On the Secret Witch Show today our guest is Claire Eccleston. Claire is a mother and grandmother, an experienced registered midwife, who is passionate about the ancient and sacred arts of birth work, bodywork and where they meet. She has a deep reverence for our bodies, the rhythms of our physical nature and our earthy intelligence. She honours this womb work with deep reverence, respect and gentleness. She is also a wild dancer.    In this episode, we explored the importance of connecting to our inner wild animal - aka our bodies - very much through the lens of the Feminine initiation of birth and the sacred portal of sexuality - and how finding pleasure in being in our bodies is deeply healing.  We dived into the shame we hold around the body and how that can stop us being fully in our bodies, how to begin to heal trauma and the beautiful gift of our nervous system - and how we aren’t ‘broken’ if we are in fight, flight, freeze or fawn, but responding to the body’s natural intelligence (as well as how to start to work with the body). What You’ll Learn from this Episode:   Our ‘inner wild’ is our connection to our ‘mammalian intelligence’ - the intelligence of being a mammal - our body is a conduit of where spirit meets matter. Wild animals aren’t always nice, though - being ok with our wild anger, our wild No, our wild pleasure is the work of rewilding ourselves back to wholeness - and it’s helpful to know that that’s really what we are doing when we talk about ‘healing’; there’s no ‘fixing’ but a reclamation of our wholeness. Shame can stop us being in connection to our wild pleasure and our bodies - for example, when we feel our bodies are ‘too fat’ or ‘too ugly’, or ‘too wrinkly’, we are not focused on having good pleasure in our bodies - and shame can suppress our connection to truth - and that can have costs of our bodies creating health challenges It’s conditioning that has us disconnect from our primal instincts - and trauma - and it’s easy to beat ourselves up for that, but really, being numb or being in a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response is a natural and healthy response that our body has to keep ourselves safe. We can start to tune back into our bodies in lots of different ways - via the breath, via dance, via self-pleasure, via connecting to our womb - often sexuality or birth are big portals or initiations back into our bodies. To rewild is very healing - and we can do this by getting back in touch with our own natural rhythms and cycles - in connection with the wild cycles of life.   Resources and Things that We Spoke About:   Social: Tiktok - @archetypalapothecary Instagram - @iamnicolebarton Instagram - @archetypalapothecary You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/@secretwitchsociety Claire’s Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/clairehomebirth/  Claire’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/claireeclestonmidwife/  Join our Secret Witch Society: www.facebook.com/groups/secretwitch  Next Crucible: Rosa; www.nicolebarton.co.uk/rosa  Website: www.nicolebarton.co.uk  Claire’s website: www.claireecclestonmidwife.com   Thank you for listening, we’d love to know what comes alive for you in this week’s episode, so please let us know.   If you loved it, there’s a fresh episode every other week - subscribe so you don’t miss it!   Thank you, Nicole and Team Secret Witch xox