Deep Listening
And offering homebirth midwifery care for local whānau
Kia ora!
I set this space aside to write about deep listening this month. A few days later than usual. There was a little more listening to do before the writing. How do you turn up the volume of your own listening and noticing, including to yourself?
Deep listening in the world
Do you connect with having a practice of deep listening in your life, for work or otherwise? If you do - is there a sense for you of from where it emerged?
For me, when I say ‘deep listening’, I’m talking about listening with all the senses for either a short or sustained amounts of time.
I’m not sure why I started thinking about it during the past month but what came up for me around my formative experience of deep listening was fishing with my grandfather. I spent quite a lot of hours when I was young for what seemed like years and years, goofing around on the river bank. Surrounded by sandy banks of river and brownish water, starting pretty early in the morning. There were no wise, magical words exchanged which taught me how to ‘do’ deep listening. I think it was just expected that I would either learn it or not if I could be quiet for more than 7 seconds (challenging).
The relevance for me now around that particular initiation is simple gratitude for the quiet space.
Bodies say ‘yes’ / ‘no’ or a million variations of communications that request our listening. And somewhere in amidst noticing that, it strikes me that a person might be great at deep listening and terrible at ordinary, everyday, functional communication!
Learning to navigate the use of deep listening in the bodywork space in contrast to eavesdropping on bodies without permission or consent has also been coming up for me. But I feel like there’s so much more to untangle about that than I thought there was - even from a few days ago. I’ll come back to it soon though.
Creating space for homebirth midwifery
I’ve recently started transitioning into homebirth midwifery practice in my local area, Eastern Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa. Here in Aotearoa the Find Your Midwife website is one of the ways that whānau can use to get a feel for potential midwives and their midwifery care. This is my offering on Find Your Midwife.
I’m working on an updated piece of writing for my ‘About’ page which talks a little more about my homebirth midwifery offerings but for now it’s a work in progress. I’ll share more in the next newsletter - which doesn’t feel too far away because this one took a good, juicy amount of time to make it’s way out into the world.
Bodywork for locals
I'm passionate about the wisdom and intelligence of bodies and especially how this can be supported in pregnancy, birth, postpartum and beyond with bodywork.
I offer Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner (SpBAP) bodywork and also internal pelvic release work.
If you’re interested in booking an appointment or having a chat about the bodywork I offer, feel free to text or call me on 02040839920. There’s even more information on this page that might be helpful, and I also wrote a newsletter about iprw here.
If there’s someone you know that’s local to Whakatāne/Eastern Bay of Plenty and would appreciate a koha appointment - please send them the link to the newsletter, and they can feel free to make an appointment by emailing me or contacting via text.
Places my attention has been lately…
Enjoying Sharon Blackie’s writing about the concept of ‘calling’ here. You can scroll straight down to the paragraph above the heading: The hymn of the pearl.
Celebrating my friend Kate’s awesome doula mahi on Te Wai Pounamu / the South Island
Revisiting the first article that I ever read by Gloria Lemay circa 2009.
Perdita Finn’s musings on Mother’s Day
Organising a new Maramataka calendar for upcoming Matariki / Māori New Year
Admiring the lush Birthing Artemis Tea tastings another epically talented friend, Stephanie Jane is creating, from afar - and missing surfing at this time of year in south eastern Australia
Bayo Akomolafe - cracks compared to doors .The most resonant thing I’ve read in ages. I really enjoy the wildcard creativity of Bayo’s thinking and writing.
I’m leaving you with John Collier’s painting: Priestess of Delphi (Pythia) inspired by the presence of cracks and their curious significance. Until next month…
Kiersten x
Beautiful words Kiersten x