Good question

People often wonder what the differences are between other published authors and myself.

We all tend to have different career paths – some do the China route (I had too many babies to raise and others are much more external career-focussed), and some also embrace the academic and often the orthodox medical way.

I have chosen the “being a practical woman who is a natural healer” and the natural medicine way. This means that we are all seeing things very differently – and are appearing at different ends of the spectrum.

As I see birthing and pregnancy as a transition and initiation into a new phase in coupledom/being a woman and inner growth, it is also where my focus is.

I have seen so much in life that demonstrates that if we move the emotional blockages we instantly alter everything that seemed so imminent – energy shifts affect all aspects of being.

Working with women for all of this time and because I listened so well to the late Dr John Shen, (what he did resonated so much with my own professional and personal experiences) I have always asked very different questions of my patients, and have got a very different slant on what creates our life problems, and how to untangle them.

Almost always there has been a drama around pregnancy/ birthing/ early mothering which really snaps something inside/for her – for the rest of her life. Or in the life of the infant . . . bending the sapling too much so that it does not grow straight.

Differences between other obstetric writers and myself:

1. – I have not been exposed, thus moulded, in western medicine first. This I feel is a blessing.

I have been training undergraduates and post graduates and designing courses for them for the past 25 years. I have been uniquely placed to watch the results as TCM has taken over, and as the “New Age” bent/classical and individualised/energetic viewpoints has been written out of it.

I have found a huge gap when teaching students – very generally speaking, those who have had physio /nursing or other medically styled training prior to the acupuncture seem to already have a ‘full cup’, and get out of the teaching a different set of skills and abilities than those who initially began as ‘laypeople’.

This is partly as the brain is trained to sort through and categorise information very differently and the different types of learning and information cultures are as diverse as the types of fields people take on board as interests.

2. – I have been working with the Active Birthing and Spiritual Midwifery concepts in all birthing arenas as a doula, for over 25 years, assisting patients and friends who wished for more than what was offered by the orthodox medical model.

This has meant that those with severe past trauma – in any area – have been attracted to what I offer. It also meant that I followed what was working or not for the woman, not what was hospital policy or ‘best practice’ as I was responsible for keeping her as well as possible, as she was under my CONTINUING CARE, not just the snapshot of the delivery/lactating/ whatever.

3. – As a healer, I know that the emotions/metaphysical and spiritual realms is where the changes MUST happen if we want the physical to do what it is designed to.

Babies and fertility and women’s health are all heart centred. To NOT ‘do’/cover the emotional side very thoroughly and to only stay within the emotionally neutral and academically ‘safe’ physical realm is to not notice what is often really happening.

The subtle changes will eventually become gross enough to be monitored – but by really being with the woman and her emotions, much of the eventual issues and their later distress can be avoided.

4. – Thus, how it feels, and how to move these blockages to clear this is my focus, rather than the text book ‘take’ on the subject.

5. – Dr John Shen was my teacher – he was extremely clued-in to pregnancy and birthing and all of his pulse work was underpinned by experiences in our early life, especially prenatally. This seems to have been watered down in the reworkings by Dr Hammer. .

6. – As a naturopath, and mother of 4, I have been very meshed into the ‘follow nature’ camp – as was Dr John Shen.
Hence, the current medical practices, whatever they are this decade, are not my focus.

This means that I present life as it is in nature – and for vets and farmers and gardeners and others who live in the real world – it looks apparently controversial as I challenge what we are doing as it is very often contrary to what nature intended and requires. The Emperor (evidence based medicine) has really nothing on.

7 – As my massively brain-injured in utero/profoundly autistic adult daughter’s mother, I have lived in, and with the sorts of issues that do not go away when the often standard professional responses fail to work.

Mediocrity has no place in the life of a the family of a very traumatized being. I know what it is like to be living within/unable to escape ‘hopeless’’.

This thus brings to my work a humanity that is often missing whilst we try to validate our work through the academic and medicalised linear thinking that dominates our profession at present – at least here in Australia.

I am focused on finding out why; and doing something about it – however odd it appears at the time.

When I present anything, I start by drawing a line across the board, and explaining that on the left we have the resonant/ethereal/spiritual aspect of anything (yang) and on the right we have the more structive /dense/physical and yin aspect of whatever it is.

Thus, we then can put the data and quantifiable info on the right and the more qualitative /wisdom/intuitive and feeling/vibes ‘stuff’ on the left.

Hence, by using orthodox medicine, statistics, and rational medicalised thinking, the ‘evidence based’ approach works from the extreme right, and the clinical experience sits where I am – the more anecdotal, energy and feeling centred/being a spiritual being in a human wrapper on the left – and we need all of it to paint the whole picture.

The positions are complementary and different, just as yin and yang go to make up the Tao.