Birth with Pleasure

Highlights of the year 2018 and Plans for 2019

I know, I know… I’m crazy late with this post. To my horror – I’m nearly 3 months late! I chose not to be present in a social media and do what mattered most – be the best NVC trainer and the best doula and birth educator for my current clients… That involved a lot of invisible inner work and self-care too. I chose to do it all until I have time to show up here again. I actually was wondering if I should write this post at all since I’m so late. But I think this post is really important no matter how late it is. Why? Well, because the process of drawing conclusions from our past actions and making plans for the future allows us to see ourselves with more clarity than ever before, see our value in this world and our prospects. It lets us be honest with ourselves, realistic, allows us to celebrate, analyse and dream. Moreover, this post may allow you, my followers, see my success and progress, get inspired by it or get involved in the projects I’m creating. So let’s have a look at it.

What happened in my life in 2018:

In April 2018:

• • I successfully graduated from the Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training created by my amazing teacher Sheila Kamara Hay. It changed my vision about how I can support women in their search for Ecstatic/Orgasmic birth experience. I obtained new knowledge and skills in the area of body work and meditations. It plays a crucial role in the way I work with women today.

• • I was a speaker at the Emotional Support and Emotional Intellect Online Summit organized by the Russian Institute for Perinatal Support for birth practitioners. At this summit I gave a 7-hour workshop “Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Approach and Its Application for Conflict Resolutions in Doula Work”. During my presentation I explained the basics of the famous Nonviolent Communication process developed by American psychologist Marshall Rosenberg and also talked about the results of NVC application in the medical environment described by Mel Sears. The workshop also had an interactive part where my listeners could work on their own conflict cases and see how NVC maybe applied to practice. This event allowed me to make another important step in my carrier which is to recruit students for my first NVC practice group.

In July 2018 I launched my first NVC practice group for doulas. This group worked nearly 8 months nonstop and graduated on March 1st 2019. Being the group facilitator for such a long time helped me to deepen my NVC knowledge and skills in a way I couldn’t imagine before. I’m feeling a deep satisfaction both from my personal and professional growth. I became more calm, more attentive to my body signs, my emotions and needs. I started seeing people in a different light, better understanding their inner world and noticing things I would not notice before. Nowadays the conflicts I experience in my life are resolved much faster and with more ease than before. That means I have more time and energy for doing things I like. My work became more productive! And I’m talking here not just about the conflicts visible to other people but also about internal conflicts that are not so obvious for others. All of it as well as an amazing feedback of my students strengthened my desire to become a certificated CNVC trainer, create a separate website for my NVC practice group project and invite new students for the second round of my NVC course.

In September 2018 I was invited to work at another Online Summit with the title “Three Types of Knowledge about Birth”. At this summit I was a speaker and an interpreter of my famous mentor Sheila Kamara Hay. Together with Sheila we explained our audience what is Ecstatic Birth, how to use pleasure as a tool to support physiological process of labor and experience Ecstatic Birth, and how birth practitioners can help their clients to create such experience. The feedback we received was beyond what we expected!. Many birth practitioners sent us emails after the event expressing their amazement about how much they learnt from our very short presentation, and how our presentation inspired them to try out some of the new ideas they learnt from us with their clients next day!

In October 2018 I started working on a secret creative project. To give you a little spoiler – I have started taking guitar classes and vocal training so I could create something special. You might wonder how playing guitar is related to birth? Well, stayed tuned! Most likely you will find out this year.

In November 2018 together with my colleague Olga Nor I finished translating an Introduction to Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training created by Sheila Kamara Hay. This translation was recorded as a podcast and distributed as a gift to all the registrants for our free webinar. Our goal is to make this podcast accessible to everyone this year.

In December 2018:

• • I organized my first ever webinar in my life where I was the main speaker and had Sheila Kamara Hay as a special guest speaker. Her presence was a blessing given the subject of this webinar was “Ecstatic Birth: Emergence of A New Culture”! Nearly 200 people registered for our event and the majority of them were birth practitioners. The feedback we received after this webinar showed us that Russian speaking birth practitioners are very interested in learning more about Ecstatic Birth and they are looking forward to seeing new materials and events related to this subject in Russian. It was a dream come true for Sheila to see me, her alumni, to become a leader on my own, and see how her work is going through new frontiers and getting known outside of the English-speaking world. It was a dream Sheila has been envisioning for already 8 years! This experience as well as my second round of participation in Sheila’s Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training helped me realize my role in the Ecstatic Birth movement and supported my inspiration to continue translating materials on this subject.

• I created two Russian facebook groups to support future moms as well as birth practitioners interested in learning more about Ecstatic Birth experiences. If you are a Russian-speaker, you are welcome to join them! The group for future moms is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/EBmamas/ The group for birth practitioners is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/EBpro/
• I sponsored Fuego volcano survivor. For more details, please check here: http://www.birthwithpleasure.com/birthsponsor_en/
• I started collecting Ecstatic Birth stories. My first story in English is here: http://www.birthwithpleasure.com/ebofmyson/
• I sold my first pack of rebozos to a colleague in Russia. The rebozos were successfully sold within a month and my customer wants to place a new order. For more details, please check: http://www.birthwithpleasure.com/rebozos_russia_eng/
• Over the course of the year 2018:
  I consulted several women online (I didn’t attend any birth because I breastfed my son) and made a few agreements with clients that are due in Spring 2019 to start working with them in February/March.
• I participated in the discussions of an experimental International Orgasmic Birth Doula Group recruited by Debra Pascali-Bonaro. As an active participant of this group I will become the first Russian speaking alumni of Debra’s new course she is designing to help doulas support women searching for Orgasmic Birth experience. Every week of the past year we discussed some aspect of pleasure in birth and to this day this group is a big source of my inspiration and my favorite mutual support circle.

Here is how fruitful was this year. Now let’s have a look at the current year.

What do I plan for 2019:

Probably the most important thing for me is to remain loyal to myself and be in tune with my sensations and feelings as about what is more important for me to do in every single moment. The most important thing for me is my inner harmony that depends on a balance of my needs in all areas of my life. Sometimes I dive into the work I’m so passionate about completely forgetting about myself. This year I would like to remember more about myself while serving others. Therefore everything you will read below is an approximate plan, and I know that it is very likely that life will correct it someway.

So, in 2019 I’d like to:

• Keep developing my rebozo production project and automate client support and order process.
• Translate my handouts for doula services clients into Russian and Spanish.
• Attend a few birth as a doula in Guatemala.
• Run a few events about Ecstatic Birth in Guatemala.v
• Continue translating Ecstatic Birth Training Sessions of Sheila Kamara Hay into Russian.
• Lead a few online events in Russian related to the translations mentioned above.
• Create my first Ecstatic Birth Preparation Mini-Course.
• Learn more technical and marketing skills to make my online school successful and profitable.
• Participate in some or create my own charity projects related to birth or birth education, in case of a successful promotion of my affiliate project Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training led by my amazing teacher Sheila Kamara Hay.
• Create a new website for my Nonviolent Communication project.
• Recruit and start a new Nonviolent Communication Practice Group in English.
• Continue working on my secret musical project and show the first piece of this work to public this year.

Now I’m curious… Who read this post till the end? Did you like it? Did it bring questions? curiosity? inspiration? Please, write me back if it resonated with you. I will be happy to hear your feedback.