuse me, in my early 20s, and I was very connected to that baby, and I felt that baby was a girl, and in the time between when my daughter Georgia took her first breath and came into her body I could see and feel this baby coming into her body. And so that was the most profound part of that experience for me and where I want to recognize like the healing and the change that happened even in my first experience and even in the ways in which that I reflected back and realized all the things I would do differently and how I wanted to approach my second birth.
And so, I went fully the opposite direction and was very curious to know what would have happened if nobody else was in the room. How would I have fully relied on myself and my connection with my body and with my baby to support my baby to emerge and so that is what led me to choosing free birth, and when I asked a few midwives in my community, you know like hey, I have this vision for my birth I don't want any interventions I don't want vaginal exams I don't want anyone to listen to the baby with a Doppler I don't want anyone to catch my baby can you hold space for me and do this and all of them said no.
They were like I don't know that I can't bring the fear into the room from your previous birth experience and that I won't interrupt or disrupt or sabotage the birth that you want. And so this was a gift for me. At first, I sort of had a pity party, you know, like I should know a midwife or a woman, and at the time, I didn't because I was still in the consciousness and the journey of being a licensed midwife and I hadn't really entered into the realm of the radical birth keepers.
And the traditional midwives and unlicensed midwives, that wasn't what I knew at the time, so I chose a free birth out of really a deeply, very strong guidance like I was told that this was what I was to do and another testament to myself on the opposite level of like could I trust birth so deeply could I trust myself could I trust women who would I be as a midwife without monitoring or surveilling this pregnancy or this birth with any outside information other than my own inner knowing?
So this was how I transformed as a mom and as a woman and as a midwife because to rely on just myself in my most powerful vulnerable moment of my life while giving birth felt like the most powerful radical thing that I've ever done if I can do that then I can choose to do anything.
A: Yeah. That's really amazing. I think the first time I ever heard about free birth I the first thought that I had was like whoa, and that's badass like I was just like, oh my gosh, like the experience of being so clear in yourself that what this extreme experience that's happening the you know the shifts and the changes and the hormones and the pain.
Or you know however it is that a person might be a woman might be somatically experiencing her birth to simultaneously have a like awareness of welcoming that and being self-contained in that experience. I can see how that would be incredibly transformative what I also can appreciate about your story is that you really have been kind of the scientist in your own body you know.
First, you went with, like, how can I do, you know, follow all the rules and do the textbook stuff right and this externalized view that you had of yourself during your birth process you know. Like you know, pre-natal included of midwifing yourself from the outside. I think so many of us do that in our daily lives as human beings we you know, especially when we're really learned about something, when we know a lot about something, we can end up like, you know, being like the authority on the outside telling ourselves what we should or shouldn't be experiencing.
Or what we should or shouldn't want right versus checking in with how we actually feel, which might be like quite surprising or even strange or uncomfortable to you know all of the knowledge all of the learned knowledge that we have because it might not align it might be but what we instinctually want or feel is going to be contrary to all of that in the moment right so I just want to see just how you exploring this range of birth as a midwife has really given you your path forward in terms of how you want to serve other women you know through that experimentation in yourself.
C: Yes, and sometimes I feel like what I'm asking is a lot of myself, and what I'm asking of women can feel like a lot, and there is definitely a certain woman that is drawn to this work whether it's deciding to free birth or deciding to invite me into their birth this is a journey that we go on together and that I try to help them to differentiate what it is that they really want because women will come to me and say I'm looking for a spiritual midwife I'm looking for a midwife who will respect my choices.
But when I describe their dream birth experience, often what they're describing is actually a free birth, and I feel as a midwife, it's my job to reflect back to them. It sounds like you really want a free birth. How can you make that happen how can I help you get there if that's what you really want or how can we explore that idea instead of being the midwife who I may have been in the past who said oh yeah I can totally do that for you but we're talking about two different things.
There's the want and the need. You don't need to have a midwife or a doctor to give birth physiologically biologically. Hormonally it's not a it's not an imperative need it is a want to want the support of a wise woman in the room of a birth attendant with someone with experience to be witnessed to be in community to be supported by a woman is a very strong desire and a strong want but not a fundamental need.
A: Yeah, that's an interesting distinction. I don't think that many of us are really yeah like tuned into especially because birth is this very innate physiological process that nobody else can. Like you said in the beginning, nobody else can do it for us, you know, but we have all these kind of ways that we end up, you know, kind of allowing someone else to do it for us, which are really kind of an invasion of that process you know. With whether it was hands or a forceps, you know there's degrees of invasiveness here, right?
But the actual experience itself is not too dissimilar from other, you know, experiences we have on a daily basis that our autonomic nervous system takes us through, you know, like digesting our food and going to the bathroom and having an orgasm. Or any of these autonomic processes, even as simple as, you know, staying in a breath cycle while we're sleeping, right it's not something that anybody else does for us. It's something that happens in our internal somatic system, you know, unconsciously, you know.
So, bringing that aspect of like and have we helping someone realize that maybe what they want is kind of a radical thing that is a natural thing but that they maybe haven't gone there because of their conditioning that they have around thinking that they you know need certain conditions to be that way I'm curious like these conversations when a woman comes to you and you offer this concept of free birth like how many women are like like a little freaked out and then come around eventually.
C: Well, I don't necessarily offer it to women who aren't asking for it, but if they're freeing about it or if what they're describing or they say, a lot of them will say I really want a free birth, but this uh-huh so that's where I'm like okay let's start with what it is that you want and I've also had actually women come to me I've had a woman come to me say hi I want a free birth, but I'm looking for a midwife, and so then I just get curious and I'm like huh what does that mean to you? Because I question myself all the time.
And I'm actually really questioning this particular topic right now of like, oh all this talking around in circles and all these mental gymnastics to explain what is free birth or what is this birth or that birth and when birth is actually so so simple. And so accessible and so doesn't need all of this, but it does because we live in a world where birth the word birth means so many different kinds of things, so we have to make all of these distinctions when at the end of the day it's just birth.
That your baby's going to come out and that's it it's really easy so this woman asked me I want to have a free birth, but I'd like to hire a midwife. And I said, huh, what does that mean? And she's like, well, I want to give birth in my bathtub, and I want to catch my baby.
And I want someone to be there in case I need something. And I said, oh, I could do that. And that was what freedom in her birth meant to her. And she was looking for the right woman, and she was willing to free birth if she couldn't find. And so that's another thing that I find in the free birth world. And there's so many reasons why women choose free birth and why women choose any kind of birth.
But what the two most common that I see is one mind, like this just clarity of mind of this is what I am to do. And also not finding a midwife or not finding a birth attendant or someone who will support them in the birth that they are envisioning. And some women definitely are taken aback when they hear me talk about all of the options available in terms of questioning ultrasounds, questioning genetic testing, questioning vaginal exams, questioning prenatal vitamins.
There's just, there's things that they have not considered. And I've learned to really try to meet women where they're at. And also, I'm very authentic and transparent up front because I want to make sure that it's a good fit for both of us.
And I might even really try hard to not, I would never push a woman to free birth, but try hard to really just wait until we know for sure that this is a good fit, that you want to welcome me into your birth because at seven weeks pregnant and you're looking for a midwife or you're looking for a doctor, you don't know who you're gonna be by the end of your pregnancy.
You don't know who you're gonna want or feel comfortable with in your birth space. So that is why it is an evolution in a walking together throughout the process and getting together for tea and sharing a meal together and understanding like who we are, how do we process information. How do we handle conflict? How do we work together in this relationship? Because I do not micro-manage women or tell people what to do or hold authority over people.
A: Do you feel like part of what you do? And maybe, you know, maybe you don't use this word for it because there's other words for it, but is there some kind of, if a woman is like, yes, this is what I want, but then there are things that are coming up that start to be challenges that are in the way of her getting there inside herself.
Do you do any kind of like coaching or emotional, you know, therapeutic kind of support that help her break through whatever those blockages are that are coming up between what she really wants and what she's seeing as a possibility in herself at that moment? Like what does that look like?
C: Yes, I definitely, I think asking questions, staying curious, and asking open-ended questions for women to journal or look at or sit with and meditate with really, like sometimes the hard questions, you know, or who would you be? This is my favorite question because I asked it to myself, and I ask it to partners too, actually, because sometimes it's the partner who is in that place.
And it's just like, who would you be without that thing? Who would you be without needing to know the answer? Who would you be for this or that, you know, whatever the situation maybe? And like trying that person on and asking, you know, women, who is the woman that is trying to come through you and how can you let her in and what do you need to make space for in order for her to come in or what do you need to integrate into yourself in order to open up and to allow this version to come through?
What are you afraid of? And also, breathwork is a very powerful tool for me when working with pregnant women and families and mothers postpartum as well, because it does send, you know, the nervous system into an altered state of consciousness, which is the consciousness of birth and pregnancy. And so we can explore those realms through the breathwork, which I find really powerful because pregnancy is already considered to be an altered state of consciousness.
Women can enter into even deeper states of consciousness just as they approach closer to the birth and throughout the birth is really a journey of, yeah, how comfortable are you in altered states of consciousness? And that is also my work as a midwife, how comfortable am I to be in a space and how can we feel into each other's, you know, spheres when we enter into those realms, which is what we'll be entering together with into the birth.
A: Right, well, in those altered states of consciousness, and I think, you know, one of the first that people often are acquainted with is like a dream state or a state of consciousness that's liminal where we're not quite awake, and we're not quite unconscious, but we're in this in-between space.
And I mean, if I had the brainwave things like Delta or whatever memorized, I could probably spew that right now. But basically, what I'm saying is like when we're in these altered states, that's when unprocessed stuff can come up to the surface. And so how capable, how cleared out are we to be able to identify when something's coming up that it's my stuff that's coming up. It's not about this person right now. And can I stay very present to this person even as that trigger or that stuff shows up alongside me in this process?
And how can I kind of acknowledge it and name it, but then not have it take over the space? Because I think that a lot of people unconsciously do that. Something happens, they're in this altered space with someone, and they get triggered, and suddenly they turn into, like, I'm the superhero who has to rescue you or something.
They respond to their own, their trigger, whatever's bubbling up to the surface in that altered state. And now they're, you know, without meaning to, they're asserting authority over the other person. They're trying to fix the other person like they're a problem versus staying in that presence, right?
So that's kind of that, what you just said about, how capable are you of being comfortable or also like balanced in that altered state where you can really be present for someone versus jump into your own stuff, right?
C: Exactly, and as a midwife, I see this happening a lot and I saw it happen in my own experience early on as a new young midwife. And I see it in midwives with many years of experience, you know, who are taking their experiences, their birth traumas, their own practice, what happened in the last birth and it's carrying into the next.
And in a way, I don't think there's any way to come fully clean, you know, to every birth. We're always gonna have our experiences that we have had in our lens and our outlook, but what are the tools that we have to integrate those and to separate them from what is happening now?
What is happening in the future? But if we haven't taken the time to process those things and whatever was left behind in the trauma that was unprocessed and, like you mentioned, entering into these sensitive, vulnerable states, that trigger can come up and become associated with an experience where it's not. And now you're trying to resolve that trauma by preventing it from happening again to someone else where it's; it actually may not be happening at all.
A: Right, it may not be, it may just be happening in you because you have that history, you have that muscle memory that's informing you at that moment, right? And that's where it can get really interesting of like the fine line of like, you know, what is mine and what is like my intuition showing up to actually do something. Because the thing is, is if you've been through some kind of birth trauma, you are uniquely qualified to maybe identify it if it's coming up again for this other person.
If there's some kind of red flag or warning signal that you have gone through that could be a source of wisdom, but if you haven't processed that enough, then you can be, I guess, overlaying it, as we mentioned, onto a circumstance that may not be relevant to that experience at all.
You know, but ideally, when we have metabolized and processed our experiences, they become wisdom. They become like this wide library of experience that we can draw from in the moment as needed, right? As intuitively guided, as called upon to share that information or that knowledge.
C: Right, and this fine line in midwifery also comes in the way of, well, if I'm gonna be invited to a birth and a woman is asking me to support her if there is a need, then it's not about being hands off 100% of the time because if there is an actual need, and the need that I see is when we're talking about physiologic birth, if something becomes imbalanced or there is a need to restore the physiology, and this is something that is talked about in birth and in something called spinning babies, which is about maneuvering the pelvis.
And it actually has, there's a lot of similarities to the somatic yoga practices for the hips. And it is restoring the nervous system in order to restore the physiology of birth in the moment of if a woman is, for example, quote unquote stuck or the baby is positioned in a way in which labor has slowed or stalled. And I used to be kind of against these maneuvers. I was like, oh, this is ridiculous to move women into these positions during labor.
C: And I just, I had a mindset about it. Like I had a bias about it. And then I heard Gail Tolle, who is the creator of the spinning babies, speak about it. And she spoke about restoring physiology and she spoke about the nervous system. And I was like, okay, now I had leaned into this idea. It was in my lens. I had opened myself up to this concept of restoring
C: the nervous system and restoring physiology in birth. When a woman is exhausted, when a woman is in fear, when a woman is in fight or fight, when there's too many people in the room, it's not that the baby is in the wrong position.
Right. Actually that the physiology and the nervous system has shut down, which the other system has turned on, just like the cat in the closet giving birth. When you go in and she's got a kitty hanging half out of her, she's gonna, the labor's gonna stop. She's not gonna push that cat out until she's safe and her nervous system is downregulated again.
A: Yeah, that's this thing about, like, especially these autonomic processes; there's something about, when we're unobserved, where our bodies settle and calm. And it's in this attention of external view from the outside and maybe being judged or critiqued or in a lighter way, like examined, like is there something wrong and looking for something to be wrong, our system starts to clench up and tighten.
And it's interesting because, thinking about my own body and the patterns that I have in my body that I work with in my somatic practice every day, I, when I was carrying my son in my body, I had a lot of pain on the left side of my body. Classically, that's where I carried my pain from all my yoga injuries, and all of the things that I had been through was on my left side.
And the right side of my body was like my good side. Well, what ended up being observed, because I had a midwife and, when we would feel the baby and notice where the baby was, he was often resting in the left side of my pelvis.
And I realize now that this is because, even though I was having all this pain on the left side, so that was what was talking to me, it was actually the source of being overly contracted on my right side, that there really wasn't space for him to be on my right side. So he was over here on my left side, right, with his head and there almost all the time. Like he wasn't, like especially towards the end of birth, he wasn't moving around a whole lot.
He was kind of over trapped over here on one side because my musculature was holding in these patterns, these nervous system patterns, these stress patterns, that I had started unwinding and unlocking, but at this point, my body's so different. And I think this is the way that birth can be dramatically different.
Like each birth process can be so dramatically different than the next when there's a reorienting of our nervous system and a restructuring that we do in whatever way we do it, right? Either during birth that happens or postpartum, we receive and do that kind of somatic work ourselves to reorient the way that our bodies are holding so that maybe this birth, my son or my daughter wouldn't be locked over here on my left side.
They might move around a bit more or settle in a completely different position because my nervous system is holding my musculature differently. So what you're saying about spinning babies, I mean, that makes total sense to me that there would be a way actively during the birth process to reorient the musculature of the woman's body internally to allow the baby to position themselves intuitively in the place they need to be, right? For the birth process.
C: The need itself is misleading because we're not actually spinning babies. The baby is spinning itself into the dynamic, like cardinal movements of rotation that the baby naturally makes in order to make its journey through the pelvis. Right.
A: We're just giving the baby that space to do it by reorienting our nervous system to opening up those spaces and letting go of those patterns of clenching that are taking place.
C: Right. Yeah. And I would love to speak a little more on my personal somatic healing experiences since the free birth because, Oh yeah. Since the free birth, I feel like the embodiment, which was like a word I just, I didn't even have these words before. And I'm like, how did I not have these words?
Where were they all my life? But they're here now, so that's great. And it's opened me up in a way to experience my health, my relationship, myself, my children, my orienting and experiencing to life in a very different way.
C: However, they came through some really big moments. So, when my son was eight months old, I thought I was ready to go back to midwifery. And it's all related, of course. I thought I was ready to go back to midwifery. I was like high on my free birth pedestal. I was going to be the best midwife. I was going to be hands-off undisturbed. I wasn't going to sabotage any woman's birth. I was going to approach things very differently.
C: And so I went to attend my first birth with this mindset, with a woman who was not actually there. Like she wasn't at that level where I thought she was or where I thought she wanted to be. And so the birth turned out to be extremely challenging for her and for I and for her partner. And it was one of those births that I was not prepared to actually show up for what this woman really needed. And I didn't have the capacity to. And the aftermath of that was a very serious illness in my body.
And I ended up in the hospital for five days with spinal viral spinal meningitis. And I was praying and holding my feather very closely as I was truly leaving my body and entering into in and out of my body, in and out of consciousness, in and out of vision.
And I entered into the hospital system, which for me was very challenging to give my power over to the hospital system, although this was a reason to do so. And luckily my body did heal on its own in the time of being in the hospital. I suppose I had a very, very mild case.
I guess this is considered mild for this type of viral infection. But it left me with the worst sort of brain fog and low energy. And it was a very long healing process and also a lot of digestive issues in that process of healing from the infection. And also my son spontaneously weaned at eight months when I was left in from the hospital. And I was not prepared to do that.
I breastfed my daughter for three years. I had no intentions. I had no even thoughts that that was a possibility.
I thought he would just come back onto the breast. So I actually reached probably my deepest darkest moments as a woman and as a mom in that experience in the hospital and in the depression and anxiety that I felt postpartum. And that continued on for many months. And we moved to the desert. We moved out to Joshua Tree, a pioneer town technically.
And we live out by the mountains in a 28-year ranch. And it took my body almost a full year of living here and almost a full year and a half after that incident to really re-regulate. And in that experience, a lot of things came up with my partner. And I had a somatic healing experience through the kidneys. And so this is all connected for me. And there's this continuation cycle of the healing process, and reclaiming my health and my power and my sovereignty over my body's ability to heal.
Because what that near-death experience caused for me was I started to not trust my body again from a place of so much power and sovereignty in my free birth. I can do anything to. I'm broken, and every sensation I feel, I'm wondering if I'm okay or it's going to be okay, or I need help, or do I have MS, or do I have this, or do I have that?
What is going on here? Do I have brain damage from my, what happened to me before from the infection? And so, through this experience, I had a panic attack, a real panic, a real somatic panic attack. I thought I was having a heart attack. I was in the bathtub screaming to get the kids out because I was having a panic attack, which I've never experienced before.
And I guess I would call it an embodied panic attack. Like I knew what was happening, and it had to come out, and it had to be expressed. And but that pain in my heart stayed there for months.
This tension in my heart. And I thought my husband and I were going to get divorced. It was the end. And then we made love.
And I immediately felt like I was getting a bladder infection. And I was like, oh no, like this relationship is doomed. We are not meant to be together. We are not compatible.
This is not the right fit. I, you know, I made a huge mistake. I'm embarrassed. I don't want to tell my friends.
We're going through this hard time, and we're having sex. There was a whole story about it. And that bladder infection turned into, wasn't actually, a bladder infection. It was kidney stone. And the kidney stone, as it was passing, I felt the pain from my heart releasing out through my heart and down through my kidneys. And it was the most excruciating sensation I've ever felt in my life.
And I stayed home and I managed it with herbs and with myself and all of my tools. I never, I never reached anyone else outside of myself for that experience. And that was the moment where I felt like I had fully reclaimed and re-embodied into myself after my free birth. And what I realized it taught me was really like the nuance of being in a body and the experiences that we can go through, but that we can always come back home. And I can always come back home and find myself again in and through the body.
A: Yeah, that's like such a, you know, all of the things kind of like piling on and leading to this, you know, event that then continued on through several months. Like I think we sometimes if we are not tuned in, like obviously you're living in a way like moving out to Joshua Tree where you were inviting your system to be more tuned in. You were like consciously moving in the direction of like, let me pay attention more to what's happening, getting away from all the city and the noise, right?
And in that, you were able to kind of be with these really uncomfortable shadowy dark spaces that were happening. I think a lot of people might just distract themselves or numb themselves or check out and not be able to kind of withstand the intensity of a period of time like that in the recovery. But it sounds like that for you. It's been really necessary for you to really experience and go through all of that and not step around it and not, you know, turn away from it, but to face it and that there's something in your, you know, willingness to do that that allows these things to actually go through their completion, go all the way through the end of the cycle, so to speak.
C: Yes, the completion of the healing cycle, I think, is what I've really tuned into, and obviously there's a continual cycle, but the completion of this particular cycle and that many cycles come through the symptoms.
It comes through the rash, it comes through the infection, it comes through the virus. And so when we take those antibiotics or we, you know, then the cycle can't complete itself and I feel that in my experience in the hospital, in that system, that experience, I did not allow myself to fully complete that experience and or I just didn't have the opportunity and it wasn't available to me at that time.
And also, it was bringing something to the surface to be looked at in a very, very deep way, obviously for our family, for my partner, for my children, and for myself. So this idea of the healing cycle and the completion and continuation of the cycle coming through what we see as like symptoms or disease, you know, like we're getting into like kind of another topic here, but all again, all related and birth, pregnancy, free birth, physiologic birth is the continuation of the healing cycle is the completion of the healing cycle of gestating and giving birth.
And it's, it's the completion and it's the catalyst for the healing journey that is mothering and postpartum and the self discovery and the awakening to the power within. And so when there's, when that's cut off in birth, when your baby is removed from your body, like mine was the first time and you don't have the birth experience, I wonder, I question, like, how does that lead women in that cycle? Right.
A: Well, and I think that the disruption of those natural cycles, depending on the severity of it or the, the severity of that disruption of like our natural cyclical rhythms in our body, that is what we call trauma is when things are extremely disrupted. When things are, you know, like you said, you know, the baby being pulled out of your body, there's degrees by which this can be traumatic for someone or for the baby, right? But the actual act of it itself is a disruption of that natural cycle and does not allow that, that loop to fully complete at that moment.
Right. And what we are speaking to also is that there are so many ways that we can complete those healing cycles on our own after the event is over. And that really is, you know, we're talking about healing trauma here or healing birth trauma, that is, they're the one in the same being able to complete and move through that cycle.
And part of that is experiencing the result or the impact of that disruption, experiencing the illness, experiencing the shadowy space, the doubt, the, you know, is my marriage falling apart, you know, what's wrong with my body?
Is there something wrong with me? All of those questions that we don't like being with, it's part of completing that cycle. It's part of coming back to our natural rhythm, is to experience the disruption. And that's part of manliness, part of bringing those spaces back together. Yes.
C: And this is what I see in women, you know, in pregnancy and in birth is a lot of this stuff coming up and a lot of the choice to either outsource it to someone else to deal with it or to look at it. And I think more and more women are asking to look at these things and are looking for providers and for support and guidance in this way.
And so that is what I'm seeing in the collective. Like birth hasn't changed, birth is birth and birth in the medical system really hasn't changed that much. But women are changing. Women are asking for more. Women are expecting better in their birth experiences. And so they're opting out of systems of that oppress or control or takeaway from the full potential of this experience.
A: Yeah. You know, it's so interesting just having this conversation with you. You know, I had a midwife, and when I actually think back on what she did during my labor, she did very, very little, almost nothing, which I didn't really think of at the time because I had other support, but I'm looking back on it and going like, actually, she was pretty hands off.
She basically just let me birth my baby, and there was one moment right at the end of the labor process where she got real coachy with me or something. It felt like almost like a gym teacher. Like she was like, you need to push right now because my body was pushing. It was at that point in the labor.
My aunt had told me, wait until your body is pushing. Right. And so I was waiting for that. I wasn't trying to push until my body was pushing. Well, my body was pushing now. I was in the warm water, you know, of the tub and the night and she's like, you need to push right now.
Your baby is sticking out of your body. And if you push right now, you're going to meet your baby. And I think in my overwhelm at that moment, I was like, I can't do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. And she's like, yes, you're going to do it.
You're going to do it right now. Push. And I pushed, and he just like flew out of my body. But that was like, I would say that was that moment was like the most that she did during the labor process. You know, she wasn't checking me all the time.
She wasn't, I think she checked me like twice in the whole 15 hours or something. Right. But like that moment's the moment I remember of like, that was the heavy lifting that I needed from her at that moment. I needed her to just like, tell me to do it.
You know, it was like one of those moments where, like, you asked the somatic teacher in me, I wouldn't think that that would be my medicine at that moment, but it totally was to just have somebody tell me to do it right now. And then I could, and then I believed her. I believed that I could do it in that moment.
C: Yes, I think having the reassurance is what women are really needing: reassurance that they can do this, that they know what they're doing, that they have the power, that they have the capacity, the ability is, is what my teacher says. But the number one thing women need in labor is reassurance.
A: Yeah. And that's hard to find when you're in a hospital setting because they almost are in, I mean, I don't want to like shit talk it here, but they're almost invested in you, really invested financially invested in you not being totally capable of this and meeting all of the intervention steps.
And that honestly makes their job easier, because they can predict all of the timing and results of things, so to speak. But there is an investment in the other direction, I guess, is what I'm saying in having you be not so sure that you can do this.
C: That is exactly how the system is designed. And that is why there is no fixing the system, because the system is not broken; the system was made very intentionally in this way to make people be reliant upon them. Yeah.
A: I think that there's different, laws from state to state about midwives and about what you're allowed to do legally and what you're not. Do you think of yourself, if you're not like a licensed midwife, et cetera, do you put yourself out there maybe as like a birth consultant? Is that sort of a position that you can hold more nationally, for example? Yes.
C: So I am still a licensed midwife. So I am licensed and regulated to practice memory in the state of California. However, there's nothing illegal about a woman attending another woman's birth, a woman choosing to birth at home and to invite a sister, to invite a woman to support her in her birth.
So to work and be a supporter for birth outside of the system, free birth, sovereign birth, autonomous birth, whatever you want to call it, there is a space for women to work in this way that is outside of the realms of regulated licensed midwifery. And in some states, there are no licenses. It is illegal. So it's not illegal, and it's not legal. It's illegal, and there's no regulations in some states.
And in some states, it is illegal. And some states are highly regulated and there are a lot of costs and some benefits to the regulation of midwives. But the midwife, in a traditional sense, is the community healer, medicine woman, you know, wise woman in their communities. And so a lot has been taken away, I think, from the midwife in the modern consumerist culture of licensed midwifery. And the medicalization of midwifery.
A: Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because, you know, for some people listening to this episode, like they may not have even heard of free birth or any of these things that we're talking about, it might be their first, you know, breaking through these concepts and learning something different today.
You know, and for me, I can see how there's been kind of this gradual increase in my knowledge over time, you know, from the time that I was pregnant, I had a friend of mine, I hope to have her on the podcast at some point. She was a friend of mine that I went to high school with and she found out that I was pregnant through, you know, like Instagram or Facebook or whatever. And she sent me a little care package. And she also described to me that she decided to have a free birth.
And it was her first birth. And I mean, I just like, like I said, I was just like shocked. And then I was like, that's badass, like, oh my God, like, I can't believe that someone would do that. Like to me, it was this like moment. And at that moment, I didn't consider it that it was something that I could do because I had already, at this point, like invested in a midwife, and I had my plan that I felt comfortable with.
But it was this like little question, you know, and then even in this conversation with you, it's like, there's this little question of like, ah, maybe this is actually how birth is designed to be, you know, this is the natural state of the, you know, the processes in our bodies. And maybe all the things that we're used to, all the things that we're conditioned around are actually bizarre.
And this is actually not kind of what you said earlier about this is really simple, actually. But all of the conditioning that we have around it makes it so that we have to dance with all of these notions and work through all of these preconceptions and beliefs to get to this place where we think this is possible for us.
C: I see it as a returning, you know, we're returning to birth, we're returning to midwifery. And what I'm using the word truth, because this is what's true for me, is the truth returning to the truth about earth and returning to the truth about midwifery.
A: Yeah, wonderful. Well, I think this is a really excellent conversation. I love how forthright and open you've been about your own personal experiences. I feel like that's that kind of transparency is really important for building, you know, trust and understanding and also helping people, you know, release shame that they might carry about themselves and about experiences that they've had, you know.
Whether they're a another healer or, you know, a midwife or another birth professional who's listening to this, like to just understand that like it is a process of learning that we are all in, and a process of discovery that we are all in. And, you know, wherever we are along that path, there's going to be information that comes in or arises through us that's going to show us the next step forward, right?
C: Yes. And thank you so much for all of your reflections as well. I feel like I'm continuing to learn so much on the somatic journey, and also, doing somatic therapy myself is a continual practice of mine. I'm currently working with the somatic dance therapist, which I really enjoy because I have so much experience through the breath, which really helped open up the body in one way, hoping like the emotions through the body, but through the physical movement of how I move my body and what how I don't move my body in what areas or not.
And in this very intuitively guided, gentle somatic one-on-one way, just sharing that that's kind of where I'm personally at with my somatic healing journey is actually, although I had these sort of very profound epiphanies and revelations through the kidney stone and the physical somatic experience, it has led me into the continuation of somatic therapy for myself in the unwinding and opening up of that healing portal that I went through and to sort of like keep the energy moving and open and flowing and to be kind of constantly tuning into areas where I'm feeling stuck or where I'm feeling sensation.
And not that that's going to prevent me from having another healing crisis at some point in my life, but possibly prepare me for when that does happen and how to orient myself in that experience.
A: Right. And to dance with it, which I think dance is such a beautiful like metaphor, but it's also a beautiful practice because there's something like innately curious and innately playful about dancing. We can't get too serious about it when we're in this place of dancing where we start to notice, oh, my hip is doing this repetitive movement, but it won't do that. How curious.
And then we can start to play with it and dance with it and be in that dynamic flow with it. And so I think that's a really wonderful place to be is to stepping into your somatic awareness through that kind of work. I love it.
Awesome. Well, if anybody is listening and they want to know more about what you're up to, they want to follow you. I mean, all that will be in the show notes, but I usually just give people an opportunity to say it out loud so that if someone's listening, you know, they can hear it in their brain a couple of times. Where can people find you?
C: You can find me on Instagram at Catalina. Clark and on my website at Catalinaclarkbirth.com.
A: Wonderful. Yeah. So reach out if you've got questions or you want to know more about her practice. She's here in like Pioneer Town in Joshua Tree, California. And yeah, looking forward to continuing to see how your journey grows and blossoms and, you know, sharing this information with people.
C: Thank you so much, Aimee.
A: Hey there, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram at AimeeTakaya, and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this somatic revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now.
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