Wise Womb and Conscious Contraception with Samantha Zipporah

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Samantha Zipporah joins me on this episode of the body literacy podcast to discuss conscious contraception and the wisdom of women's bodies. Sam is a fertility, sex, and cycle educator, author and activist with over 20 years of experience in personal, professional, and clinical contexts.

A former birth doula whose roots of study can be found in traditional midwifery, Sam’s work rises from an ancient lineage of midwives, witches, & wise women. She provides radical love for navigating the womb continuum & reclaiming ancestral wisdom.

Together, we peel back the layers of history to reveal the entrenched fears surrounding women's reproductive health and challenge the narratives that have been handed down through generations. This episode promises to be an insightful excavation into the magic of menstruation, the medicalization of childbirth, and the potent power that comes from embracing our bodies' innate functions.

As we converse with Sam, we shed light on the shifting landscapes of midwifery, the rise of medical dominance, and the evolution of the doula's role in modern healthcare. We scrutinize the implications of credentialing systems and insurance on personal health autonomy and ponder the intersection of commercial interests with traditional care practices. Through personal stories and historical context, we navigate the journey toward reclaiming ancestral wisdom and fostering radical love for the womb continuum.

You can learn more about Sam and her work at https://www.samanthazipporah.com/

This episode is sponsored by Pact organic cotton clothing. Pact makes its clothes with certified organic cotton in fair trade manufacturing facilities. Organic cotton uses up to 95% less water than conventional cotton during the wash phase and doesn’t contain the harsh chemicals, bleaches or dyes that conventional cotton uses. PACT organic clothing is so super soft that you’ll never want to wear anything else.

Your purchase helps make the Body Literacy Podcast possible.

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This episode is made possible by Beam Minerals. Check out the Jen’s Favorite Things tab at JenMayo.com for a code for 20% off of your purchase of Beam Minerals or save even more on auto ship. https://jenmayo.com/jens-favorite-things/

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Episode Transcript

Jen Mayo (00:02):
You're listening to the Body Literacy Podcast your
connection to the art andscience of feeling really good
body, mind and spirit.
I'm your host and holistichealth coach, jen Mayo.
If you've never experiencedtruth and freedom inside your
body and amazing adventuresabout to begin healing happens
in community.
Body literacy is your tribe.

(00:23):
Join me in discovering the keysto fearlessly unlocking your
body's innate intelligence andresilience.
Turn on to the wisdom of yourbody as we connect your wellness
dots by exploring whole personhealing, from neuroscience and
nutrition to sexual health andsleep.
Join the wellness revolutionand start speaking your body's

(00:44):
language.
For a former birth doula whoseroots of study can be found in

(01:09):
traditional midwifery, sam'swork rises from an ancient
lineage of midwives, witches andwise women.
She provides radical love fornavigating the womb continuum
and reclaiming ancestral wisdom.
We discuss the history ofhormonal contraception,
medicalized childbirth, thewisdom of women's bodies, the
magic of menstruation and somuch more.

(01:31):
So welcome to the show.

Samantha Zipporah (01:34):
Sam, thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.

Jen Mayo (01:39):
Yes, I'm so glad to have you here.
So I wanted to have maybe sortof a more in-depth conversation
over this idea of consciouscontraception and just what we
can learn from our fertilitysigns and our menstrual cycles
and so forth as those being usedas vital signs.

(02:01):
Essentially, I'll probably startout and give a little kind of
set up where I think thisconversation may be going, with
just a little anecdote from myown life.
So I remember Plain as Daybeing five years old and sitting
at my kitchen counter we wereliving in Florida at the time
and I was bawling my eyes outand my mom came in and she saw

(02:25):
that I was so upset and asked meyou know, jenny, why are you so
upset?
And I looked at her and I saidI'm worried that when I'm older
and I have a baby it's going tohurt.
Yeah, and as an adult, you know, I look back both humorously
and very seriously at that, youknow, snapshot in time, and

(02:47):
think to myself what messageshad a five-year-old little girl
received at that point in timethat she already had this
ingrained fear of her naturalbody and the things that it does
?
So I know you have a lot ofexperience in this area and I

(03:09):
think you have a differentcontext for where you're
approaching women and theirbodies and their fertility.
So, with that said, maybe youcan give us a little bit of
background on your history withhelping women.

Samantha Zipporah (03:28):
Yeah, I'm like different.
Different in relation to what,right, and just oh, I just want
to, you know, hold your littlefive-year-old self, right.
Thanks for sharing that story.
It kind of like spun me offinto memory and like my first
memories of actually my firstperiod or actually my second

(03:53):
period.
I have a very amazing, likevisceral memory where you
remember like the quality of thelight and like the texture of
the washcloth that I was foldingin the laundry room as I was
having my second bleed andcontemplating the fact that I
could now create a human beinginside of my body, right, and
that's what this meant.

(04:14):
And for me I was not at allafraid of the pain.
For me it was like somebody hadgiven me a Porsche, you know,
and I was like let's get thisthing out on the road.
I want to see how fast it couldgo, like look at what this

(04:35):
amazing machine can do, right.
Which is kind of, you know,pretty indicative of like what
my journey has been like, inthat it started very young, with
amazement and fascination andwonder and a very mechanical

(04:59):
view of the body, right.
I come from a family and, youknow, most of us come from a
culture as a whole with immensedisease and illness and
disempowerment and pain, wherethere's this rampant belief that

(05:20):
having a womb is something thatis going to make you suffer and
going to be a painfulexperience.
That is like a disadvantageRight In life or something Right
, and some part of my littlegirl self.
Thank you to whatever divinespark.

(05:41):
Whatever you know past life,whatever you want to call it,
some part of me knew as a verysmall child that that it wasn't
supposed to be painful, but itwas supposed to actually give me
both power and pleasure.
Right, but I didn't know howright, and so I started studying

(06:04):
as a tiny person and I knowthis even more intimately.
You know I've been tellingthese stories as I introduced
myself at a workshop or apodcast forever, but it's like
very fresh and very detailedright now because I'm doing this
massive project where I'mreading all of my journals and I
started keeping a journal agesix.

(06:25):
Oh wow, so I'm really.
I started studying women'sbodies, women's wisdom by
Christiane Northrop, love her,and herbal healing for women by
Rosemary Gladstar.

Jen Mayo (06:39):
Okay.

Samantha Zipporah (06:40):
When I'm in fifth and sixth grade that's
amazing Before I even started tobleed, yeah.
And even though they had veryholistic and like emotional,
psycho, spiritual perspectivesoffered in their books, like I
would say, really the firstdecade of my studies, I was
still just totally focused onthe mechanisms and like I

(07:04):
thought I could like figure itout intellectually, that if I
could figure out how my bodyworked I could make it run well,
like a good machine, right, andI guess I'm just like which
parts of the story to tell,right?
So I started very young, beforeI had any concept of it having

(07:26):
anything to do with how I wouldearn a living or even like what
my role would be inrelationships or within
community, and it really justnaturally evolved.
You know, I helped somebody putin a tampon when I was 11.
And I always say that was likemy first doula job.
And then soon enough, peopleneeded help with contraception,

(07:49):
they needed help with theirabortions and then eventually
one of my friends got pregnantand wanted to have a baby and so
I started studying to be amidwife to support her in her
birth, and I was a midwife'sapprentice and student and then
a birth doula, and birth doulawas like my primary, you know

(08:12):
public job identity that, like I, fit into a little box for most
of my 20s.
And then in my late 20s Istarted to professionalize the
care that I had been offeringfolks for loss and termination

(08:32):
and that began eclipsing mybirth work and I created a
training and started teachingother people how to offer
companionship and holistic carefor any type of a miscarriage or
abortion.
And all this time I'm alwaysteaching people how to tell when

(08:54):
they ovulate, because I'mobsessed with it.
And I learned when I was 19,living on a farm, doing an
internship, reading KatieSingers the Garden of Fertility,
and I learned doing a farminginternship and studying
permaculture.
So I naturally saw my ovulationcycle as a cycle of nature that

(09:22):
we could apply the principlesof permaculture to and how
important it is that we respectthe cycles of nature as our
teachers and create arelationship of synergy and
humility really with them,rather than trying to dominate
or control them, which alwaysends in it does not end well

(09:49):
when we try and dominate, as wecan see in so many facets of our
culture.
So.

Jen Mayo (09:54):
I'll take a pause.

Samantha Zipporah (09:56):
That was like a bit of my story.
It's always been I use thisterm womb continuum, this
continuum being a cycle that hasno beginning and no end, and
it's a really expansive andinclusive perspective.
And certainly I've developedexpertise in certain areas of

(10:20):
the continuum, but I've alwaysbeen a student and a teacher and
a companion and a guide for thewhole thing.
So it's the ovulation, it's theorgasm, it's the abortion, it's
the yeast infection, it's allof it, and just they all inform

(10:40):
one another.
So All right.

Jen Mayo (10:43):
Yeah, can you give us a little more perspective too on
the whole concept of midwiferyand being a doula, because I
think you know I personally hada midwife in a hospital setting,
which I think is a step in theright direction, but I don't

(11:04):
think it's radically differentthan having an OBGYN deliver
your baby for you.
Yeah, there's this concept ofkind of lay midwifery.
That is kind of what peopleused to do in terms of having

(11:25):
someone with them to help themduring that process, versus the
medicalized version that I thinkwe're more familiar with now.

Samantha Zipporah (11:34):
Sure, yeah, I would refer people.
I mean I will give someexplanation, but I would refer
people to the book Witches,midwives and Nurses by Barbara
Ehrenrich and Deidre English,which is really digestible.
It's really short and sweet andit is so succinct and effective

(12:01):
at communicating specificallythe appropriation and the
commodification of ourtraditional skills as women to
be able to support the body ingeneral in life, including the
processes of birth and you knowhow to use plant medicine, how

(12:23):
to take care of ourselves andone another outside of the
systems of hierarchy.
We have like a collectivecultural amnesia in our culture
around this.
We're so used to externalizingauthority, we're so used to
asking permission, we're so usedto having a mediator, whether

(12:46):
it be a priest or a doctor or alegislator, who is like there to
give us permission to accessour power.
And our fertility and sexualityare raw power, so midwifery

(13:06):
until the rise of the AmericanMedical Association and similar
organizations globally whicharose with the industrial
revolution.
So we need to see this parallelthat our bodies as the earth is
not a metaphor and that thecommercialization, the

(13:31):
mechanization, the appropriation, all of these things of the
fertility of both our bodies andthe earth has a paper trail of
specific wealthy white menhoarding power and creating

(13:53):
relationships of subjugation,and it's through that process
that midwifery was turned intowitchcraft and demonized and
stomped out.
So the etymology of midwife issimply with women, and so it's a

(14:18):
non-hierarchical relationshipof companionship.
And in most cultures throughouthistory across the globe the
midwife provided womb to tombcare.
There was no specialization inbirth.
Maybe there was somespecialization in birth, but you
wouldn't only know about birth.

(14:40):
You would also know, forexample, about miscarriage or
about abortion or aboutcontraception.
You would also know how to seta broken bone, how to fight an
infection and all of thesethings, and you would care for
somebody in a relationship thathad continuity of care in a
village, intact culture.

(15:02):
So midwifery was, you know, atleast in the states.
There is a paper trail, there ispropaganda that was put out by
the American Medical Associationin the early 20th century and
the late 19th century, againwith this time of the industrial

(15:23):
revolution, to demonize homebirth and midwives, to say that
they were dirty and unsafe andunhealthy, and essentially it
was a perpetuation of the witchhunts in a lot of ways.
So that you know, people werealways practicing home birth

(15:45):
underground, but it wastechnically illegal in the
United States, I think it was1983 or so.
My teacher, actually ElizabethDavis, is the midwife who I
studied with, who is an amazing,amazing inspiration.
I was talking to anothermidwife the other day who, like,

(16:07):
studied in Canada in themedical system, and so what you
had and what she studied, folksin my subculture scene, we call
them the medwives.
Right because they're trained inthe system to perpetuate the
mechanisms of the system, whichis a for-profit industry.

(16:32):
It's not a healing modality andit actually, like the industry
would lose money and lose powerif they actually taught us how
powerful we were and how capablewe were and we lost dependency
on them.
And so I believe it was in theearlier mid-80s that federally

(16:53):
home birth midwife became legal,based on these competency tests
and these programs that myteacher helped create, which has
positive and negative thingsonce things are regulated and
recognized by the state.
And then doula is a Greek wordthat essentially means slave,

(17:18):
servant, servant, woman, slavegirl.
But they specifically had aconnotation of taking care of
the fluids Right.
So it's the term doula isclassist, it's imperialist and I
don't use it to identify myselfanymore.
And it has again beenappropriated and commodified to

(17:42):
the extent that I was chattingwith a woman at a potluck a
handful of years ago and she was, like, had three children of
her own and one of her bestfriends was pregnant, and she
tells me oh, I would love tohelp my friend have her baby,
but I'm not certified as a doula.

(18:04):
So again, it's like thesesystems I.
There's a lot of amazing doulasin the world.
There's a lot of folks doing alot of good, but we do not need
permission or certifications todo what we have always done,
which is help each other, live,be alive.

Jen Mayo (18:25):
And.

Samantha Zipporah (18:26):
I think that there's danger with any type of
credentialing system in creatingthese hierarchies and barriers
to access.
So the profession of a doula assomebody who would help
somebody have a baby,specifically in the hospital
setting, is where it evolvedalso emerged in the 80s out of

(18:49):
Seattle specifically, a womannamed Penny Simpkin is like seen
as the mother of doula care andit's like you know, it's a
band-aid on the system that isbroken rather than just burning
the system down and starting anew one, which is what my little
radical heart is more fond of.

(19:13):
So that there's that Iidentified as a doula for about
a decade and as soon as Istarted doing more public I had
always been doing underground,but as soon as I became more
public about the miscarriage andabortion support that I was
offering, I was in Oregon at thetime and a board of doulas had

(19:36):
been working tirelessly foryears to get Medicaid to fund
doulas and they had finallysucceeded to get Medicaid to
support hospital birth doulasonly if they were trained and
certified and approved by thepowers that be in a way that

(19:58):
were like I had been practicingfor 10 years and I would have
had to pay several hundreddollars and do their trainings
to get their certifications, toget Medicaid to reimburse me 75
dollars per birth when I was, onaverage, between prenatal and

(20:19):
birth and postpartum, spendingaround 30 to 40 hours with my
clients.
So these doulas were like you'renot a doula, doulas are for
birth, not abortion.
So that's becoming a hugemovement.
Recently that's a whole otherpodcast interview.

(20:44):
That's what I'll stop there formidwife and doula, I'm sure
that was more than you bargainedfor.

Jen Mayo (20:50):
I mean, and maybe on a side tangent on the concept of
excuse me, permission, sure yeah, do you think the insurance
system in and of itself is a bigpart of that problem?
Because I know for mepersonally my own personal

(21:11):
healing journey my biggest ahamoment was losing my insurance,
and I've talked about thisbefore.
But oh losing my insurance, Isay, was the best thing that
ever happened to my health,because I realized what a teeny,
tiny little box I was givenpermission excuse me to access

(21:31):
for healing and care, and assoon as you're ejected from that
system, it's like wow, there'sthis great big world out here of
actual healing modalities thatdon't fit inside the corporate
medical industrial complex thatI now have access to, as long as

(21:51):
you're willing to pay for itand as long as you realize, as
long as you value that yourhealth is that important, and I
think there's a certain valuingthat comes out of having to pay
for it out of pocket.

Samantha Zipporah (22:05):
Not that I'm necessarily saying that's the
solution, but no, everybodyshould just free healthcare and
free housing for everybody yeah.

Jen Mayo (22:16):
So, yeah that's the the topic of permission, I think
is a huge one.
Let's talk a little bit aboutsynthetic hormonal contraception
, and I think you know, asyou've kind of already pointed
out, language is very powerfuland I think the fact that we've

(22:40):
called this, you know, birthcontrol for women.
I've more recently heard somepeople refer to it as chemical
castration.
Yeah, so how does that changethe dynamic when we go from
selling you know, birth controlas a marketing concept for big
pharma, and maybe I think youmight be able to give us a

(23:03):
little bit of history on thecompanies involved with that too
.
How does that change thedynamic when we start using
different language to describewhat we're actually experiencing
here?

Samantha Zipporah (23:15):
Yeah, I'm a big proponent in my work of
calling things specifically whatthey are.
Yeah, and I feel like with theterm birth control in particular
, it's very misleading and Iwould strongly prefer that we

(23:36):
call it ovulation prevention,when that's what it is, which is
what the vast majority ofsynthetic hormonal contraceptive
methods are ovulationprevention methods or, in the
case with a copper IUD, it wouldbe implantation inhibition
method and sperm murderersbecause you know that's.

(24:01):
I mean that's also.

Jen Mayo (24:03):
I guess for listeners, why not like?

Samantha Zipporah (24:05):
where copper ions explode, the little like
cell membranes of the spermheads, if they come in contact
with the copper.
But they might make it past andyou're still ovulating.
So it's quite possible tohabitually conceive, and then
that irritation from the IUDjust creates a situation where
the endometrial tissue isn'tthick enough to support a

(24:28):
pregnancy, so you willmenstruate.
So, yeah, what if we just callthese synthetic hormones
ovulation prevention pills andbirth control being like a
planned cesarean, not like amedicine that you take to
prevent ovulation from happening, and then it's not preventing

(24:50):
birth, it's preventing ovulation, and that we are smart enough,
and I think that's like part ofthe assumption is that, like
birth is like this big, veryvisible thing that like sure
it's preventing you from givingbirth.
But I feel like we are givingpeople their power and their
agency through self-awarenesswhen we teach them specifically

(25:13):
the mechanism of how this thingworks.
And like, how many clients haveyou and I had over the years
that have been on thesemedications for years and years
and years and they have no ideahow they work or what the risks
are involved with them?

(25:34):
So you know, I think we aresmart enough to understand
ovulation.
I understand that likeendocrine health and metabolism
and mineral absorption, like.
There's a lot more nuance anddetails, but, like the concept
of ovulation and menstruation,we can teach to every
eight-year-old, right, and ifthey want to suppress their

(25:55):
ovulation with medications whenthey get old enough to do so,
great.
But let's understand fully therisks and benefits, which you
cannot understand withoutunderstanding the mechanism of
the thing that you are puttingin your body all the time.

Jen Mayo (26:13):
And, yeah, it just of course comes back to internal
versus external authority, right, and that industry, the, the
reality that If you're asconscious about your health as I
am, you probably read everyfood label at the grocery store
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with pesticides.
You may even shop organicbeauty brands for your personal

(26:37):
care products, but do you readyour clothing labels or research
fashion brands with integrity?
I was shocked when I learned myfavorite yoga pants and even my
everyday clothes are full oftoxic chemicals and synthetic
fabrics that are not compatiblewith our bodies.
Many clothes contain PFOS orforever chemicals that are
extremely difficult for ourbodies to detox in their linked

(26:58):
to thyroid issues, hormonedisruption, birth defects,
reproductive toxicity and more.
Formaldehyde is used in manyanti-wrinkle fabrics, and many
other fabrics are treated withpesticides and antifungal
chemicals.
Most people think of their skinonly as a barrier, when in fact
it's also like a sponge orsemi-permeable membrane that
allows things in and out of ourbodies.

(27:19):
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Samantha Zipporah (28:55):
If you've listened to my podcast already,
you've probably heard me say it,but I think it's worth saying
again that we have to beconscious consumers from the
industry and understand that themedical industrial complex is
there to provide goods andservices, which is different
than healing, and that very muchservices.

(29:20):
If we truly feel like thisparticular service or this
particular good is going to helpus heal and we have that level
of consciousness in our consumerchoices, and then that's great.
Like I'm not anti their goodsand services I think a lot of
them are super valuable but weneed to be thinking from this

(29:41):
perspective, understanding thatthey're trying to sell you
something.
The people who have beentrained to work within the
industry are trained to sell youthe goods and services that the
industry provides, and thathealing is something completely
different that you cannot buy,it's an experience and it's a
process, and that there arehealing modalities that are

(30:04):
5,000 years old.

Jen Mayo (30:06):
Right, and I think that's something a lot of people
don't realize is how young ourcurrent medical system is.
I mean, we're talking a centuryor so old, of this paradigm
that we've shifted into and thatexactly medicine and healing
arts have existed, like you said, for thousands and thousands of
years, and to just throw outall of that knowledge base and

(30:31):
completely replace it with onethat I think we're finally
starting to understand isn'tworking very well is something
to consider.
Yeah, yeah.
What are the long-term risks ofbeing on synthetic hormonal
contraception?

Samantha Zipporah (30:48):
Of suppressing your ovulation.

Jen Mayo (30:51):
Yes.

Samantha Zipporah (30:53):
So I feel like I mean just the simplistic
way of like your brain and yourovaries need to be talking to
each other.
Yeah, you know, if your brainand your ovaries aren't talking
to each other, there's going tobe consequences all over the
whole system and that's whathappens when you shut down
ovulation.
You're shutting down, you'resilencing the conversation

(31:16):
between your brain, yourpituitary hypothalamus if you
want to get specific about itand your ovaries, and that
there's like a cascade ofeffects ranging from you can't
absorb minerals as well.
You could be eating the mostperfect organic, nutritional

(31:38):
diet ever, but you're not goingto be metabolizing those
minerals if you're not ovulatingbecause of the important role
of progesterone, which you onlyget natural, healthy
progesterone when you'reovulating.
And oh my goodness, likelisting off all of the different
things that can happen ifyou're not ovulating for an

(31:58):
extended period of time.
Bone mass, I think, is one thatis really shocking, especially
in terms of our youth and howmuch ovulation suppression
medications are doled out for aregular period, or acne or
things that have nothing to dowith preventing pregnancy, even

(32:21):
and that we develop about 70% ofour bone mass between the ages
of 12 and 20 through the processof ovulation.
Again, with that, progesteroneis very important for being able
to fully metabolize all of ourminerals, including calcium, to

(32:42):
build our bone mass, so that ifyou're not ovulating regularly
from 12 to 20, you're notbuilding bones properly.

Jen Mayo (32:51):
Right and I think we're finally starting to see.
I was actually reading anarticle about veterinary
medicine and how someveterinarians are now cautioning
against routine spaying andneutering because they're
finally realizing like oh arethe testes and ovaries actually

(33:12):
do have a purpose in the overallhealth of the brain.
They might have a purposebesides just creating babies.

Samantha Zipporah (33:20):
Yeah, and so the term I use a lot and I have
a whole module in my consciouscontraception skillshare around
body ecology, right, andrecognizing that our bodies are
ecosystems, not just tothemselves like not isolated

(33:42):
right, like they don't exist ina vacuum, but like starting with
understanding basic endocrinefunction and how your digestion
and your mood and your skin andall of these things are going to
be affected by your hormonalcycle and when you're on
synthetic hormones you don'thave a hormonal cycle to be

(34:05):
affected by.
And then actually also lookingoutside of ourselves, into the
ecosystem that we live in,understanding all of the
Xenoestrogens, the syntheticestrogens from outside of our
bodies, from the toxicenvironment that we live in.
Which is one more reason whyit's so important to make your

(34:26):
own progesterone throughovulation is because, as a
culture as a whole, we're allinundated with these toxic
levels of estrogen coming fromour plastics and our food and
industrial agriculture and allthese things, and progesterone
natural progesterone, which onlycomes from regular, healthy
ovulation counteracts all ofthis toxicity.

(34:51):
But also that when we're takingthose synthetic hormones
whether it's to suppressovulation or, to quote unquote
replace our hormones inmenopause which is absurd thing,
also to, anyways, language thatwe are actively changing the

(35:12):
reproductive capacity of fishand amphibians in our waterways
due to the toxic load ofsynthetic hormones from humans
consuming pharmaceuticals andpissing them out into our
waterways.
There is no a way.
When you flush that toilet, itgoes somewhere and that goes for

(35:34):
antibiotics too.
So we have to both consider thepersonal and the collective
ecology and that, yes, you can'tshut down your ovaries.
You can't remove the testes orthe uterus without affecting the
entire ecosystem of the body,right right, in humans or in

(35:59):
cats I'm like, look, I get mycat sleeping here, whose
testicles we did remove.

Jen Mayo (36:06):
I had I put off doing my cat for a while and obviously
there were behavioral factorsthat eventually fed into that
decision, but I really I hadthis like tearing sensation of
like I really didn't want to dothat to work.

Samantha Zipporah (36:21):
I was like I'm not so bad, but they didn't
seem to care at all.
No, she was like prepared forthe cat to be like sad or
depressed or like in pain andthey were just like whatever,
yeah, right.

Jen Mayo (36:36):
But I will say my cat did put on a lot of weight after
we had her fix, though, so Ithink there's, you know,
something to be said for that,yeah.

Samantha Zipporah (36:45):
Totally.

Jen Mayo (36:47):
So we have been enough about cats.

Samantha Zipporah (36:50):
Cats are great.
I mean cats are great.
I mean I use cats when I teachconsent to children in
particular, as, like this is theway to be If you want to be
touched, be like a cat.
Cat tells you.
The cat's like dude, touch meand touch me right here.

Jen Mayo (37:08):
And it would be really persistent.

Samantha Zipporah (37:10):
And if somebody touches a cat and the
cat doesn't want to be touched,that person is going to get hurt
, right, and the cat is going tobe gone, right.
So I think cats are great.
That's lots, and I, if we'regoing to use, yeah that's an
excellent comparison.
I love it.

(37:30):
I love it.
Perk upset Right.

Jen Mayo (37:35):
Um, can you talk a little bit about moon cycles and
seasons?

Samantha Zipporah (37:40):
Hmm, yeah, I mean.
First thing I want to say isthat, speaking of 5,000 year old
medicine, right, that, uh,taoism, which is the
philosophical and spiritualroots and like sort of an
umbrella under which all formsof Chinese medicine acupuncture,

(38:02):
acupressure, chinese herbalism,all these various other forms
of actual physical medicineTaoism is the philosophical
umbrella and that, um, what isnow being popularized in the
world of menstruality is a wordthat's being used.

(38:23):
It's hugely popularized by thered school out of the UK.
They wrote uh, wild Power is anamazing book.
I love it.
Um, and it focuses on this thepolarity of ovulation and
menstruation, with the metaphorof the full moon and the dark
moon, and the polarities of thewinter and the summer solstice

(38:47):
and the seasons in between eachstand for some type of uh phase
in the menstrual cycle.
So the fertile phase it's allwet and it's spring time and
everything's all fertile andlush, and the heat of the summer
solstice is, you know, like theheat also, that happens when
your progesterone rises afteryou ovulate.

(39:08):
So I love, I love this metaphor.
It's so useful, especially formen and children, I mean, I
think it's important for womenas well, but I think it's an
amazing teaching tool for peoplethat don't have this cycle in
their body, especially beingable to relate to like oh yeah,
there's these seasons andeverything is really different,

(39:29):
and like I'm not in control ofit and there's no bad weather,
there's only bad gear is one ofthe things that I'm also really
passionate about in thismetaphor, um, and so, yeah,
menstruation, dark moon, wintersolstice, ovulation, full moon,

(39:49):
summer solstice, and these,these polar, polar energies,
which, again, there's another,there's a whole module of energy
anatomy.
Uh, in my skill share, because Ithere's there's so many
different mythological umframeworks throughout history to
illustrate the importance ofdynamic balance.

(40:12):
Yeah Right, that stasis isunnatural.

Jen Mayo (40:17):
Uh huh.

Samantha Zipporah (40:18):
The stasis, that synthetic hormones put our
bodies into, a state of stasiswhere they're trying to make us
the same every day.
Right, so unnatural andunhealthy, and that actually
these, the dynamic balance ofthe cyclical seasons of the
menstrual cycle of the moon, ishow life is, is how life does,

(40:43):
yeah, uh, and that it's.
It's going to be extremelyproblematic if you try and
control or suppress or subjugatethose cycles, but I want to
again give credit that, to myknowledge, taoism has been using
this metaphor and writing aboutit Right, there's written texts

(41:04):
about it for about 5,000 yearsor longer, and that I'm I've
been frustrated to see whitewomen claiming that they made
this up, uh, and like gettingupset on social media when
people reshare their chart,right, that they did that.

(41:27):
They're like die on the sourceof this.
And I was like that was on thesource of this and I don't
really know.
I mean, I think, like allcultures have had systems of
energy anatomy and that most ofthat was communicated orally,
and just cause it's not writtendown didn't mean it didn't exist

(41:50):
, right, um, so yeah.

Jen Mayo (41:56):
And I think there's been this notion too, that you
know, with the advent ofpharmaceuticals to control our
bodies, you know that thatindigenous cultures and you know
cultures, cultures of antiquity, were just oblivious to how

(42:17):
their bodies worked, like theywere just stupid and didn't know
what they were doing.
Like is that is that true, Likedid they just they didn't know
what they were doing and theyneeded you know science to come
along and and show them how tocontrol.

Samantha Zipporah (42:32):
Yeah, I, yeah , that's like what a what an
amazing like colonizer overculture perspective, which is,
of course, what they love you tobelieve, because then you need
to like have access to academiaand all of these highly
regulated, funded, private, likeprivatized, industrial ways of

(42:53):
knowing.
But I mean that comes into justlike gnosis and like
epistemologies and all of theselike how do you know what you
know?
Do you know what you know?
And that, yeah, I believe youand I experience like this.
Really, I feel like it's aremembering the level of

(43:18):
intimacy that I now have with mycycle from I've been tracking
it on a moon calendar for 24years, wow.
And I've been tracking myfertility signals and my
temperature for, let's see, I'mlike math 17 years, wow.
So I have the data points, Ihave the external validation and

(43:42):
like recognizing that thelanguage of science that we
consider a default today astruth, capital T truth the data
points that are available to usagain are like maybe 100 years
old, right In terms of theirdevelopment and in terms of

(44:03):
anybody being able to be fluentin them, and what we have had
ancestrally is body literacy, issensual, somatic, visceral,
intuitive ways of knowing andbeing with the ecosystem of both

(44:25):
our bodies and the land, andthat, for example, contraception
and cycle awareness as a methodof contraception is likely
paleolithic in origins and thatwe created calendars.
Women tracking their menstrualcycles is the origin of all time

(44:49):
, tracking right, right andhunter gather societies.
You'd want to plan yourreproduction in congruency, in
synergy with the cycles of theearth, with when certain foods
would be available, with whenyou were or were not moving camp
or study in camp, and thatpeople absolutely have been

(45:12):
planning their pregnancies andtheir reproduction and that this
has been our job, this has beenour birthright, this has been
our awareness, for the majorityof human history is the minority
of human history that thiswisdom has been lost, and it's
been lost through systemicviolence and political and

(45:34):
economic motivated violence, ofwhich the witch hunts are some
of the more profuse, obviousruptures of this wisdom.
And so, yeah, this and you know,women also developed
agriculture as a whole.
So, like again, this, likesynergy, understanding, like how

(45:56):
we manage the resources of theabundance of our bodies, of our
physical bodies, are internalecosystems in relationship with
the ecosystem of our environment.
I believe absolutely is ourbirthright and is ancestral
wisdom that we can remember andwe have to just unlearn all

(46:21):
these dissociative externalauthority habits that we've been
in, where we have to like lookat an app or look at a
thermometer and that actually wecan feel our fertility.

Jen Mayo (46:37):
Right, right, yeah, and can you tell us, just give
us kind of a brief overview ofwhat fertility awareness methods
are and how they differ fromusing, you know, some sort of
external device or chemical tocontrol ovulation?

Samantha Zipporah (46:56):
Sure, so most fertility awareness methods are
tracking at least one, if notall three, of what are called
the primary fertility signals,which are the cervical fluids,
the cervical position and thebody temperature, and so being
able to observe those cyclealmost said symptoms, but I

(47:21):
don't like to use the wordsymptoms, I prefer signals or
biomarkers, right, symptom beinga symptom of an illness usually
and having a really negativeconnotation, right?
So, yeah, one can track theirfertility signals, their
biomarkers, and identify thefertile wave.
There's like for most of itsit's around three to six days

(47:43):
where there are fertile fluidspresent during which interaction
with sperm may result inconception.
Okay, and I think it's alsowildly important that people
learn that there is a vastdifference physiologically
between conception and pregnancy, that they're totally different

(48:07):
things and one does not equalthe other.
They're correlated but they'renot causal.
And that about from the dataworld.
I have a dear friend who is adoctor, who is a medical doctor.
They're not all bad.
I love lots of people in themedical field.

Jen Mayo (48:24):
Yeah.

Samantha Zipporah (48:26):
And.
But she's done all of mycitation work and fact checking
for all my books and courses forthe last five years.
I pay her well for it too.
This she came up with to mewith this citation the stat 70%
of all conceptions do not end ina pregnancy.

(48:49):
So when a sperm meets an egg,they will start to multiply,
will be a little zygote and itwill hang out in the egg tube.
And notice I use the word eggtube instead of fallopian tube.
It's like some old, dead whiteguy.

Jen Mayo (49:06):
Right.

Samantha Zipporah (49:07):
Discover this body part Right and it's like
such a symptom of colonialismand misogyny that all of these
parts are named after the whitedude.
So the egg tube it's a egg tubefor an average of three to six
days and then it finally makesit into the uterus and then it's

(49:29):
just kind of free floating foranother handful of days and
before or until the endometrialtissue may absorb it and nestle
it like a little blanket till itcan attach to the actual
uterine wall, which is a thickmuscle.
And so what we have between themoment of conception and

(49:51):
implantation on average is 11days.
Statistically speaking, we have11 days between conception and
the moment when that entityactually attaches to the
physical uterine wall and thematernal blood network.
And historically and I've beendoing a deep dive into research

(50:15):
again, like I was alwaysinterested and I read a bunch of
books and I reread a bunch ofbooks I did a whole bunch more
research this summer with theoverturning of row around plant
medicine and fertilitymanagement and I know that you
just started asking me aboutfertility awareness and this is
gone super pencil.
That's okay, that's okay, butwhat fertility awareness offers,

(50:37):
through being aware of yourfertile window and your
ovulation, is this profoundopportunity to fully manage your
fertility without needing toask anybody for permission,
without needing to consume goodsor services from the medical
industrial system, especially ifyou actually learn how to
intimately partner with plantmedicine.

(51:00):
And what I've learned throughresearch is that the vast
majority of what people wouldthink of as herbal contraception
or herbal abortion in fact isimplantation inhibition.
Historically, that most of themethods that indigenous and
earth based and our ancestors ofEuropean descent as well we're

(51:24):
using to manage their fertilitywith plants, were methods of
inhibiting implantation, notmethods of preventing ovulation,
nor methods of causing anactual abortion after
implantation had occurred.
So does that make sense?

Jen Mayo (51:42):
Yeah, and I was going to say too, I mean, if we change
, if we start changing theconversation, because I think
First, I think most people don'treally have a concept of there
being a different sort ofconversation about this.
Prior to the whole Roe versusWade thing, managing fertility

(52:06):
and promoting menstruation was athing long before it was a
legal thing in the 70s orwhenever that was.

Samantha Zipporah (52:14):
Oh my God.
People have been managing theirfertility at home with plants
safely and effectively for thevast majority of human existence
Right.

Jen Mayo (52:24):
But if we change the conversation from one using a
very divisive word like abortionto more of a concept of
promoting your menstrual cycle,does that potentially ease some
of the ethical implications thatI think people struggle with?

(52:46):
Because I think even what youjust described I don't think
women are even very wellinformed on how the
pharmaceutical versions ofcontraceptions work inside their
bodies.
Yeah, so there are instanceswhere that's doing the same
thing that the plant medicinesthat you just mentioned are

(53:06):
doing Sure.
You know, and even as a womanwho, I mean, I had an IUD at one
point.
I don't think it was properlythe informed consent from my
provider on how that actuallyworked.
I don't think was there.
So there's I mean we could do awhole other convert a whole
other.

Samantha Zipporah (53:23):
Well, and you should all by you, do you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jen Mayo (53:26):
Yeah.
So I guess I guess what I'masking is can we shift the
conversation?
Because I think you know, whenI see women on social media out
marching in the streets withsigns protesting pro, versus
Wade and I'm not really ineither camp I've kind of opted
out of that because I kind oflike what you were talking about

(53:49):
earlier.
Why are we asking forpermission to live inside of our
own bodies?
It's none of their business,right?
I mean, it's just not yeah, andI empathize with with the
sentiments of both both campsbut at the same time I don't
personally subscribe to either.
There's a book I read Not onplant medicine, was actually on

(54:11):
energy medicine called womanheal thyself.
Are you familiar with that?

Samantha Zipporah (54:15):
Yeah, judy Bloom, yes, great book yeah.

Jen Mayo (54:20):
And I think it's about these acupressure points that
were forbidden during pregnancybecause they can cause an
energetic you know flow thatmight terminate a pregnancy.
Yep, I've seen it work, yeah.
So I mean there's so manydifferent ways to support and we
make that shift that you're youknow, even before you would

(54:40):
ever know that you might miss aperiod before you miss a period.
Yeah, You're just supportingyour body's natural menstrual
cycle.

Samantha Zipporah (54:49):
Yes.

Jen Mayo (54:50):
Does that potentially eliminate at least some of this
very divisive stuff that's goingon?
I?

Samantha Zipporah (54:56):
doubt it, because I think a lot of the
super right wing, conservative,religious people are jockeying
for the idea that life begins atconception and they're
completely ignorant of thephysiology that 70% of those
conceptions will naturally pass.
I mean, yeah, education,education, empowerment and

(55:17):
promoting menstruation, I do.
I mean, I don't know, I feellike maybe there's some support,
but I've definitely likeengaged.
I grew up in Boise, idaho.
I've been in some likeextremely conservative places
with my work and they just don'tunder.
I mean, it's, yeah, I don'teven I'm a little again

(55:40):
tongue-tied about it, but, yeah,promoting menstruation versus
having an abortion and what thedifference of that is, yeah,
physiologically, ethically,energetically.
I think that that would beexcellent for people to even
have the option to understandwhat the difference is between
those things, and that it wouldbe predicated upon understanding

(56:03):
the physiology of ovulation andimplantation and early
pregnancy, and that, yeah, it'stotally subjective for sure, but
the physiology is less, though,and that we all deserve that
education, and that's been asmuch as I've gone into this deep

(56:26):
dive of like historical contextis just like very soothing to
me, like all the research Ireally.
I think mostly about childrenand I think about ovulation and
consent with all of the crazy,intense, loud, divisive rhetoric

(56:50):
in the media and in politics.
I'm just like obviously, if youknow me at all, I've been the
companion and guide for many,many people having abortions and
I believe it's a sacred rite ofpassage, that people deserve
love and care and it's deeplyspiritually alchemical.
I don't think it's just amedical procedure.

(57:13):
I think it's a negotiation withembodiment and our relationship
with the divine.
However, most of what I see isthe root.
There's many different roots andtendrils, but I think that
education around consent andovulation are really main root

(57:37):
issues here, and the oblivionthat most people are operating
in with their fertility andsexuality, the passivity that we
are encouraged as women, aspeople with uteruses and vaginas
, that like that our fertilityand sexuality are things that
happen to us rather than thingsthat we fully embody and that we

(58:02):
do, that we are, that we getpregnant, that we get laid, that
these things just like.
These things just like happento us, and that we actually have
a profound opportunity to be atchoice and to be in very

(58:22):
satisfying consensualrelationships with our fertility
and sexuality as conduits forour relationship with the divine
.
And yeah, that's circling backto this language of conscious
contraception and encouragingpeople to actually gather and

(58:45):
acknowledge and embody theirphysical and spiritual and
emotional selves, with theirsexuality and with their
fertility, as a way to heal andas a way to experience pleasure
and power.

Jen Mayo (59:05):
And that's the invitation Right and I think the
idea of like sexuality andfertility being a medical event
is a relatively new concept inhistory, correct?

Samantha Zipporah (59:19):
Oh, exactly, I think we've been.
Yeah, it's maybe a hundredyears old.
These processes have always hadrituals and songs and stories,
and they have been spiritual andsocial events, not medical

(59:39):
events.
And even so, the World HealthOrganization, who is taking into
account impoverished countriesand people with no medical care
and famine, all these thingsthey suggest that globally,
about 5% of people need medicalassistance to give birth About

(01:00:04):
5%, yeah, and what we have inour country is the inverse where
we have.
actually less than 5% of thepeople in our country are giving
birth without any medicalintervention.
Over 95% of people are havingsynthetic hormones, narcotics

(01:00:29):
and surgery, and a huge part ofthis, yes, is the industry, is
insurance and is that feeling ofnot having choice and not
trusting the body which startswith ovulation administration.
Our relationship with ourmenstrual cycles is a foundation
upon which we will build ourrelationship with pregnancy and

(01:00:52):
birthing and mothering.
So, yeah, starting with thechildren, starting with consent.
Yeah, absolutely.

Jen Mayo (01:01:01):
Woo, yeah, could you?
I've heard you talk about thisbefore could you give us a brief
history on?
Bear is one of the big makersof most.
Yeah, I'm wondering if you'regonna circle back.
I would love to.
I would love to.
That's kind of dangling, yeah.

Samantha Zipporah (01:01:17):
Oh, yeah.
And so again, like with thepersonal history, is like I had
very painful or regular cyclesas a teenager and they offered
me synthetic hormonalcontraception and I refused it.
I had enough social andpolitical content, like
consciousness, at the time to belike I don't trust these big

(01:01:39):
pharma corporations.
I don't know who they are.
I don't trust them, though Idon't want them manipulating.
And again I have the likespecific language from reading
my journals.
I'm like I don't want thesepeople controlling my hormones,
my skin, my mood, my digestion.
Like who are these people?
I don't trust them.
And then I didn't find out untila few years ago I was watching

(01:02:03):
an interview between VandanaShiva, who is one of my all time
inspiring Like she just oh, shemakes my heart sing and Amy
Goodman on Democracy Now, andVandana brought it to my
attention that Monsanto that is,patenting and managing all

(01:02:26):
different methods of seeds andbig proponent of pesticides and
all these things Monsanto mergedwith Bayer.
Really here, yeah, this waslike four or five years ago, ok,
monsanto and Bayer merged, ok,and Bayer has been incorporated

(01:02:49):
for over 100 years and they wereexclusive contractors with the
Nazis to create all of the gasto exterminate my family in the
Holocaust and they neverdisincorporated.
They simply played reparationsto the military industrial state

(01:03:12):
that is Israel and neverdisincorporated.
And Bayer makes a hugepercentage of the synthetic
contraceptive options on themarket currently.
So we have this hugemultinational corporation
conglomerate, monsanto, bayerthat are controlling the

(01:03:36):
fertility of both the soil andour bodies for profit.
And the metaphor within thatfour seasons and four weeks
analogy of the menstrual cycle,the metaphor of monocropping and
what that does to ecology, whatthat does to soil health and

(01:04:01):
what taking synthetic hormonesto suppress ovulation does to
our bodies, is really profoundand really really wonderful,
mirroring in that monocroppingdepletes all of the soil,
mineral health and it destroysthe ecosystems.

(01:04:23):
That taking these synthetichormones also kind of traps us
in what is harvest season andthat analogy.
It's just like constantly,constantly late summer, early
fall harvest season, with norest of winter and no lushness
and abundance of spring.
And that again these systems ofmechanizing and commodifying

(01:04:49):
how we manage fertility and whatour connection to life is, our
connection to our food, ourconnection to our fertility.
These are religious questions,these are spiritual questions.
Right, and yeah, regardless ofwhat my beliefs are, if I turned

(01:05:11):
off people around talking aboutabortion as a rite of passage
and things like this, it's justlike I am not at all here to
preach a dogma or an ideology.
But I think that it's veryimportant that we explore these
ideas.
Yeah, and that people are like,what would make me feel
connected to the divine throughmy body, like how could I, is it

(01:05:35):
possible for me to experience asense of connection or a sense
of wholeness that is notmediated by an external
authority and that is notprofiting a corporation that
does not have not only my ownbest interest in mind, but does
not have the interest of theentire collective ecosystem at

(01:05:58):
the center of its action?
That is, exploiting life forprofit?
Right.

Jen Mayo (01:06:04):
Right, and I think creativity is at the heart of
correcting a lot of the ills ofthe world and moving society
forward in a positive way.
Does using forms ofcontraception that essentially

(01:06:27):
keep your body in that stasisthat you mentioned this late
summer, early fall, kind ofstagnation?
Does that kind ofmetaphorically reflect something
that can be said about how thatimpacts our ability to really
show up and be very positive?

Samantha Zipporah (01:06:49):
I believe it does.
I know that there's one studyaround the luteinizing hormone,
which is in the follicular phaseprior to ovulation.
It spikes during the fertilewindow, so you don't have it if
you are taking synthetichormones.
And what the study?
The language they used wasdivergent thinking Interesting.

(01:07:16):
They found a correlationbetween the spike of the
luteinizing hormone and women'sdivergent thinking, thinking
outside of the box, nonlinear,creative thinking.
So that's just like one littleagain the language of modern
science, the data.
Like it's fun.
I love it.

(01:07:36):
I really love being able tospeak that language, but on a
more visceral, spiritual, likeancient energy, anatomy level,
like absolutely, and again,taoism is my favorite, I've
studied it and like the ovarianenergy and ovarian kung fu.
If anybody wants to learnovarian kung fu, get yourself

(01:07:59):
some Montauk chia.
But yeah, our vital force hasimmense, immense creative power
and that we can conceive andgestate and birth things that
are not babies, with the sameenergy for sure.

Jen Mayo (01:08:18):
And I think there's something to be said for
experience based medicine.
I think this term evidencebased is not that it doesn't
have any validity, but I thinkit's kind of been co opted as a
marketing term and used to helpget people to outsource their
permission to an externalauthority, like you were talking

(01:08:39):
about earlier.
So I think a lot of what you'respeaking to here is really
about intuition and trustingyour own experience, your own
lived experience.

Samantha Zipporah (01:08:49):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's very poignant.

Jen Mayo (01:08:53):
Yeah Well, this has been fantastic.
Is there anything we haven'talready specifically talked
about that you think would bereally important for our
listeners to know about?

Samantha Zipporah (01:09:06):
Oh gosh, no, I think that was quite, quite
expansive.

Jen Mayo (01:09:09):
Yeah, we covered a lot of ground there, covered a lot
of ground there.

Samantha Zipporah (01:09:14):
And you'll include my info.
They know they can find me ifthey want to talk more, learn
more.

Jen Mayo (01:09:19):
Yeah, you've got some you've got some online programs
that you have that people cansign up for.

Samantha Zipporah (01:09:26):
Yeah, it's an okay time.

Jen Mayo (01:09:28):
Yeah, definitely go for it.

Samantha Zipporah (01:09:30):
So I have an online learning community that's
called the fruit of knowledgecommunity, inspired by the
ancient Hebrew text, the Genesisstory, which is actually what
came to mind when you startedtalking about being five years
old and fearing the pain ofchildbirth.
Yeah, right, and that that isactually like a mainstream over

(01:09:54):
culture Christian trope, thatthat's part of what.
The punishment for eating thefruit of knowledge, right.
That we would suffer inchildbirth, right, and so, being
the history nerd and theetymology nerd that I am, being
the Jewish, that I am the Jewish, which the Hebrew word that's

(01:10:17):
actually used in the originaltext for knowledge is also used
for sex, okay, and so the fruitof knowledge is the fruit of
sexual knowledge.
Very interesting, and there'salso lots of writing and ideas
that I'm very enchanted withthat point to the idea that

(01:10:41):
eating the fruit of knowledgewas actually our awareness of
our power to create life, beingrelated to our sexuality, okay,
and being related to themenstrual cycle, specifically
and the snake is the symbol ofthe primordial goddess of the

(01:11:01):
earth, mother, creator, alsoLilith.
I'm a big fan of right, and sothe idea that eating this fruit
was actually the original win.
Not the original sin, it's likepart of my little tagline,
right, so that's like theumbrella, the fruit of knowledge

(01:11:24):
.
Learning community is a placewhere people can access all of
my published books.
I have four public selfpublished books.
Okay, and I also have what'swhat I call the living library,
which is all my works inprogress and various curriculums

(01:11:46):
, and then there's monthly Q&A'sand live events and all the
different tiers.
You can choose what yourbenefits are in the fruit of
knowledge and that's theumbrella.
Okay, I prefer and invitepeople to join us.
The lowest here's only fivebucks, oh nice.
And then all my, all my booksand courses can be purchased by

(01:12:07):
themselves outside of thatmembership, for sure, okay, my
website is just my namecom.
It's Samantha Zipporah Z I P PO R A H.

Jen Mayo (01:12:19):
Nice, I'll put that in the show notes too.

Samantha Zipporah (01:12:21):
And then one little thing also just wanted to
, like, go back to that fruit ofknowledge, genesis story,
because it's just so pertinentto what we're talking about and
it turns me on.
So much is this idea that youknow we're, we're exits, we were
kicked out of the fruit of thegarden of Eden In our awareness

(01:12:42):
of our nakedness, right, right,that we're different than the
animals, right, the animalsdon't have to wear clothes.
Well, the estrus cycle and ourability to actually viscerally
and sensually discern ourfertile window Is one of the

(01:13:05):
main things that separates us.
It's not the only thing, right,but I think it is a profound
thing that separates us from thevast majority of the animal
kingdom.
So I also just kind of weavethat into this subversive, yeah,
retelling and reclamation ofthis story that like, no, it's
good to eat of the fruit ofknowledge, right, right.

(01:13:28):
You should understand yoursexuality and your body and your
menstrual cycle.
And yeah, that's theinspiration behind the name, so
thank you for letting me shareall of that.
Thank you, I really appreciateit.

Jen Mayo (01:13:42):
Now, this has been a great conversation.
I think our listeners willreally enjoy it and I will
include all those things in theshow notes.
So thank you so much forjoining us and it was.
It was a pleasure.
This podcast is forinformational and entertainment
purposes only.
Any statements and viewsexpressed by myself or my guests

(01:14:04):
are not medical advice.
The opinions of guests aretheir own and the body literacy
podcast does not endorse oraccept responsibility for
statements made by guests.
If you have a medical problem,please consult a qualified and
competent medical professional.
As always, I hope you enjoyedthis episode of the body
literacy podcast and be sure tosubscribe and sign up for

(01:14:27):
updates over at genmayocom.