Latest / The Home of Fertility with Liz Walton & Helen Zee / Womb Wisdom part 2 of 3: The Sacred Womb: Connection, Creation, and Coming Home a chat with Julie Tenner

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Womb Wisdom part 2 of 3: The Sacred Womb: Connection, Creation, and Coming Home a chat with Julie Tenner · The Home of Fertility with Liz Walton & Helen Zee

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Fertility, health and Coming Back to the Self, an opportunity to go deeper into your journey of life, and all this can encompass with your host, liz Walton.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: This podcast follows the threads of life and the journey of fertility on every level emotional, physical, spiritual and the consciousness we consider our health and what that means in our lives today.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And we bring all of this together with coming home to ourselves, the conscious and unconscious journey of life and how we traverse this in the best way possible.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I am so grateful and humbled you are here, and a beautiful morning to everybody out there, wherever you may be in the world, and thank you for listening in on this wonderful episode as I'm talking to the gorgeous Julie Tenner.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Hello Julie, how are?
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: you, I'm beautiful.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks, liz.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: How are?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: you.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: You are so beautiful.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I'm with you.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So just to let everybody know, Julie is in Melbourne, Victoria.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I'm in Canberra.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit chilly here this morning, but it's beautiful and crisp and blue.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: What is your weather looking like?
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a balmy, 26 degrees humid, as and warm, isn't that?
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: wild.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Australia always fascinates me when England is roughly the same weather and Australia can be a million different weathers.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: So enjoy that, because canberra's well, it's just different but it's still gorgeous.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: So I'm very grateful that you have said yes to having a chat today for a few things one you, with my very first I chatted with on getting started on my podcast journey, and I love following you in all of the different areas, whether it might be being on one of your workshops, whether it be part of doing your honey club, as well as all the different containers, and I've learned so much about the feminine and the masculine, which has helped in my personally as well as in the work that I do, so good, yeah.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Feminine.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: And the masculine, which has helped in my personally as well as in the work that I do fertility, so good, yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: And on your journey and following you and the wonderful things that you do, um, your journey of when you had to have a hysterectomy really brought to me the connection, the power of the womb, if it's a right way of saying that, but just that, that wonderful space of the womb and who, what it is for us, and I really wanted to create a womb series, and so, with this, this conversation with you, I think, will be just beautiful.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: What?
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: What is it for us as women?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Um, as women also, we're on the fertility journey, and then you know, even afterwards, you know and um, I think this is a I.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I didn't know about the womb.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I had one, yes, it was part of my anatomy, but I didn't get it, um, until I had to learn about it and learn about connecting to it for my fertility journey.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: So this isn't just about a fertility journey.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: This is, I think, more who we are as women, and I know that your journey really inspired me to want to know more and to look deeper into how I felt about it, and I do bring this up with a lot of the wonderful clients that come and see me, and so to have just a deeper discussion is I'm really honored to have a chat with you.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Likewise Me too, thank you.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: So I think let's start with what is the womb, apart from just a part of our amazing anatomy that lets us grow a child and also be part of who we are as a woman?
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I'm really curious.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Let's delve into that.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, if you had asked me this at different decades in my life, I probably would have had completely different answers.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so here I am, in the middle of my fourth decade and have had a hysterectomy where I no longer have a physical womb, and yet I have lived a life that has been incredibly womb centric.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: So I think, look, I was a birth doula and a naturopath.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: I've always facilitated and been in women's circles and spaces.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: One of my major healing experiences was stepping outside of the patriarchal paradigm of, you know, static functioning that you know you just perform the same every day of every week, of every month, of every year, like you are just this static almost machine that just keeps going, and I think we can see that in a lot of men and in a lot of masculine ways of showing up.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: But for a woman whose life is so deeply orchestrated by hormonal fluctuations and the impact that that has on your physical body and your emotional body and your nervous system which even today now we're only just having conversations about in terms of the silence around women's pain and lived experience, that's marginalized and invisibilized in a system that requires that you show up statically this way.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: So one of my greatest healing journeys truly was becoming more womb centric in my life, which meant as opposed to expecting myself and then, you know, whipping myself for not performing at this, you know, outside standard, every single day exactly the same, and instead going, wow, actually, this is a power of mine, the ability that I have to fluctuate over a month, potentially over a day, potentially over a week, as opposed to that being a weakness, because it doesn't look like this static thing that's over here.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And so when I started to understand that I had a choice, and if I listened to the ancient women around me who were wise and embodied and loved their womanhood like they loved their body as a gift and I think that's the major flaw in our initiation of young girls into womanhood and why we now will have experiences of feeling completely disconnected, disassociated, have no relationship to our pelvis, our womb, our cervix, our vagina, our labia.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Some of us will feel completely numb or disconnected or just not really have any relationship at all.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: And it's not that there's something wrong with that, but I'm curious about what has happened across those generations of women where or you know, worse, I would say, actually, when we grow up believing that this part of us is a curse that this is a real like.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, poor you being a woman, poor you having this womb that bleeds or that, you know, makes you feel these things in a month.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: That was me as a young girl, Right, it was like oh my gosh.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: And it's still around now, like I'm the mother of three daughters and I choose to intentionally initiate them across to womanhood in a space where their transition into you know the concepts around what it would be like to listen to your energy and listen to your body and listen to your pelvis, and listen to the intelligence and the creativity that exists in your womb and see that as a power and a place you navigate from.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: So there's certain weeks in the month where you're, like I am, so into being social and connected out there in the world and there's weeks when actually, I really need to pull that energy into myself and be at home and inquire about what's happening for me internally and what I want to shift in my life.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: And there's weeks where I want to nurture my physical body and there's weeks where I can lift weights and have productivity that is maxed out and could do three weeks worth of work in one week.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: And so I want my daughters to have that understanding that this place in their body is powerful, that it has the opportunity to bring through their body and into their life a sense of aliveness and connection and creativity.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: And receiving rather than this perception that I'm less because I'm not always the same, or that it's all about I'm all about productivity versus my power is a lot to do with what I can receive and allow into my experience and into my life and into my body.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: So when I think about the womb, I think about all of those journeys, and I have sat with so many ancient teachers in ancient women's work who would also say that we can connect with the ancestors or the lineage of women that we come from through the womb, and I've loved that as a concept as well and I've loved it as a way of how do I want to be more feminine in my body and in my life and in my relationship.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Well, it begins by connecting and loving these most feminine aspects of my body, so creating a type of relationship and connection with them versus one not being there.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: And so then I think we forget some really key things, which is the womb is not just for making babies.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: That I so often see, particularly when we're talking about lineages of women and their connection or disconnection to their pelvises, to their yonis, their vaginas, to their wombs and to trauma and experiences that the vast majority of lineages and women will have, then I see a lot of pelvises that you know are numb or disconnected or full of tension.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: You know, there's this sense of when we disconnect from our body or from our womb or from a place in our body that we tend to brace our body like it braces for protection, for holding, and everything tightens and all of those emotions that we don't feel and we don't allow out and we just kind of push down.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It's like it doesn't disappear.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: It just kind of like cements down, down, down down into our body.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Where does it end up?
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: In the womb, in the vagina, in the pelvis, and so there can be this sense of blankness or numbness in the pelvis.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: We're able to connect to the womb, you know, even in tiny micro moments, and we help the body remember that it's safe, that it's safe to be here, that it's safe to open, that it's safe to receive and be receptive again, which is such a feminine strength that it's safe to create.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Like that is fertile ground for whatever you want to create in your life.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: That you know the impact of chronic stress and over-functioning and shoving down, all of those feelings can really directly impact fertility or infertility, based on literally what is happening physically and energetically in that pelvis and in that womb.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Wow, so what happens?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: When we connect with the womb and with the yoni and with the ovaries and we allow our hearts to connect and build those neural pathways, we slip into this rest and receive mode.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Right Now we're open and available to receiving and allowing and feeling and flowing and softening into the body instead of this constant push and perform right.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And all of that creates these magnificent energetic and hormonal conditions for pregnancy and beyond that, for sexual vitality, for feeling centered and connected and rooted in your body, for feeling powerful in your own sexual sovereignty, for feeling alive and full of creative vigor.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: You know like this is, I think, the gifts of the womb I love that.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Sexual sovereignty, that's.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Wow, I think that's.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: That's never thought about it in that way, just how you know it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It is in a way that that um, what's the word?
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: That specialness, that royalty within us isn't it exactly it's.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: It's wow.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: That's interesting way of really feeling it and seeing it, and I remember with our chat before, you were talking about the womb as a place of really receiving.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: So it is this whole idea that even through the yoni so up through the yoni we move through the cervix and then up into the womb, energetically and certainly tantrically which is my background we can really draw energy up and through and the womb is literally this representation of receiving right, because fertility isn't something that you force or you hustle for, despite the fact that I would say systems of infertility ask that of you, and I think that that is oh, I don't even know what the words are.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: It's like.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: That is such a brutal experience from what I can witness in my own clients and I'm sure you're the same that in many ways it's still a patriarchal system that marginalizes and harms women and invisibilizes their experiences in so many ways and asks that they continue to, you know, perform and force and hustle.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Versus the understanding that, certainly energetically and physically so, as a naturopath and as a tantric practitioner I would say, is that I understand that the body, particularly a feminine body, to be fertile ground requires that we move from forward, giving into that sort of lean back, receiving that it feels good to receive, that this is a safe place to receive and to nurture and to soften, rather than this push and perform where you're constantly out there rather than in here, and so I often think the womb is just this physical representation of our willingness to receive in our life and receive in our body, receive feeling, receive insight, receive whatever it is that we choose to let through our experience, rather than blocking everything and nothing gets through.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Or we feel nothing, or we're always pushing, feel nothing, or we're always pushing, and so there's never this receptive, receiving, fertile moving of energy through our body it's like that internal barometer, isn't it?
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: yeah, and I really want to, um, just go back to you talking about safe, and I know with a lot of my clients and and as well, for myself, it was not being safe, uh, through maybe stress, maybe stuff that happened in the past, and then what's going on now, and then the mind of you know what's wrong with me, and then all of this created, I would say, stress in the body, definitely, and that lack of feeling safe within the body.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And I suppose I just want to connect, even as I'm connecting with my little neurons in my head, that by being able to breathe, connect.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: And I might even ask you in a minute, like, how do we connect with our womb?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: By being able to do that, we are creating that I am safe, my body is safe and you know, where is it that I can be safe?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: In my womb.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: You know that is so important.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Safety and being able to procreate is, you know, just to me, hand in hand and finding that safety can be, you know, like almost one of the magic keys, and so that connection what I suppose I feel I'm connecting to is that connection with the womb is amazing feeling this is a safe space to be to inhabit for yourself and for someone else
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: yeah, definitely, definitely, and the vagina as well, and the cervix, right, like there's, like there's this idea, yes, exactly, there's this idea that just like we, um, you know, have a map of the body on the hands and a map of the body on the feet for reflexology, or you know a map of the body on the hands and a map of the body on the feet for reflexology, or you know a map of the body on the ears, and we can, yes, right, actually the vagina is the same, so you can actually map places on the body.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: So I always think it's so interesting when we're with our own um, we'll see probably some of it around.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: When they talk about de-armoring, have you ever seen that?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's that idea that our physical tissues become desensitized and numb, and it's a type of armoring, right, which is what we're talking about.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: When we don't inhabit the body, when we don't inhabit the wound the wound that's funny the womb what happens is that our body does this holding.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: What happens is that our body does this holding, does this disconnection, does this tension, numbness thing as a form of protection for us?
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Right, because there's something that's stored there.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: The body has a mind, there's the body mind right, and what the mind physically forgets or chooses to forget to keep us safe and to keep us surviving well in this world.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: On some level, our tissues remember, and we have so many books written on this the Body Keeps Score obviously being one of the most widely known and as a trauma therapist, particularly around women's bodies and sexuality, I have really noticed how the vagina and the womb and the cervix and the pelvis hold so much memory and so many stories.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Some of them might not even be ours as a lived experience, but we have it there, which you would know.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Obviously, being a body worker, you would know that too.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: And so when we see numbness, particularly in the vagina, that's meant to be as alive and sensitive as a sea anemone like, if you imagine.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: The entire inside of your vagina ultimately has the potential to be that alive and aware and sensitive and orgasmic.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: And then we find there's places that are numb or painful.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: We want to get really curious about why that is.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: And so, when it comes to the womb, about why that is, and so when it comes to the womb, it's similar in that when it's ignored, right, there's a type of bracing that goes on and simple, energetic ways of connecting the heart back to the womb and the heart back to the ovaries and the yoni to the womb and the like, just reconnecting that sense of love and mixing it with that sexual energy of literal creation.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Love and creation as an energetic force is the most powerful force you'll ever meet.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: So washing your body in that in a way, in a visualization, energetically, in a breath, being willing to have a conversation with this part of your body that is like a devoted lover, not this thing that just kind of does something for you like a machine, and then you scold it when it doesn't and you disconnect from it when it doesn't show up the way that you want.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: We don't want to be creating like versions of toxic relationships with our own body.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: We really want to be able to be in love and wholeness, with the fullness of this experience.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Now, I haven't had an infertility journey, but I certainly had a missed miscarriage, so I remember that feeling of my womb, feeling like a tomb or feeling empty and dark and nasty even, or like my body had betrayed me, and I can remember that feeling, which I'm wondering is it similar to the feeling that you're talking about?
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: yeah, well, I you know we've all got different feelings and how we'll represent them, but yes, I think it's where I know, for me that just kind of not knowing that how special and empowering and just the awakening to connect.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I didn't have any miscarriages myself, nothing worked, but I did feel like my body had betrayed me at that time Absolutely.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: And for me, learning to reconnect reconnect with my body, my, my breasts, my tummy and my womb and all of that was really a massive turnaround key of for me, do you know mean, and an awareness of like, wow, why, why did I just give up my body as I expect someone else to fix it and forget that I was connected to it?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And that's where that first part of curiosity and awareness was like, wow, that this I needed to learn to love myself again and all of those bits yes, exactly and forgiveness.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Forgiveness is the ultimate type of surrender, isn't it?
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: And so forgiving our body and our womb and finding the type of grace in that that chooses to love still, and chooses to connect rather than disconnect, I think is profound.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: It is, it is.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Connect, I think, is profound.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: It is, it is and um the just just the realization of.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: You know why am I hating my body?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I'm asking it to procreate.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: No wonder it's confused.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's turn the conversation around let's get us in alignment and yeah that's when I really started to look into the womb and then discovered all this work on the womb and yeah, so cool, I want to say.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: I think that I've certainly had a couple of clients who feel that when I say something like we just need to connect daily to your womb, that they feel like it's another thing they've got to do when they're already being asked to over function and do too much, which is true, and that it's a failure on them if they don't, and so I think maybe I'd like to just speak on to that, for a little bit.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I'd love to if it's coming.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: If it's coming up, there's a reason, so yes, let's.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: yeah.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I just feel like I would really like to say, if that is you and that's where you find yourself, that this is not about pressure and this is not about performing an action, and this is not even about you having to do more.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: This is about stepping off that rat race of over-functioning that you do everywhere, that you're doing medically, that you're doing mentally, that you're doing in the workplace and, potentially, that you're doing within a relationship as well, and choosing to take intentional, bite-sized moments, moments like ladies I'm talking 30 seconds that turn the day as a you know, as a climate, as an experience across the day, change it from one of complete over-functioning and constantly giving outwards and your energy always leaking out from you to tiny micro moments that call it back in and change entirely.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I want to say erotic, yes, but that experience internally of love and connection with yourself, that say to you I've got space to be fertile within myself.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I'm making space for me here and for my body and to be in conversation with my body, because we're a team, my body and I.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: So I don't want you to think about it as another thing that you're doing.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: This is you, you know, being a revolutionist in many ways and stepping off of that system and saying you know what?
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: I'm just micro-moment's going to choose me and choose me and my baby, and choose me and my body and just fall back in love with the me that exists in here.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: That maybe I haven't discovered yet, maybe I don't know yet, or maybe it just gives me a breath, it gives me a moment to move into, you know, that rest and digest phase where we can just let go of stress, which keeps us adrenalized and is the opposite of arousal and pleasure and procreation, really.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: So I just hope that it's not about perfection.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Perfection it's about just taking moments for you to be with your own body and your own experience, because she's the most precious relationship that you will ever have.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: yes, yes, I love that, and what that um brings to mind is, you know, when I started, I started to realize, you know, just you know, even though I was on my fertility journey, at times I felt I needed to put that aside and remember to come back to the relationship I for me with my own self, because there hadn't been one, and I would put my hands, like on my belly ovaries, my tummy, my breasts and just just say thank you, yes, that might be.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: That might be in the evening, you know, just before I was, you know, falling off to sleep, or maybe in the morning.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Just thank you.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: But that was like it wasn't an extra thing, it was just me going I'm, I'm here now for me, and those were the little things that started to right micro moments.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's when you say that.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: My god, just like, that's right, it was just wasn't anything extra, it was just like that little time in bed.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It was for me, yeah, but it was me changing the rhetoric in a cell, in a being, in in the sinews in my brain.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: You know just everything and it really like you said, that whole thing of coming alive again, you know.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I always loved the fact that we have sacred anatomy.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: You know how we go?
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, your foot is the same length as your wrist to your elbow.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: You know that type of thing?
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Well, it's actually that's how you can find your womb in your body that if you make that sacred triangle with your hand, so if you put your two pointer fingers and your thumbs together and you've got that triangle like that, you can even put your middle fingers together if you want, and then you invert that so that these fingers here sit on your clitoris, so your pointer and your middle finger sit on your clitoris so that it feels good, so you should be able to tap away on your clitoris.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Then, ultimately, if I'm like that on my clitoris, what you'll find is that space in there is exactly where your womb is.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: So if these fingers are touching your clitoris, that space there is exactly where your womb is and the center of these palms is where your ovaries are.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, I know.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: So.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: I always, I always, and I still have loved this practice of, of when I've just had a day where I have not inhabited my body at all, I have existed in the mind and I have been for everyone except me.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Then I just lay down for a moment on my bed 30 seconds again, ladies and I place my hands there and I give it a little wiggle to check.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: I'm on my clitoris Yep, okay, cool, I am.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: There's my womb Wow, hello.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And there's my ovaries, under my palms, and I would just spend a moment to imagine that my, you know, my ovaries were these beautiful little fireballs of creation and I could feel the heat under my palms and my womb.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: There was this soft honey dripping through its center and over its walls until it was coated, or I would breathe in soft pink light into all of those the ovary and the womb.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: And honestly, ladies, that would change my life.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Then, once I'd done that for 30 seconds, I would smear that like honey up over my breasts and over my heart.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you, and that's it.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: That is beautiful.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: That is a thing to be able to envisage and do, and you know everyone that's listening to it, just listening to this, and those last words have a go.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I think that is a wonderful visualization.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And to imagine that, honey, I love it, yeah it so good.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: And it still surprises me how even that just awakens my sacral chakra, which is sitting right there.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: And it's all about the wetness and the juiciness of life.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: And so often you might find, oh, I'm noticing that I'm a little bit wetter or I'm a little bit more turned on, or I feel a little more activated.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: How cool is that?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and how fertile is that?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that's just.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: You know just, it's almost like awakening.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, exactly, that's our own fertile.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: You know whether we want children or not, but that is the fertile fertile-ness of the body?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it totally is.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: So maybe I'll just fill in the blank around.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Not having a womb now is that I don't identify as not having a womb, which is quite radical, you know, even in my world.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Actually choosing to have a hysterectomy it was a choice because I had a vaginal prolapse.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: It was was really significant.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I'd had a birth injury with my first child, who is now 19.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, I saw, I know.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: So for 17 years I had been on a path of trying to heal this prolapse and only you know, the medical system really does really let women down, especially when it comes to their pelvises.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: That we know more about Mars than we do about women's pelvises and women have been giving birth since the beginning of time Just blows my mind.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: So we actually didn't have.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Or when I found this amazing team of surgical women and I just felt so grateful for this surgeon who I spent a year going in and out of her surgery office for, I never committed to anything.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I just needed another woman that I could bring research to and riff with, because I needed to make sure this was a really significant decision in my life, because I'd loved my womb and lived by my womb and it had given me four beautiful children and I just like it felt huge for me.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: And in the end, this surgeon the surgery option that I had if I wanted to go with her was that she didn't do the type of surgery that I wanted.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That kept the womb.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: So she said you can absolutely go to someone else, no problems.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: And so it made me really sit with it and I had been to several surgeons and in my world it was even quite divisive, because there are a lot of, you know, women who are absolute beautiful advocates and fireballs for women and their fertility and their health and the noticing of women's experiences, who saw the removal of my womb as a persecution of women Wow yeah.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Saw the removal of my womb as a persecution of women Wow yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: So it was quite radical and divisive in, certainly in the feminine based alternative communities that I existed in.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: And yet.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Yet what I knew to be true was when I entered conversations with my womb, when I sat and asked because you can ask your body, you can have a conversation with an organ, you can have a conversation with your body, right, I mean, it might sound a bit woo until you try it and then you realize there's a type of intelligence there who knows higher self, who knows voice of God?
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't really care, I'm having a conversation, yeah.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Right, it's all welcome seeking guidance from my body.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: And so, when I would have conversations with my women, I was always so grateful Like, I'm so grateful for the love and the experiences that you have given me, and what I received back with this was this really clear message of like babes, we're a team.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Like my body and I, we're a team.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: And so who's to say why I've arrived here?
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: If we're a team, isn't this just a beautiful part of this process of being with your body as it ages and as it moves through these stages and as it asks for different things?
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: And so I decided I chose to have this hysterectomy surgery.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: But I did that hugely intentionally.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: I even put a little sign on my, pinned it to my surgical gown.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: That was a message to the surgical staff.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: That was like you know, hey, I just want you all to know I've really loved my womb.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: This is not a like see you later.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: This is like a morning for me.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: I've loved her and I'm grateful for her and I have so much reverence.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Please know that as you're removing her, and please take a photo of her for me.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: And they fucking loved that.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: And they did it, and so they.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: I had this beautiful photo of my womb and you know I had this beautiful ceremony at my own, within myself, you know, with my womb, and you know really said goodbye to her and trusted that I knew enough energetically, with so many years of working energetically with the body, that even if the physical organ were gone, that the energetic resonance that was there still existed.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I absolutely still feel that I don't feel less of a woman, I don't feel less connected, I don't feel less intuitive or less creative or less juicy.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I feel like I can still feel her because I can feel that energy pocket that exists there and that's because of so many years of training, I think essentially neural pathways there, right, Yep, yep, yeah, and I felt like I learned so much just following that and it really reflected back to me about just remembering, remembering how important my body is, how important my womb is, and I want to say this for everybody.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: It's about that reflection of remembering how amazing our bodies are, you know, to work for us and create health and all of these things, but you know, what makes the woman, or us women, amazing is is these amazing wombs, and you know the woman, you know it's um, so I, I felt like I learned a lot just just watching it and just reflecting back.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: You know, what does the womb mean to me?
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: You know, as know, as I'm now older and, yeah, I just wanted to thank you for making that public you know your journey there public, and I felt that it was a good reflection for us all to understand.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know if the word is our power, but our resonance and who we are.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: That is that beauty of womanhood, of roundness, of fertility, of love and, like you know, I love what you said.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Love and creation, you know, just really connecting in on love and creation, yeah, and even as you did that right, you were moving like a snake, you were doing that kind of yeah, look at salsa, salsa dancers, look at women who are deeply connected to their womb.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: They can roll and move their hips in such a sensuous and seductive and delicious slick way, right, versus those of us who aren't and we feel kind of clunky and like I don't know how to what?
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's just such a beautiful.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: You will watch your body change in the way that it moves when you connect to your womb and you know and that's also the um, you know the opportunity is, you know we can do it at any time.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah never too late, any time and um yeah, they're waiting for you right, like that eternal consort.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: I always loved um, I always loved that idea by dr pinkola estes.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: If you've not read her book, you might know her uh, women who run with the wolves.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: But she has this book on the body and essentially she talks about that through the vehicle of storytelling which she's so magnificent at.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: She is amazing.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the body is the eternal consort, and that cracked me open.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: That thought of all of these years of neglect and abuse and abandoning my own body or, you know, hating her, torturing her in different ways, to realize that she just sat there like my eternal beloved, waiting for the moment that I oriented towards her.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: That broke my heart.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, my goodness, like that's love.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: She was just there waiting for me.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: So it is never too late and she is always waiting for you, and that's yeah, that's the invitation.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Is the coming home to the self, isn't it the coming home to yourself?
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And that lovely author.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Dr, Pinkola Estes.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Dr Pinkola Estes, you introduced me to their book the Late Bloomer and I've been listening to that.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, this is another one yeah.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: You know any listener out there there, I'd say listen to the audio, because her voice is a gift, isn't it?
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Her storytelling is sublime I think it's so.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: It is so sublime and um, I think another area, um, I'd like to just quickly touch on is the masculine and the feminine.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, sure, with with the feminine being the womb, the feminine being the lady that has the baby, the feminine being that part of us that can sway and connect, and, um, we can lose connection with our femininity.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: You know we can be busy working, you know, in high areas, you know we can be quite high up in whatever we do and you know so we're working with men and we end up working, you know, taking on that masculine part of us and even wearing suits.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And then it's about remembering to reconnect to the feminine, which I think can also support us, to reconnect to the womb, to the fertility, to feel safe.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: It's almost that wonderful trail, maybe trail home, isn't it?
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: What would you like me to explain in that Mm-hmm?
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: What would you like me to explain in that?
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I suppose the feminine.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: What do I want to explain?
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I suppose helping us to read.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: How important would it?
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: What do you consider?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: The importance of us reconnecting to the feminine, to support the womb with fertility.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Most of us know how to do the masculine really well.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: So when we're talking masculine and feminine, if those words feel tricky, sticky, icky for you, fair enough.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: They are full of suppression and oppression historically, so choose other words that are more empowering for you.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Receiving and giving energy, I think, is often really good.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: That's a good way.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: So if we imagine that we've got this spectrum within us and on one end we have our giving masculine energy, that's all about output and production and achieving and goal setting and moving forwards and being linear, and you know, do or die kind of mission stuff, and you know, forget how you feel, it really is irrelevant, because it's about the product, it's about the productivity, you know the outcome.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: And then all the way down the other end, we have your ability to receive your receptive energy, your feminine energy, which is all about, and it's all about the body, because the body essentially is this magnificent I don't even know receptive pole that takes in information and has an intelligence that you understand entirely right.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: So it's about receiving in and understanding and deciding what you want to do that.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: So it's about receiving intuition, empathy, feeling, sensuality, which is all just feeling right, touch, taste, sight, smell, receiving input, receiving it sensual and then deciding what you want to do with that right, that innate knowing, that ability to which we all know.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: If you spend your whole life giving to others, at some point you burn out.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: There has to be a balance for all of us in how much we output and how much we input, how much we put and continue to give out and how much we are willing to allow to receive in, because our bodies need to receive to be nourished and our relationships need to receive to be nourished.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: And so it's this idea of if we are only ever allowing ourselves to be in our masculine energy and in production achieving lists, tasks, next responsibility, next meltdown that we're holding space for next task, next, next, next deadline.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: You know, and we're constantly on this rat race of next, next, next.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: There's no space in our body for eroticism, for desire and for receiving, because our body will always choose survival over arousal and all of the juiciness that that creates.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: And when we're talking about fertility, that's entirely important, right, it's not just a sperm and an egg that make a baby, it's the environment in terms of what it's, you know, what it's alive with, how juicy is it, how available is it, how receptive is it, how welcoming and receiving is it, how full of all of the hormones and the nutrients that nourish that, that there's enough left in the body at the end of the day, that it has that nourishment to sustain the nurturing of life, right, rather than just where it's survival and there's nothing else, it's about output and then boom, I just want to disconnect and feel nothing.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: So I'm only ever in production or nothing.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: So when it comes to the feminine, it's hugely important because what you will find is, if you never dip into it, you will end up being a woman who feels like she's invisible and she's unseen.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: You say how do you feel, and she'll tell you how she thinks, or she'll move a thousand ways around it.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe you don't even know how you feel, maybe you feel numb.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Do you feel?
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: And she'll tell you how she thinks, or she'll move a thousand ways around it.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe you don't even know how you feel.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe you feel numb, maybe you feel disconnected, maybe you're not really sure, maybe actually that's gone on for so long that now you're resentful and you're angry.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: So the ability to slip into the feminine is about the ability that you have to be able to move yourself from only a space of putting out to a space of receiving in, so that you can be in touch.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Right eroticism and arousal for the majority of women and feminine beings is about that.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: I get to be in my own experience and not worry about anyone else.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: I get to move from my head into my body and inhabit it here, and when I do that, I get to be in my own experience and not worry about anyone else.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: I get to move from my head into my body and inhabit it here, and when I do that I feel relieved, I feel taken care of, I feel nourished, I feel fulfilled, whereas when we never enter the body, we miss out on all of that and all we feel is disconnection and bubbling, resentment and separation in all of its forms, right that we just feel invisible in.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: So the feminine when we're talking about the womb and the journey of fertility is well, I mean of course I'm biased I think is essential, because I think it's just part of the vitality and the well-being of what it is to be a full human, and it actually doesn't matter what your gender is.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: You get to have access to having both of these aspects of yourself the part of you that gives and the part of you that loves to receive.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: But if you never allow yourself to receive, to be in touch with yourself, to feel yourself, to allow into your body and your experience something more than the mind gives you, you're always going to be in the sense of feeling like there's scarcity, like there's this desert kind of vastness in you that you can't quite name, and it just kind of feels vague.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, it definitely turned my life around to remember to reconnect.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: So, yes, thank you, thank you.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you, julie, for this really enlightened conversation of you know the beauty of the womb you know and to learning to reconnect and understand just the vitality I love that word, the vitality what can bring our bodies and being and where else that can take us Exactly.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Whether it is a baby, whether it is just our fullest being, whether it is to be a happier us you know?
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Most definitely Won't matter.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: You know, most definitely Won't matter.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: You know what our output of creation is.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: We all want to feel alive and inhabited in our lives, right, and your sense of presence in yourself and your ability to flip into receiving and surrender and juiciness and sexiness and desire is absolutely an intrinsic part of that.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: It is, it is.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: So if we could leave with one, I don't know what would be like to be able to finish off with one word or a few words about our beautiful womb.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Um, what, what would those words be for you?
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: whenever I connected with my womb, I can't help but feel my ancestors, the stories that all of the women before me carry.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: And if I carry their stories and I'm the living embodiment that's come through each of their wombs and that I carry the DNA and the epigenetic imprint of then, I feel gratitude Because if I have their stories, I have their collective wisdom and if I'm willing to feel my womb, I can call forward and pull through the wisdom of generations of women before me, and that feels nothing short of powerful so I feel like that's made my arms tingle there.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: That's my whole being.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Ah, that's beautiful.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: That's beautiful, um, thank you.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: And I know, for me I think I think I feel like I learn every day, but that was the beginning of my journey was understanding to connect to my body, and for me, I think it's just been such gratitude of coming home.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: You know that I can, it's okay for me to feel and it's okay for me to be safe in my body and you know, just learning who I am as a woman.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me here, Liz Thank you so much for coming and now I want to share all the wonderful things that you do.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: So for anyone that's listening to this, wherever you are in the world, I would say please follow Julie Tenner, because she does so many yummy things.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: My sanity as a woman and you know the busyness of life we could get lost in that with life and you know I'm part of Julie's Honey Club and it's, you know, a container of women and we just talk about, in a way, being women and you can come in, because you got us on Voxer as well as on the Facebook group, but on the Voxer, like I think it's on a Monday and a Friday, you come in with you, drop in.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: You know something to think about and to be aware of or to consider, and it opens so many aspects in my body.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's just the breath, maybe it's adornment, maybe it's wearing something that's gorgeous.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: You know, for you it's never big, but it's wearing something that's gorgeous.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: You know, and you know for you it's never big, but it's like it.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: It creates this big space of like.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yes, because growth is never about the huge leaps, it's actually about the one percent every day and instead of choosing neglect and, um, complacency, even just, we just take for granted that this body is just kind of here, moving our mind around.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the one percent of.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, hang on, that's right.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: I do have a body.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, hang on, that's right.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: I do have a womb.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, I do have a desire.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, I do know that my heart wants to feel something like.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: It's the one percent every day yeah, yeah.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: so, um, please come and join us in honey club, because Julie is a beautiful holder of that container, so check it out.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: And where else can we find you, julie?
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Look, I would just say you can find me all places at julietenorlove, so that's on socials as well as on the website.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: I have a podcast Nourishing the Mother.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: If that speaks to you and if you are feeling like you've got a lot of resentment at the moment, then I'd say my freebie maybe is great If you want to look at.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: You know, resentment is really a sign of a whole heck of unspoken needs.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: So if you want to get clear on what is happening for you there, then head over to julietenorlove forward, slash resentment and you can download the Resentment Decoder for free, for free that's right.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I was just listening to that yesterday.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Actually, I was waiting to pick up my daughter when she was uh, um, yeah, it's still early.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: So, yes, I was listening to that.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: So, julie, thank you huge gratitude for sharing your knowledge and the different ways of the womb and how connecting can support us, and I think I'll just leave with you know, creating love and creation with our bodies and our womb.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, julie.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks Liz.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: All right, sending love and gratitude.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Fertility Health and Coming Back to Self.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and consider leaving me a review, which will help me to reach others who may benefit from this information.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Feel free to get in contact at liz waltonorg or via social media at liz walton, underscore, fertility coach, and, if you feel called to, I would love you to share this podcast with anyone you think this could be a healing for, as an elixir for the soul.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I'll see you next time.