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Tag: woo
How listening to drumming can unlock your brain
As an ex-scientist turned doula and healer, and as someone whose signature approach is to blend scientific and spiritual knowledge, I love above all else to help others embrace their woo. I also like give people a embodied experiences, because I believe that we learn best by experiencing things (especially things we might be skeptical about!).Using drum healing, and in particular, using drum journey (listening to drumming as a tool to unlock your brain, set intentions, and find answers) is such an experience.If you are a skeptic, I get you. I used to think drum healing was bullshit, and I explain my journey, which started with experiencing it for the first time in an unplanned manner,Ā in this blog.You might be surprised to hear that repetitive, heartbeat-style drumming has been shown in published research to slow down brain waves, as well as to synchronise different parts of the brain and even to stimulate your immune system! For me itās simply a faster way to enter a meditative state, and make my thoughts more fluid and creative. I find it particularly helpful to find the answer to a question I may have. A bit like having a massage can loosen your muscles or any tightness you may have, listening to repetitive drum beats can loosen your brain, making it easier to access knowledge.Iāve recorded a 20 min drum journey called ābirthing something newā. I used a very powerful carved birth drum created by drum artist Juha Jarvinen to record this journey. I included a short guided introduction and conclusion.To best enjoy this process, set an intention (for example, an answer to a question you may have, or a solution to a problem), and then set aside 20 min (or even only 5 to 10 min-you do not have to do the entire journey to get the benefits) during which you will not be disturbed, and either sit or lie down comfortably. You may find that the sound works best using headphones. Relax and enjoy the journey. Iād love to hear what you think of it!
Taking the red pill: why I became a doula course leader
The Developing Doulas course, and its founder, Maddie McMahon, have a special history for me.Back in 2005, when I was pregnant with my son, I hired Maddie as my doula.
The experience was so incredibly empowering and life transforming that it started me on the path of a complete career conversion, and I went from being a scientist to becoming a doula and childbirth educator.
Three years later, when Maddie ran the first ever Developing doulas course, she asked me to attend as a guinea pig.
I absolutely loved the course, the course facilitators, and the amazing women I met.
Fast forwards ten years andĀ I’ve been a doula for nearly 7 years, a doula mentor for 2 years, and it feels right and fitting that I should start to facilitate Developing doulas courses myself.
I’ve felt for myself the power of being supported unconditionally through one’s pregnancy and birth choices and I feel it has the power to change the world we live in. So it feels right, and important, to help more women embark on their journey to become a doula.
Whilst I went into doulaing to help make the world a better place and to serve parents (and to help families have the same positive, supported experience I had), I’ve personally benefited from becoming a doula in ways that I could never have envisaged. It has been such an amazing journey of self discovery, and has given me such joy, such personal growth, and such incredible self belief.
As I’m reflecting on this journey, I’m finding it quite hard to pinpoint exactly what is it about becoming a doula that had such a positive effect on me.
I’ve found that it’s a multilayered combination of several factors.
Firstly, supporting women through birth and the postpartum is incredibly rewarding. I’ve joked several times that when I was a scientist, I had many exciting moments, but I never cried tears of joy like I have many times since becoming a doula. Also as a scientist, I hoped that my research may lead to advances in medical care someday. With doulaing, the positive effects one has on families is immediately visible. On more occasions than I can count, I’ve been sitting in my car after a birth or a postnatal support session, and I’ve burst into tears of joy and gratitude. I feel that I am incredibly lucky to be able to do such a fulfilling job.Second, becoming a doula has broadened my mind beyond belief. When I was a scientist, I hung out all day with other scientists. Yes they were all different people, but they all operated within a similar
mindset. As a doula I’ve met the most incredibly range of people, doing jobs I didn’t even know existed. Supporting families through such a vulnerable time as pregnancy and birth, the relationship we develop with our clients over the course of several weeks or months means that we get to know people really well. And what has amazed me the most, is, the longer I do this job, the more people keep amazing me. We are all so different, with different life stories and different needs. You start to realise that nothing is black and white, and just many different shades of grey. and that what’s right for one isn’t for another. Nothing exposes you to breadth of this difference as supporting women through birth.I have likened becoming a doula to taking the āred pillā (as in the Matrix movie). Once you start doing this job, it opens your eyes, your heart and your mind beyond what you thought possible, in a way that I find hard to articulate with words, especially to people who are outside the doula world. You cannot unsee what you’ve seen.
Everything in your life starts to change too, because what you learn is so opening and so deep, you cannot stop it from percolating to the rest of your life.
Take questioning everything. Something that we discuss in depth during the doula course. The world, especially the medical maternity care system, isn’t as evidence based as you believe. Once you start digging into the evidence for that, and you realise it’s all a house of cards, you start questioning other aspects of medical care, you start questioning parenting, you start questioning education, the list goes on and on.Take unconditional support. This is the cornerstone of doulaing. We’re here to work alongside women and support their choices, and help them discover what’s right for them. Often we might be the first person in their life do to this for them. Just listening with no agenda. There is incredible power in doing this. Once you start doing that for clients, it also becomes a part of who you are. You judge people less, you ask open questions instead of making statements, you stop projecting your own beliefs on other. Your close ones, your family and friends benefit immensely from this. I am proud to say that becoming a doula has made me a better mother, and that I am raising kids who will take no shit from the system.
Take becoming self employed. I don’t know if this applies to any self employment because I haven’t tried anything but doulaing, but since becoming self employed nearly 7 years ago, I’ve realised that I was pigeon holed without knowing it, in my previous job. Within science, there was a common, quite judgemental, and narrow minded way of thinking and an unspoken rule that if you didn’t know everything, you were incompetent. I used to feel very vulnerable after giving a talk at a conference, in case I didn’t know the answer to all the questions. Becoming a doula taught me that you don’t need to have all the answers, and that it’s ok to say “I don’t know, but I’m going to try and find out”. It’s incredibly liberating, and has built my self confidence no end.
Take entering the most amazing community of women I’ve ever encountered. The doula world is almost entirely composed of women who are passionate about supporting women, and each other. It kicks the patriarchy in the teeth. My local doula community is simply the most amazing, non competitive, non judgmental, supportive community of awesome, kick-ass women I have ever entered. We lift each other up. We laugh and we cry with each other. So not only did I gain a job I adore, but I have also gained a local and UK wide community of women I love and admire. And, after many years of buying into the patriarchal model of competition between women, I’ve discovered the joys of sisterhood.Take all the opportunities for learning new skills that comes with this job. Since entering the world of doulaing I have attended countless study days on topics I didn’t even know existed before. Many of these I have enjoyed so much that I’ve honed my skills, and ended up teaching others. For an eternal student and knowledge freak like me, it’s incredibly exciting.
Take the self esteem boost. It’s so good for the soul to follow your calling and do a job that you love. Beyond that, not having to know everything also led me to start believing I was good enough, so the effects on my sense of self (along with the incredible rewards of this job) have been very far reaching indeed.
Take breaking the mold and becoming truly myself. Doulaing has allowed me to explore what I love doing and learning beyond the confines of what’s considered “ok” by society. I’m a scientist AND an energy worker, and it’s completely ok! When you spend your days encouraging others to trust their instincts, it rubs off! So the biggest gain for me as a person has been able to grow into who I really am, and embracing my weird quirks and blend of science and woo unashamedly. I feel I’ve really grown into the person I am meant to be. I no longer fit into a nice neat box and I love it.As Brene Brown says
” Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
Becoming a doula has been instrumental in my journey of self growth and self acceptance.
These are all the reasons I’m grateful that I have become a doula. These are also the reasons I’ve become a doula course facilitator.
I’m teaching my first course in North East London in May. Visit the Developing Doulas website to find out more.
Would you like to join me in taking the red pill? What are you waiting for?
Confessions of a hippy scientist : 3 years on.
Three years ago today, I published a blog call “confessions of a hippy scientist“.In this blog, I came out as a science meets woo person, something I had shied away from for a couple of years.
You see I’ve got a PhD in biology and spend 20 years working as a research scientist.
When I left my scientific career to become a doula (back in 2012), being at births and feeling the incredible powerful energy in the room, combined with hanging out with a lot of spiritual birthworkers, led me to want to develop my energy healing abilities further.
Back in 2003 I had undergone Reiki Level 1 training. In 2015 I took it to level 2 then master teacher level.
After training and starting to offer healing to people on a regular basis, I agonised over showing this side of myself to the world.
Doula clients told me they’d picked me because of my scientific background, which wasn’t surprising as Cambridge is full of medics and scientists. They felt reassured by it and I understood that.
I worried a lot about putting people off if I chose to show my woo underbelly.
I even went as far as considering a separate website for my Reiki work!
Luckily someone challenged me to “come out”, and I wrote the blog I mention above.
It felt very vulnerable to publish it, yet the post only got amazing responses, mostly from people who felt the same as me and thanked for it. It helped others on their way to embracing their full selves.
Something magical happened in my work too, as I started getting clients who were more aligned with my true self.
Because you see, when you show your true self, it puts some people off, but these aren’t the people you want to work with.
Instead, you start attracting people who are much more aligned with who you are.
For instance, a birth client who had told me she didn’t want any hippy stuff, asked for several Reiki treatments after birth. When I asked her what had made her change her mind, she said “before the birth I didn’t get it, but now I do”, which was a complete reflection of my own journey.
So where am I now 3 years after this “coming out” blog?
First of all, I have now embraced who I am so much that I cannot believe that I used to feel the need to hide this side of myself.
I still work with a lot of scientists and medics (I’m still in Cambridge after all), but somehow my alternative side is never an issue.
I’m getting a lot more woo clients too, which I love. This year I have finally ticked my bucket list wish of drumming during a birth, and I have also been hired specifically by someone who wants me to drum at their birth. It feels very good and exciting.
I’m also being hired to organise mother blessings and group closing the bones ceremonies, as opposed to just doing them for friends.
I’m still a scientist, and always will be be. I love nothing more than providing clients with evidence based links, especially when those help them make truly informed decisions about their care, and challenge population based hospital policies.Last year, I spent several months reviewing the research on the aging of the placenta and wrote this blogĀ mostly because I got fed up of seeing non scientific birthworkers friends being bamboozled by jargon, and to show that things aren’t quite a simple as the “experts” say.
To write it I had to put my old scientist hat firmly back on and spend many hours reading the research. I realised I found doing this, that I found it tedious and dry. This is no longer who I am, and I’m really glad I’m not working in academia anymore. Today I’m able to unapologetically embrace who I am, and no longer feel that I need to know everything.
As I write this, I realise that I already felt this way when I was a budding scientist, early during my PhD. I remember my supervisor implying that I had to know everything and that I was incompetent if I didn’t. What a load of tosh! Something in me already knew this wasn’t true. I also remember questioning the way scientific papers were written under the same rigid rules and not liking it. I found reading papers for the sake it really tedious even then. I guess I always was a bit of a maverick, and someone who questions everything.
Between 2008 and 2012, as I trained for my diploma in antenatal education, I learnt about the way we learn, and it makes so much more sense to me. You simply cannot force knowledge into people, by pouring it into their heads.
Interestingly, I feel that my scientific knowledge is now kept fresh and alive by the multitude of clients I supports and all their wide and varied needs. Because I love nothing more than finding scientific evidence for clients, I find myself reading avidly on their behalf, and the knowledge sticks because there is a positive and emotionally investment behind my looking for it.
I’m still a hippy, in fact more than ever! I’ve carried on developing my more spiritual skills since I wrote the original blog. In 2017, made a shamanic drum at a very spiritual workshop, for the purpose of healing around pregnancy and birth. I then took a Reiki Drum training course shortly after that, and using my drum for healing and holding groups etc has become completely normal and natural to me. I’ve had two Reiki training upgrades. I have even stopped shying away from using my drum as standard in my closing the bones treatments (I used to give people the option to have it or not, now I just tell them it’s part of the treatment). Using Reiki treatment is part of my everyday life.What I’ve found has happened is my energy work offering, which started being a neat Reiki thing, has morphed into my own style of blended healing, which is completely intuitive, and doesn’t actually have a proper name or fit in a box, but it’s mine and I love it.
Rather than offering energy work as a standalone I now weave it in and out of my birth and postnatal practise as and when feels appropriate.
The call to embrace and develop my inner healer is extremely strong. It feels without a shadow of a doubt that this is where I’m headed.
To make room for this I ended up dropping hats that no longer fitted me, that I felt I had outgrown. For instance I left my role as an NCT teacher.
I’m also slowly letting go of my teaching of babywearing. I still love supporting parents using slings, but I dropped running a sling clinic and I’m also letting go to actively teaching babywearing peer supporter courses-because whilst I still enjoy it, it doesn’t fill my soul with joy the way facilitating more spiritual work like closing the bones does.
The thing I love above all is blending my own cocktail of science and woo.
I trained with Spinning babies since I wrote the blog, twice, and I use a combination of their techniques which I apply in a very scientific way, together with tuning in to what I feel and see happens energetically to the mother during labour. I have experienced true miracles in using this unusual mix.
Perhaps the one thing that exemplifies this above all, is that I just finished developing an entirely new massage technique inspired by closing the bones, together with Teddy Brookes the osteopath. We called it the postnatal recovery massage. It combines massage, energy work and osteopathy. We teach it together, and the feedback we have received reflects exactly that. To quote Charlotte, a doula who attended our first training :” Sophie and Teddy have taken all that is special about it and fused her energy-work approach with his osteopathic technique to create something extraordinary.”
Openly embracing who I am with all my paradoxes and quirks has been the most liberating journey ever.
I am a scientist but I am also an energy healer. I am proud of it. It’s what makes me unique.
If being a doula has taught me one thing, itās that we are ALL full of paradoxes and quirks and uniqueness.
Nobody fits nicely into a neat little box.
I want to support others in this journey of embracing themselves, and this is a massive reason being my recently becoming a doula course leader.
When we celebrate rather than shame our uniqueness, this has tremendous power, both for ourselves and everybody around us.
The Developing Doulas course, and its founder, Maddie McMahon, have a special history for me.
Firstly, supporting women through birth and the postpartum is incredibly rewarding. I’ve joked several times that when I was a scientist, I had many exciting moments, but I never cried tears of joy like I have many times since becoming a doula. Also as a scientist, I hoped that my research may lead to advances in medical care someday. With doulaing, the positive effects one has on families is immediately visible. On more occasions than I can count, I’ve been sitting in my car after a birth or a postnatal support session, and I’ve burst into tears of joy and gratitude. I feel that I am incredibly lucky to be able to do such a fulfilling job.
mindset. As a doula I’ve met the most incredibly range of people, doing jobs I didn’t even know existed. Supporting families through such a vulnerable time as pregnancy and birth, the relationship we develop with our clients over the course of several weeks or months means that we get to know people really well. And what has amazed me the most, is, the longer I do this job, the more people keep amazing me. We are all so different, with different life stories and different needs. You start to realise that nothing is black and white, and just many different shades of grey. and that what’s right for one isn’t for another. Nothing exposes you to breadth of this difference as supporting women through birth.
Take questioning everything. Something that we discuss in depth during the doula course. The world, especially the medical maternity care system, isn’t as evidence based as you believe. Once you start digging into the evidence for that, and you realise it’s all a house of cards, you start questioning other aspects of medical care, you start questioning parenting, you start questioning education, the list goes on and on.
Take entering the most amazing community of women I’ve ever encountered. The doula world is almost entirely composed of women who are passionate about supporting women, and each other. It kicks the patriarchy in the teeth. My local doula community is simply the most amazing, non competitive, non judgmental, supportive community of awesome, kick-ass women I have ever entered. We lift each other up. We laugh and we cry with each other. So not only did I gain a job I adore, but I have also gained a local and UK wide community of women I love and admire. And, after many years of buying into the patriarchal model of competition between women, I’ve discovered the joys of sisterhood.
Take breaking the mold and becoming truly myself. Doulaing has allowed me to explore what I love doing and learning beyond the confines of what’s considered “ok” by society. I’m a scientist AND an energy worker, and it’s completely ok! When you spend your days encouraging others to trust their instincts, it rubs off! So the biggest gain for me as a person has been able to grow into who I really am, and embracing my weird quirks and blend of science and woo unashamedly. I feel I’ve really grown into the person I am meant to be. I no longer fit into a nice neat box and I love it.
I’m still a scientist, and always will be be. I love nothing more than providing clients with evidence based links, especially when those help them make truly informed decisions about their care, and challenge population based hospital policies.
I’m still a hippy, in fact more than ever! I’ve carried on developing my more spiritual skills since I wrote the original blog. In 2017, made a shamanic drum at a very spiritual workshop, for the purpose of healing around pregnancy and birth. I then took a Reiki Drum training course shortly after that, and using my drum for healing and holding groups etc has become completely normal and natural to me. I’ve had two Reiki training upgrades. I have even stopped shying away from using my drum as standard in my closing the bones treatments (I used to give people the option to have it or not, now I just tell them it’s part of the treatment). Using Reiki treatment is part of my everyday life.
Perhaps the one thing that exemplifies this above all, is that I just finished developing an entirely new massage technique inspired by closing the bones, together with Teddy Brookes the osteopath. We called it the