205 episodes

Cutting-edge, pioneering conversations on holistic women's health, including sex, birth, motherhood, womanhood, intimacy and trauma with doula, certified Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, and author of Call of the Wild and the Fourth Trimester, Kimberly Ann Johnson.

Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson Kimberly Ann Johnson: Author, Vaginapractor, Co-founder of the School for Postpartum Care

    • Health & Fitness
    • 4.8 • 252 Ratings

Cutting-edge, pioneering conversations on holistic women's health, including sex, birth, motherhood, womanhood, intimacy and trauma with doula, certified Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, and author of Call of the Wild and the Fourth Trimester, Kimberly Ann Johnson.

    Apprenticing the Web - Mothering, Co-Parenting, and Love as Our Compass with Kendra Cunov

    Apprenticing the Web - Mothering, Co-Parenting, and Love as Our Compass with Kendra Cunov

    Summary
    In this episode, friends Kimberly and Kendra share their experiences and insights around mothering and the complex webs of care in non-traditional family structures. They discuss the beauty and challenges of single parenting, parenting young children while dating, forming new care structures, and navigating professional roles while mothering children of all ages. They also discuss their co-led upcoming retreat Apprenticing the Web taking place in Booneville, California this September 2024!
     
    Bio
    Kendra Cunov has been studying, facilitating, and practicing Authentic Relating, Embodiment Practices & Deep Intimacy Work for over fifteen years. Kendra has worked with thousands of men, women & couples in the areas of embodiment, intimacy, communication & full self-expression. She co-founded “Authentic World & Fierce Grace,” as well as “The Embodied Relationship Training Salon” (with John Wineland), and pioneered some of the most cutting edge relation work on the planet. Kendra has consulted for companies such as Genentech & been on staff for 4PC, an elite mastermind for the top 4% of coaches in the world. She works with organizations & leaders, as well as men, women & couples, who know that embodied presence, truth, connection & integrity are our truest access points to success – in business & in love.
     
    What She Shares:
    –Non-traditional family structures
    –Co-parenting with young children
    –Love as a guiding compass
    –Mothering and professions
    –Upcoming retreat with Kimberly and Kendra in September
     
    What You’ll Hear:
    –Apprenticing the Web Retreat September 2024
    –Blended families, partnership, and parenting non-traditionally
    –Mothering and marriage traditionally and non-traditionally
    –Ease as a compass in hard situations
    –Kimberly’s pregnant in Brazil
    –Making partnerships for co-parenting
    –Feeling alone in single parenting
    –Mothering alone in marriage
    –Centering the child/children
    –Facilitating opportunities for children to connect with fathers
    –Inquiring in co-parenting
    –Love as an invitation to the co-parent
    –Dating while single parenting young children
    –Work changes through mothering
    –Love as a compass
    –Managing finances while single parenting
    –Wanting to be in the world sooner while parenting young children
    –Older children needing more mothering than younger
    –Traveling and working while mothering young children
    –Creating community as single parents and living abroad
    –Benefits of single parenting
    –Not wanting to be a buffer while co-parenting
    –Unpacking child at the center
    –Mothering the culture
    –Maiden-Mother-Crone transitions
    –Something to “keep up” with while mothering
    –Mothering through menopause
    –Accepting missing out in mothering
    –Responding to life in the moment
    –Cultivating capacity for discomfort and the unknown
    –Trusting self to respond in the moment
    –Being willing to fail relationally
    –Curiosity over shaming
    –Upcoming retreat in September, California!
    –Kendra buying land near Mt. Shasta
    –Stewarding the land before building
     
    Resources
    Website: https://kendracunov.com/
    IG: @kendra_cunov
    Retreat Details: https://kendracunov.com/apprenticing-the-web/
     

    • 1 hr 8 min
    A Council on Matrimony with Stephen Jenkinson

    A Council on Matrimony with Stephen Jenkinson

    With special guest host Stephen Jenkinson, Kimberly and Stephen consult with three engaged couples and an unmarried woman to wonder aloud about the institution of marriage. 
    Stephen describes his experience, when he was asked to marry several couples, how he did his homework. 
    What does it mean to approach matrimony as something other than a predictable, foreseen conclusion?  Are weddings overly performative? Is it possible for a wedding to feel authentic?  Kimberly describes what she learned from having a wedding in the working terreiros culture of Bahia, Brazil. 
    Stephen describes why a ceremony has no audience - it only has witnesses and participants. Stephen and Kimberly contend with how contemporary couples, longing for ceremony in their matrimony, strive for integrity in their union.
    This episode is just the tip of iceberg. 
     
    Starting February 25th, Stephen and Kimberly will start their 5-part Online Series "Forgotten Pillars: Patrimony, Matrimony, Kinship, Ancestors & Ceremony."
     
    They will dive much deeper into the lessons gleaned from working cultures of the past to inform meaningful ways for couples, families, and communities to come together for experiences that linger long past the "big day." 
     
    Find out more or join us: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/forgotten-pillars/

    • 1 hr 4 min
    EP 203: Reflections on a Wedding Ceremony

    EP 203: Reflections on a Wedding Ceremony

    In this episode, you hear reflections on Kimberly’s wedding, just weeks out from the event in Salvador, Brazil. With guest host/podcast producer/cousin, Jackson Kroopf, you will hear Kimberly sit with all of the proceedings: from spiritual preparation to rehearsal to ceremony to celebration. What does it mean to be married in the traditions of a spouse’s culture? Who is a wedding for? What role do children play in their parent’s ceremony? How do we understand the relationship between matrimony and contemporary weddings? In this open hearted conversation, you will hear family reckon, reflect, and bask, in real time, on their expanding family.

    • 1 hr 22 min
    Death Doulas and Green Burials with Bodhi Be

    Death Doulas and Green Burials with Bodhi Be

    In this episode, Kimberly and Bodhi discuss his work as a death doula at Doorway Into Light, Hawaii’s only nonprofit green funeral home and educational resource center, The Death Store. They discuss what green burials and ocean burials are and how they are more generous and sustainable to the planet than modern burial practices. They also discuss how dominant culture fears death, responds to death, and death traditions across cultures. In light of all of the ways that people, and even babies, die, Bodhi asks us to deeply reflect on the question, “What is a full life?” P.S. His nonprofit is still taking donations for those displaced by the Maui fires; find the link below to donate!
     
    Bio
    Bodhi is an ordained interfaith minister and teacher in the Sufi lineage of Sufi Sam and Hazrat Inayat Khan. He is the founder and executive director of Doorway Into Light, a nonprofit organization on Maui, which provides conscious and compassionate care for the dying, their families and the grieving, and has been offering community presentations and trainings since 2006 in the fields of awakened living and dying and the care of the dying. Bodhi is a bereavement counselor and educator; a hospice volunteer; a home funeral guide; a teacher and trainer of death doulas; a speaker and workshop leader and a ceremonial guide. He hosts a weekly streaming radio show, ‘Death Tracks’, on a Maui station. Bodhi guides memorials and funerals and leads grief rituals. He facilitates grief support groups for teenagers. He has trained hundreds of doctors, nurses, hospice staff, social workers, ministers, chaplains, therapists, artists and lay people in the spiritual, psychological, emotional and logistical care of the dying and the care of the dead, and for 4 years has taken dozens through a certification program to be death doulas. Bodhi has written a column called “Ask the Death Professor” for a local Maui magazine. He is a notary public, a coffin maker and a Reiki practitioner. Bodhi and his wife Leilah lead spiritual retreats in Hawaii and around the world.For many years Bodhi collaborated with Ram Dass, a neighbor and friend, who served on Doorway Into Light’s Board of Directors. Bodhi is continuing the work Ram Dass helped birth, in the fields of conscious dying in America.
     
    What He Shares:
    –Death doula work
    –Green burials and ocean burials
    –Running a nonprofit funeral home and resource center
    –What you do (literally) when someone dies
    –Legalities of keeping a body with you
    –Generational stories of death



    What You’ll Hear:
    –How he was led to death work and spiritual counseling
    –Working with Ram Das
    –Starting the death doula movement and a ministry of death
    –Running a non-profit funeral home
    –Culture pushing away death
    –Green burials
    –Hazards of embalming
    –Biodegradable graves
    –Death and burial as another practice removed from traditions
    –Cultural differences around death and burial
    –Ocean body burial
    –Being with bodies after death
    –Generational stories after death
    –Lingering with the body to witness death
    –Healthy life includes its death
    –Mothers of stillborns fighting for baby body
    –Giving families time and space with death beyond laws
    –Outlaw moves
    –Medical rules around bodies and placentas
    –Navigating baby and child death
    –What is a full life?
    –Entitlement around death
    –Death doula trainings
    –Facing Death, Nourishing Life course
    –Showing up for life and death
     
    Resources
    Website: https://www.doorwayintolight.org/
    IG: @thedeathstoremaui
     

    • 46 min
    Informed Pregnancy and Evidence Based Birth and Bodywork with Dr. Elliot Berlin

    Informed Pregnancy and Evidence Based Birth and Bodywork with Dr. Elliot Berlin

    In this episode, Kimberly and Dr. Elliot Berlin discuss his informed pregnancy focused chiropractic work. He explains noticing a rise in out of hospital births post-pandemic as well as an increase in hospital restrictions and inductions in hospital births. He discusses various causes of breech positions, his chiropractic approaches to breech babies before birth, as well as the long history of cesareans and how VBACs became stigmatized in recent decades. The common thread through this whole conversation is providing education and information for pregnant people to make the best informed decisions for themselves and their birth.
     
    Bio
    Dr. Elliot Berlin is an award-winning pregnancy-focused chiropractor, childbirth educator, and labor doula. His innovative techniques for prenatal wellness care address tight and painful muscles and tendons utilizing specific massage techniques based on soft tissue releases. He combines this with traditional chiropractic adjustments to restore motion to restricted joints. Dr. Berlin notably works with several hundred breech babies each year, most of whom turn into the ideal pre-birth position once normal function is restored to the mother's low back and pelvis. He is also the host of Informed Pregnancy Podcast, an award winning pregnancy focused chiropractor.
     
    What He Shares:
    –Differences in births post-pandemic
    –Chiropractic approaches to breech babies
    –History of cesareans
    –Informed VBACs
    –Mind-Body health for fertility
     
    What You’ll Hear:
    –Pregnancies post-pandemic
    –Rise in out of hospital births
    –Increase in restrictions and interventions in hospitals
    –Guiding clients in making best choices for birth
    –Training for breech births
    –Using Webster technique to reposition breech babies
    –Structural reasons for breech positionings
    –Functional issues of mother posture
    –Minimizing ultrasounds
    –Looking at baby position at 32 weeks
    –Chiropractic care outside of pregnancy
    –Approaches to releases and maintenance
    –History of cesareans
    –Myths around VBACs
    –How VBAC information is portrayed 
    –Uterine ruptures
    –Insurance policies and cesareans
    –Induction drugs causing uterine ruptures in 1980s
    –VBAC Facts website
    –Using modern technology to improve childbirth
    –Downsides to how interventions are applied
    –What led Dr. Berlin to his work
    –Mind-body practices leading to natural fertility after years of treatments
    –Informed Pregnancy podcast
    –Informedpregnancy.tv streaming app
     
    Resources
    Website: informedpregnancy.com/informedpregnancy.tv
    IG: @doctorberlin
     

    • 34 min
    EP 200: "Birth Control" - Maternal Agency, Education, and Systems of Perinatal Care with Allison Yarrow

    EP 200: "Birth Control" - Maternal Agency, Education, and Systems of Perinatal Care with Allison Yarrow

    In this conversation, journalist Allison Yarrow and Kimberly discuss Allison's new book “Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood.” They go in depth about the culture and systems of perinatal birth care. They explore Allison’s extensive research around the differences between home birth care and hospital birth care, and go into depth about their personal experiences with each scenario. They wonder how future generations will approach their birth, as well as the deep impact of race on varying birth experience. With all of the information out there, they ask how do you prepare for birth?
     
    Bio
    Allisoni Yarrow is a journalist for nearly two decades (in newsrooms like NBC News, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and Vice), a national magazine finalist, the author of 90s Bitch (finalist for the Los Angeles Press Club Book Award), and she has written about the shortcomings of the perinatal experience in America for the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Vox, Harper's Bazaar, and Insider. Her new book Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood, which is out July 18 and arose out of my TED Talk. With the recent news that maternal mortality has risen 40 percent to the highest level in our lifetime, this subject couldn't be more important. The book draws on extensive reporting, interviews, an original survey of 1300 birthing people and mothers, and my own personal experiences, to document how women are controlled, traumatized, injured, and even killed, because of traditionalist practices of medical professionals and hospitals during pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and after. 
     
    What You’ll Hear
    How birth procedures and techniques were not developed by science by traditions?
    The overriding of midwives knowledge by doctors.
    How has birth become such a profitable medical field?
    Why C-sections are so prominent despite their limited need?
    How does home birth care differ from hospital care?
    What kind of mother culture do we need around birth trauma?
    The pressure to educate onesellf in the perinatal experience.
    What role does agency play in the birth experience?
    What needs to change about the system of birth?
    How will future generations experience birth care?
    Our bodies perceive surgery as interruption.
    The importance of sex education to the birth experience.
    The racial dimensions of birth culture.
     
    Links
    www.allisonyarrow.com
    Instagram: @aliyarrow
     

    • 1 hr 5 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
252 Ratings

252 Ratings

Kate44444444 ,

Brilliant

Kimberly is an amazing interviewer and I love hearing her thoughts on a myriad of issues. She’s extremely knowledgable in areas of womanhood, trauma, and health. She isn’t afraid to have a controversial opinion and I appreciate that! I’ve learned so much from her and she’s changed my life for the better. Thank you Kimberly for making this podcast and all the work you do.

Amana BeLove ,

Love love love

I have listened to every episode, some of them more than once! I have received something from each one of them. I love the dialogue and exploration. I am inspired by Kimberly’s genuine curiosity and ability to question and co create with her guests.

emaheg ,

Rambling

Episode 188 is interesting…and then she talks about her daughter near the end. It changed the whole way I viewed the podcast and I won’t continue. She gaslights her teenage daughter on the podcast, sharing things without her daughter’s expressed consent. The content does not add to the episode in anyway, and does not feel necessary. If nothing else, it feels like whining about young people. She seems to demonize psychologists, then she walks her statement back a little, but not much. It’s truly odd. Combine that with other little moments in the show that struck me as narrowminded or dogmatic. She goes on to talk about elders, while I think that’s a really important conversation to be had she has it in the most unhinged way. I won’t be listening to any more episodes. The host was rambling and a poor interviewer. On the other hand, the guest, Sophie Strand, was articulate and clear.

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