From Calmbirth Canberra to Transform Your Birth and Transform Parenting – An evolution story
It’s close to a year since I first decided to leave my beloved Calmbirth community. To further my experience of working with new families and act on creating the vision of transforming not only birth experiences, but the parenting experience.
When you teach something for a long time, it’s easy to become scripted and repetitive of the party line. Like an experienced method actor, delivering the lines week after week – could have become like a play on Broadway well passed its expiry date. I was afraid of becoming a performer, rather than a Helen Mirren – who just keeps getting better, staying fresh and delivering in creative and exciting ways.
With these fears motivating my growth I continued to study. I continued to listen to my families.
I could see their struggle. I continued to find more ways of meeting their needs. I could see so clearly their trajectory of growth and empowerment and I understood, firsthand, the ride they were on. So, to me, it seemed short-sighted to focus solely on the birth.
At night, I kept having dreams of giving birth. Apart from almost scaring my husband out of the bedroom, I read this as a sign of giving birth to a new way of doing things. I realised I had not been teaching the Calmbirth curriculum for years, but a continual culmination of my learning and experience working with couples well past the birth. I also understood how powerful it would be to use the same formula for taking the stress out of parenting, as we had used, to take the stress out of birthing.
Transform Parenting was born and breastfed, bathed and required many nappy changes (ok, probably too many metaphors!) She is a mystery, like most newborns and I’m learning everyday how to best serve my families.
See the path we have created, for families to walk on. Take peace in knowing you have a place to rest your weary parenting head, to learn with other families, and not turn parenting into an Olympic sport. To be supported whilst delving into the warehouse of your subconscious to reprogram and continually become a bigger better version of yourself.
If you’d like to know about those who contributed to this evolution, please read on.
Firstly, my midwives, who held such confidence in me and all women to birth their babies even when we need help. Without you all, I never would have discovered my own power during birth. Without you, I wouldn’t be doing what I am today.
The late, great Andrea Robertson – Birth International, where I did my initial training as a childbirth educator, and who set such a high standard for the potential of education. I learnt more through Andrea about teaching than I did in my 4 years at University.
My families – You have given me the honour of working with you through such precious times. You have shared your most intimate stories and struggles. Your loyalty is precious to me and has kept me going strong all these years, even when I left Calmbirth.
My new mothers’ groups – my goodness what a privilege it has been to learn from you all and laugh together, cry together and have fun sharing our experiences and supporting each other. I just love you all and your babies.
Jenny Browne – who brought me into Canberra University to share my passion and adventures with new emerging midwives. What an honour it has been to inspire the next generation of midwives and help them to understand birth as more than just a physiological event.
Peter Jackson – the original founder of Calmbirth who helped me to discover the role of the subconscious in childbirth and gave me a community of wise educators to work with for 14 years. I will be forever grateful.
Julia Willoughby – fellow childbirth educator and Prenatal yoga master, my sister, my colleague who shares my passion for birth and parenting and the many long and inspiring conversations we have. After all these years we are still not bored.
Tess Graham – a breathing retraining expert, who took a geeky passion of mine of learning about the significance of breathing and gave me a business getting to help people of all ages retrain their breathing. When I learnt Tess’ methods, my teaching went through the roof, and people I never had answers for, who struggled with the breathing, all of a sudden felt normal, understood why and had ways to change.
Marisa Peer – who introduced me to hypnotherapy on steroids. Not only has her method helped me personally with my own subconscious programming, I have now been able to share her method of subconscious change with my families who are wanting to dive deeper and work with their own limiting feelings and behaviours. Her work is so aligned with the workings of the mind, the results continue to astound me. I’m busier doing this now, than my breathing and coaching work.
Dr. Joe Dispenza – Joe is a master teacher and takes a complex system of the human body and makes it easy to understand. His methods have taken my 20-year meditation practice to heights I never even imagined. I wouldn’t want to do life without these practices.
Forever grateful and blessed to do this life transforming work – thank you.
Tracey x