In this talk we look at how birth prepares us for motherhood. Undisturbed, physiological birth centres the mother-child dyad and sets the stage for a well, connected and capable motherhood. We will discuss why it is so vital that we consider our choices in birth, look at the mechanisms at play around birth and visualise the profound power that this initiation offers us
Undisturbed, physiological birth centres mothers and enables them to be:
Deeply bonded with their babies;
More effortlessly responsive to their babies;
Protective of their babies;
Their own mothering authority – responsible and courageous in their choices;
Less prone to postnatal depression, birth complications, struggling to breastfeed;
Generally calmer and more confident as mothers;
Able to meet their child’s needs.
About Lynne: Certified Mama Bamba Antenatal Facilitator, Lynne is a registered Intimacy coach with Intimacy Coach International and her personal experiences of three home births, including a freebirth at 45, have deepened her understanding of birth as a rite of passage. She is also trained in Hatha and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, specialising in prenatal Yoga and has facilitated conscious dance, Tantra, and breathwork. Her work explores intimacy, embodiment and transformation. Passionate about women’s sovereignty, she supports mothers in reclaiming their power, intuition and birth choices. Motherhood remains her greatest teacher and she is dedicated to guiding others through this sacred journey.
Meet Debra Stevens-Robins publisher and editor of Odyssey Magazine and accredited publishing and media partner of The Southern Explorer KZN™. Debra is the curator of the KwazuluSpirit™ Festival along with an incredible team of service delivery and eventing professionals.
Savvy and insightful corporate jungle escapee, wordsmith, author, publisher and editor, Debra is passionate about upliftment through the power of the written word. Former natural healer, teacher and healing academy principal, Debra blends together extensive expertise in wellness, both in the corporate and personal contexts, as well as over 25 years’ experience in driving and delivering corporate wellness initiatives for local and global corporations. Student of law and corporate consultant by trade, naturopathic practitioner by design and magazine editor by choice, Debra is honoured be the custodian of Odyssey Conscious Living Magazine Est. 1977. Debra is the curator of the KwazuluSpirit™ Festival and the Wellness Within™.
Debra’s Credo “When you discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough to make room for it in your life”
SENSORIUM is a conscious touch and sensory soundscape experience that includes theta and beta waves, solfeggio frequencies, binaural beats, saxophone and vocals.
“I felt the energy move right up my spine and finally understood what frequencies and energies were…” (KwaZulu Spirit Festival 2024)
In today’s world, somatic polyvagal relaxation work has been scientifically shown to improve sleep, mood, libido and ability to communicate and relate to others. Adding conscious touch and all of our senses in meditative musical space exponentially increases the experience…
Sensorium is the brainchild of Anne-Marie Clulow (award-winning vocalist and performer (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Sweeney Todd, Beauty and the Beast and Ballyhoo) and her husband Tim Visser fully immersing the audience into a healing brainwave entrainment as well as an energetic community healing experience.
It’s not just music, it’s a deep sensory experience that you have, as you let the frequencies, brainwaves and song work with your subconscious mind. Sensorium has the frequencies of nature and animals blended into the soundscapes, from live recordings on the South Coast of Africa and the Gili Islands.
“We wanted to create something that went beyond just a musical experience, into a shift being. We created an alignment with the nervous system and the body’s innate wisdom, that rebalanced our frazzled dopamine brains!”
This immersive sound experience creates deep bliss and relaxation, an incredible sound journey that takes you to the very core of your being…
SENSORIUM will be featured at the KwaZulu Spirit Festival 2025, 26 July, 18:30 – 20:30, A 60-minute journey, with pre-journey prep and a post-journey Q and A.
Blissexology – Recharge your pleasure, recharge your life
I don’t know for sure how it’s been for everyone else, for the past two and a half years, but I suspect that we’ve all been deeply stressed. A pandemic and planetary trauma have affected all of us in some way. It’s been a war on our nervous systems.
It’s time for peace, pleasure and balance now. It’s time for a reset. Often, we don’t recognise the actual point on the timeline when pleasure disappears from our lives, as the experiences that replace it tend to be all-consuming; they are generally about trauma and survival.
As an intimacy coach supervisor and trainer you’d think I’d be the last person to lose libido, or have to deal with the stress of a dysregulated nervous system. However, the past two years have shown me that, no matter what our logical specialities are, without the regulation of the body and nervous system you get stuck. You can’t think your way into changing things, there are physical practices required.
It’s not enough just to understand the work logically, it has to go deeper into the somatic practices to hold deep impact.
So many of us have been battling with our intimate lives, with work stress and world systems changing, our intimate relationships being put under heavy stressors.
Stressors don’t have to hold a negative connotation, in fact, some stressors can be the momentum to inspire great change, yet continual, ongoing crisis and survival mode is seriously detrimental to our health and, by default, our pleasure, connection, intimacy and happiness as human beings.
The problem with repetitive ongoing stress, is that the adrenaline in your system eventually oversteps its purpose of keeping you alive (in an immediate life-threatening situation) to keeping you from living life fully, as you become adrenally fatigued, run down and burnt out.
This often means sex, libido, conscious touch and intimacy can become a battlefield to get needs met, instead of a field of pleasure and connection possibilities.
A dysregulated nervous system eventually runs into total burnout, brain fog, crisis and catastrophic thinking, and often prevents you from being able to practise gratitude, reframing and learning, hijacking the body’s resources for crisis, not balance.
This ability to polarise your nervous system for survival keeps you alive but, when overwhelmed, becomes so unbalanced it just doesn’t really work any more.
You start feeling less alive; Less of everything really. Exhausted. In dire need of better sleep, and relaxation. Yet these are states of being in your body that your nervous system won’t allow, because it’s scared you’ll die if you relax. After all, adrenaline is sending the message that your very life is in danger!! It’s keeping you alive! Until it isn’t any more.
To be able to allow our bodies and beings to be in states of gratitude and joy instead of just staying on high alert for danger, involves a reset and restart of the nervous system.
If our nervous system is running on high alert, we also don’t have access to the connection we would normally have with other human beings, whether that’s social or even sensual. This is because we disconnect from the nervous system that produces oxytocin (the connection chemical) that also enables social decision-making.
The body that keeps you alive in danger, is the same body that prevents connection when it’s is running in unbalanced overdrive.
This is also why I believe we really haven’t been getting along so well as humans lately.
Play and pleasure for adults often involve things that are not actually beneficial to us.
Many adults ‘relax and play’ by socialising and drinking, eating junk food, gambling and indulging in addictive behaviours, which are often adrenaline hiding itself in a different place, not really relaxing and resetting your nervous system.
Most of us as adults don’t use our bodies to play any more and even sex and Intimacy can be difficult in highly stressed environments.
It’s almost impossible to ‘think’ your way out of this imbalance, it needs a balance of practices that activate the parasympathetic nervous system. There are many practices that can do this: Yoga, laughter, singing, chanting, praying, community socialising and even gargling can activate vagal toning and balance in the parasympathetic nervous system.
Or you can play with pleasure.
You can reset and rebalance through the exploration of deep somatic pleasure.
Most of us don’t really know what’s possible in the body through pleasure, deep relaxation and bliss states, because we don’t have the technical knowledge on how to access these states. I have personally experienced a two-hour orgasm.
It’s pretty mind-blowing, was intensely spiritual with my husband and it isn’t something we have as a daily practice, but having the techniques to be able to play with pleasure is deeply healing.
Nothing wrong with a quick physical release, it’s just limited in what it can do in the body.
Deep states of pleasure release the chemicals and hormones that can balance and regulate our nervous systems to be able to make changes in other areas of our lives, our decision-making, our community life, our parenting, our careers. These aspects of ourselves are all deeply impacted positively by having a regulated and balanced nervous system.
We can use playful and relaxed pleasure to access the body’s own pharmacy to bring our lives into balance. It feels like a weird idea until you experience it. There has to be a conscious decision to learn, because adrenaline will not release you easily from its clutches; it’s almost like an overprotective parent by this point! But you can choose differently.
You can choose to discover the pleasure and deep connection potential within your own body.
It’s not about sex per se, it’s about the pleasure systems in the body being in balance, producing the chemicals and specific relaxation in the nervous system that lead to a balanced and blissful existence!
There are a few paths that can do this, and Neo Tantra is known as the ‘lightning path’ as it directly ties in the entire life-generating system into the life-preserving system!
Most people are excited and curious about what is possible beyond basic sex, the levels of consciousness and deep connection and awareness that can arise and every journey is individual, the journey into bliss and intimacy.
“Integrating a practical, curious and kind approach to sexuality helps heal a deep wound in humanity”
Anne-Marie is the founder of Intimacy Coach International and certifies and trains Intimacy Coaches worldwide to run sessions with neo-Tantra, Taoist sexuality and sensual/massage skill sets, with a set code of conduct for sessions. Having been with her husband for 27 years, their passion is working with people to improve their pleasure skill sets and relationships, both online and with couples’ retreats. Anne-Marie has appeared on 702, Radio Today, Power FM and Kaya FM talking about conscious sexuality and neo Tantra, featured in Women & Home magazine and has been a guest twice on ETV’s ‘Great Expectations’ on regaining libido after childbirth.
Are you ready to evolve to a world of change? Ready to embrace life-changing perspectives on parenting?
“When we let go of rigid boundaries and rules, we can start to enjoy life more, relax more and rediscover fun with our kids,” says Dr. Shefali, a New York Times bestselling author of seven books on conscious parenting and mindful living.
Conscious parenting encourages parents to understand deeply their own emotions, triggers and beliefs and how these influence their children. Too often children serve as mirrors of their parents’ forgotten self.
With conscious parenting, the spotlight is turned around from the children onto the parents as opposed to a traditional focus concerned only with modification of children’s behaviour. When parents heal their own wounds and live authentically, without the projections from their past or the pressure to conform to societal norms, they are able to actually see the unique child in front of them. “When a parent’s consciousness is raised, the awareness and evolution of the parent is magnified.” Debra Robins, editor of Odyssey Magazine
We bring thought leaders to you: Those who take you through all the archetypes on womanhood, the maiden, the mother and the crone. Those who highlight the role of fathers in nurturing their children’s emotional development, building their self-esteem and providing solid guidance for life. Those who take us on a journey to recognise the gift that each child brings into their own lives, enabling us to recognise their path and focus on their innate strengths. We collaborate with those who share the importance of conscious nutrition for young children, impacting everything from physical growth and cognitive function to immune system strength; laying the foundation for a healthy lifestyle throughout their lives.
Join the conversation. Thought leaders and topics will be placed on this platform by 9 March 2025
