Birth and Belonging

Birth and Belonging

A conversation between Samara Concepcion, host of the Birth: A New Story course, and Mia Kalef, to explore how our earliest experiences in the womb and at birth connect us or disconnect us from our sustainable place in the ecosystem.

Virginia Vigliar: So today, we’re going to talk about birth—specifically how preconception and pregnancy shape our world collectively. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by birth and how we come into the world. I truly believe it’s a collective experience. That’s actually something I loved when I met Samara, who is the curator of our course Birth: A New Story (which I’ll introduce in a moment). She talked about the collective experience of birth, and for me, that was a revelation. We often talk about birth as a deeply personal, transformative experience, and that’s true, but the idea that birth is also a collective experience really resonated with me. It’s a universal topic. We often think of birth as something only for mothers or those expecting, but we all come from a womb. We all enter life in the same way, and so speaking about birth is relevant for all of us. It’s not only about the freedom of mothers everywhere to choose how their children come into the world, but also about collective healing.

Without further ado, I’ll introduce our speakers. Samara is a holistic birth keeper, a women’s health practitioner, and a multidisciplinary artist based in London. She’s the curator of our course Birth: A New Story, and she’s devoted to elevating women’s experiences of womanhood, pregnancy, birth, and motherhood by helping them reconnect with their innate body wisdom. Samara is also the host of the Birth: A New Story podcast, where visionary voices explore what it means to be human and bring new life into the world with reverence. She’s the director of the documentary film by the same name. Our other incredible speaker is Mia Kalef, a therapist, author, and ceremonialist dedicated to seeing the soul of things. She practiced as a chiropractor for 18 years and has been a craniosacral therapist for over 30 years. Mia mentors health professionals in bringing pre-birth and birth awareness into their work and practices divination in the tradition of the Dagara people of West and Central Africa. She lives in Canada with her family and works locally and internationally, serving humanity’s intersection with the subtle world.

I’m so grateful to have you both here today. Samara, we weren’t sure you’d make it since you were attending a birth, but you arrived just 15 minutes before our session, which is amazing! I’m so happy you’re here. I’d love to hear from both of you about what brought you to this work. Maybe one of you can answer first.

Samara: I’m happy to begin. Thank you so much for being here with us—it’s a true pleasure. It’s also a real joy to be in conversation with Mia Kalef, whose work has deeply moved me over the years in the way it honors our earliest experiences—those in the womb and at birth—that truly shape our relationship with life, the world, and our sense of belonging within it. This is exactly what we’re going to talk about today. These are all topics we explore in much more depth in the course.

As Virginia mentioned, I literally just spent the whole day with a birthing mother, so this conversation feels spontaneous, and I’m sure much of it will be informed by that experience, which is still very fresh. To answer your question, Virginia, in my early 20s, I was training as a contemporary dancer and started doing a lot of community work with women. I began hearing their birth stories, and I found it fascinating. At that time, I was being introduced to somatic movement practices, which were a real revelation for me. Somatic practices are interested in our internal, felt experience of movement rather than what movement looks like from the outside. It was a true homecoming for me.

When I started hearing about women’s birth experiences, I could see how they were often shaped from the outside in, rather than from the inside out. This raised a question for me: How would birth unfold if women were supported to cultivate a deeper relationship with their bodies and trust their innate body wisdom?

This became my inquiry over the years. Fast forward ten years, and it’s such a gift to witness how birth unfolds when women feel safe, heard, and undisturbed. When the natural design of birth is understood, protected, and allowed to unfold, it’s often very different from what we see in films or hear about in mainstream conversations.

When I began sharing these birth stories, I would often get surprised reactions, like, “Oh, those women are just lucky” or “How is that possible?” But I don’t believe they were lucky; I believe they were simply heard and well cared for. That’s what makes all the difference. There’s so much more I could say about this, but I’ll leave it there for now.

Mia Kalef: Thank you for having me, and it’s so good to see Samara again. It’s been some time. Welcome to all of you—especially it seems there are many young women here. How beautiful to connect with you as you emerge into the possibilities of caregiving, motherhood, or birth support. I know there are men here too, and I welcome all of you. It’s hard to pinpoint when my journey began, but I’ll share the part I’m most aware of. I became a healer at the age of 22, and I’m 52 now. I had the wonderful opportunity to heal many traumas from my early childhood. My early years were difficult, but I felt satisfied that I had healed a lot of what needed to be addressed. Then, I attended a workshop for craniosacral therapy, one of the modalities I practice. The teacher offered us a chance to explore healing from in the womb and from birth. I had never thought about that before, and when I tapped into that experience, I felt something profound—a moment where I truly felt my mother’s love, perhaps one of the first times I truly felt it, and it changed my life. That brief experience helped me realize that there’s an entire landscape of experiences before birth—before conception even—that can deeply affect how we feel about ourselves and the world. Whether we had a positive or difficult experience, coming into a loving relationship with the beginning of our lives can transform how we see ourselves. It inspired me to study and practice this work to help others.

I’ve been doing this for quite a while now, and I’m so grateful to have had the chance to explore and teach this to others. Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

How did I wish I could have been held? And it really allowed me to see where the lack is in the world. And I knew that already. Academically, I knew it. Socially, I knew it as a health professional, but to experience that as a mother allows me now to articulate what I feel we should spend our time on. There's many beautiful organizations in the world, some of which I'm a part of, that help mostly mothers and often grandmothers and birth keepers to become aware of how to hold the mother and how to hold the child. But I've been thinking lately that we should be training teens all at once to hold a mother—not just a birth keeper, not just a doula, not just a midwife or the mother and the father or the mother and the partner—but to gather seven or eight adults who are part of a trained and cohesive team that works with the mother together.

Because inevitably, the mother, one day, needs to talk. She needs to talk about the powerful instincts that are coming through her when she's pregnant, things she's never thought of before, to do with her ancestors, to do with fears she had when she was in the mother's tummy. When she was born, she needs to talk. She needs to be fed. She needs someone who knows how to cook those beautiful recipes that bring out the essence and the strength of the fetus who's growing, and relax the mother and allow her to put her feet up.

We need someone who tells stories and plays music and creates pleasure and beauty, and to come around so the mother doesn't have to sign up and go out and drive in the middle of winter somewhere.

We need a beautiful team of people that all love each other and take care of each other and have done the work with themselves, too. And that's a very, very wonderful vision for the distant future. I think I don’t know where the money comes from for things like that, and who would think they want to do that. But now that I've had a child, I realize it took way more than I even had as a trained professional to hold all of that that was coming through the vessel. Through the vessel comes big, big ancestral imprints, big, big stories from distant ancestors that you never thought of suddenly pop up in your mind and in your body, and you have fears you didn’t even know you had before, or body challenges paying attention. Or sometimes the baby surprises you, and they're in a position that isn’t favorable for birth, or they have some kind of complication.

Where are all the adults around that know how to lovingly sit with the whole family so that the baby can hear? Ah, there’s a beautiful world out there. It's not just my mother, it's not just my father or my mother’s partner or my caregivers or my grandparents. It's a world I want to come to. And, you know, we're doing it slowly, slowly. But like I said at the beginning, we also come here very equipped. We come with a mission. We come with a vision. We come with a certain know-how. We come with experiences that come across the veil with us as we come down like a satellite from the stars, like a beautiful vessel of light entering this world. We come with something that we want to share and we want to express, and even people who have had the hardest experiences find the right people to bring that light out with. They find a way to make the decisions that will support who they're going to become.

So a lot of it is mysterious, but we, as healers or as caring citizens, know we're building humanity. This world will not be violent to itself or to each other. We'll take care of this planet. We'll take care of each other, we’ll take care of the animals. We'll see the beauty in every day if someone reveres us somewhere along the journey. It doesn't take too much, just enough to have our light reflected back to us, to be celebrated and welcomed, and then all of a sudden we look for it everywhere, because that's who we are.

Virginia Vigliar: That really landed like right here. Thank you for saying that. Um, I'm wondering if we can explore a historical event through the lens of pre and perinatal psychology that can illustrate what you just spoke about.

Mia Kalef: It’s not my field of focus, but I do write about it in some of my books. There's someone called Lloyd Demons. He's a psycho-historian, and he did some studies of cultures, especially cultures at war, and the type of language that they use, and the types of glyphs or imagery they'd like to use. So a long time ago, maybe before some of you were born, when there were challenges in Iraq, there were lots of cartoons made of the enemy with a pregnant belly and a bomb that was about to go off, or a dangerous mummy holding a baby, but it was the leader of the country that was at war.

For some reason, when we get into conflict, when we get into big transitions, people like to use imagery and figures of speech that are very reminiscent of pre-birth and birth. I looked at some music too. A lot of musicians tend to use language that involves the coupling of a mother and a baby, like, like, "we're wrapped up together inside and we’re all tangled up," or "I can't leave you because I don’t know my way out." And this is all birth language. And when you start to listen to these things, and you start to look for them, you realize, wow, we all remember these things.

I even did a little foray into looking at the Torah, the Hebrew Bible. Right at the beginning of Genesis, they talk about a conception journey. And I never realized this before, but there’s this light that hovers over the deep, over the deep ocean. There’s a light hovering over the waters, and a penetration of that light into the water. And I thought, hmm, now I don't want to be blasphemous because, you know, I’m not a pious person, I’m not a religious person. But it could be that the author of the Bible also was remembering a beautiful conception of light entering this world into the amniotic waters. It could be.

So, I think it’s a part of all of our journeys. It’s a part of all of our consciousness, in so much as even when we go to get married or have a child or get a new job or even grow ourselves spiritually, sometimes we find ourselves a little stuck or blocked or tangled up or in the fog, if there was anesthetic in our birth, and we have to go back, back, back, and almost fortify our birth journey, our gestational journey, maybe our conception journey, so that we can galvanize ourselves to come forward again, more whole, more free to do that next leap in life.

So when we do this work of healing, pre-birth and birth, it’s a wonderful way to free ourselves to take that next step in our evolution that we want to take, or have been longing for but haven’t been able to take. It’s a wonderful adjunct to any other healing journey that you take as well.

Virginia Vigliar: Yeah, I’m sure. I mean, I’ve had experiences myself, and I have the fortune of having a mother that I can speak to openly about so many things. I’ve asked her so many times, like, what happened when I was born? How did you feel? And, you know, she—I think she had a version of postpartum depression that obviously was not at all diagnosed, or she wasn’t at all accompanied through. And so, she was made to feel kind of inadequate. And, yeah, I actually found that also really interesting, how the postpartum experience of women is cared for by society, or rather, not cared for by society. And I think it’s so important, because, yeah, as women, or anyone who gives birth, there’s so much that comes with that, as you just said, you know? And sometimes it can be overwhelming, and maybe we're not equipped to kind of take it. Anyway, I’m just sharing my personal stuff. It just felt... yeah. But I think I wanted to ask.

Samara Concepcion: Before we move on to the next thing, I just want to really acknowledge what you said. I’d actually love to hear your thoughts on this, Mia. You know, postpartum depression... again, so many women feeling inadequate when really, the way that I see it, at least, is just—it’s got nothing, it’s got very little, if not nothing, to do with the new mama. You know? I think it’s just a reflection of the lack of holding that so many new mothers experience. I remember one of my greatest teachers, Angelina Martinez Miranda, who's a traditional Mexican midwife. When she comes and teaches over here, she says, "In my village, there's no postnatal depression." You know, women are bathed, women are massaged, women's hair is combed, women are sung to, women are cooked for, women are loved, women are cherished. I'm going to have honoring ceremonies. You know, you've got the village coming and saying, Thank you for bringing the next generation into the world. Like we have so much to thank you for, you know, thank you for looking after our next generation.

And, yeah, that's like a whole paradigm that is possible, that does happen again, as Mia was saying, when the village comes together and supports women. So, I like to think of postnatal depression as, yeah, not an individual problem. That's all... you know.

Virginia Vigliar: Oh, that’s so beautiful. Thank you. I’m so glad you spoke to that, Samara. I’m just reflecting on everything you said, Mia and Samara. It’s so powerful and so true.

Mia Kalef: And if you are suffering with health conditions, it doesn't mean that you are broken or ill-equipped. It might mean that your body is a very incredible messenger of information that wants to come out. Some of us process ancestral patterns and collective patterns in the world through our tissues. Some of us express intelligence through what feel like misalignments in our bodies. It doesn't mean we're ill. It means that we are clearly speaking, and to learn to decode what some of those languages are can sometimes, in a way, free us, but sometimes that's just how our body speaks. That doesn't mean your womb and the Conception Vessel that you carry, and your abilities to bring a child safely through that vessel, are not smart. I often think of a woman I knew who had no legs and no arms, and probably other challenges from birth. And she had a very, so-called, healthy pregnancy and birth. And I love that. I love that the soul that comes to you and is waiting for you—they are waiting, they are around, waiting. They’re coming because of you, not because of someone else, not for you to be different, not for you to be better or changed. They have their eye on you, and their wings are pointing towards you so you don’t have to get better. You don’t have to be better. And sometimes, especially in my case, even I found myself healthier from having been pregnant. I felt I feel better than before. Doesn't mean it's always true for everyone. Could be different, but I was surprised by that. So you never know. You just never know.

Virginia Vigliar: Thank you. Yeah, thank you both for your words. I'm so grateful. I have one question. There’s quite a few, but I have a question about how to support and hold mothers when, for instance, in the city of Berlin, everyone seems to be undersourced or very busy, and I have such a strong wish to support my mother friends more, but it’s difficult to make that happen in the way I would like to. Do you have any tips?

Samara Concepcion: I mean, I'm based in London. It's a very, very busy place, and a lot of people here are just doing their very best to survive and pay rent at the end of the month. So, you know, we're all just doing our best. I would say, simple ways of supporting a mother are, even if you can’t cook food, maybe get some food delivered to her home that you know is of good quality. You can just order her some food. Create a little care package. You know, mothers often hold their little ones for long periods of time, and sometimes, you know, sending her aromatherapy or something that she can diffuse in the house while she’s nursing, or a beautiful book or simple things, the things that kind of uplift us all. That’s a beautiful way to support. And, as we’ve been saying, listening is probably one of the greatest gifts. Especially in a busy city, checking in with the mama regularly and maybe having a support group, like a chat group with a few friends. You know, taking turns to support—not feeling like it’s all on you—but just gathering a few friends and making it fun, something that you can sustain.

Mia Kalef: While I was pregnant, I had the good fortune—it was the end of COVID, so it was a brutal time—but I had the good fortune of sitting in circle with three other women weekly, and they watched my belly grow. And it wasn’t all about me. We all shared, we all took turns, we all had something to say. But it was such a beautiful thing for them to witness me emerging with this child in my womb, and we stayed connected afterward. Another thing, you know, the earth is easier to be with in certain locations. It’s true, when there’s more nature, it’s a little more comfortable. There’s less congestion, less Wi-Fi, less 5G. So one thing that you can do when you’re in a busy city is go down, go down with your attention to where the earth is beneath you, and ask her to hold you.

She’s our mother. She holds all of us—our worries, the things we don’t like about ourselves, the things we don’t even want to admit to ourselves, all our displeasures, our joys. She’s our mother. So you can always have a conversation, and there are lots of beautiful surprises that come from that kind of holding too.

Virginia Vigliar: Beautiful. And just, Stefania is wondering, when does the fetus become aware and gain consciousness in the womb?

Mia Kalef: I love this question. I think that’s definitely for me. My experiences were that consciousness begins before we’re conceived. I’ll call it sentience rather than consciousness—being able to sense and communicate begins before conception. I spoke to my daughter for three or four years before she was conceived, possibly longer, and we built a relationship where I considered myself her mother even before she was conceived. If she was ever going to be conceived, I decided I was going to parent her across the unseen realm, because I loved her so much already, and I longed so much for her, and I couldn’t live without having a child. So I decided I was going to become a parent, even though she wasn’t here yet. People I work with, when we get into therapeutic experiences, report their experiences coming into form, being in the womb, their experiences of birth and after birth. We commonly think of memory beginning when we’re verbal, around age two and a half or three. But there’s a different kind of memory, we call it implicit memory, or Soul Memory, that comes all the way from before. It’s interesting—right now, my daughter is becoming very verbal at two and a half, and she’s starting to forget everything she knew. She can’t remember some of the things she knew when she was born, right after she was born, because she’s becoming verbal. There’s something about becoming verbal that sort of closes a door into our conscious mind. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t there in our bodies. And when we’re in regressed states in therapy, sometimes we actually have a fully visual or fully kinesthetic experience, or just a knowing sense of what it was like for us, and we can report on it and bring more healing to it, too.

Virginia Vigliar: Giving hope. Thank you, indeed. Samara, do you want to ask your question?

Samara Concepcion: I’ve just seen the time as well. It doesn’t need to be answered. I’m just really aware that we’ve been speaking a lot about the need for mothers to be held and looked after. And the question that stems from that, for me, is: Well, if we were the child within that mother who lacked holding, who lacked care, how would that imprint us and our relationship to life? And how can we begin to heal that and restore that wholeness and essential nature that Mia Kalef speaks to? We don’t need to answer that question—I can just send you towards Mia’s work, she covers that in depth. Also, one of my gifts within the Birth and New Story course, at the end of module one—which is really centered around Mia’s work—is a meditation where we return to our own birth. So we kind of hold our mother through her birth experience, then we welcome our own selves with the care, gentleness, love, and warmth that we wish we had received. And we then do that with our grandmother and great-grandmother. That’s a little offering that’s on the course. But yeah, I hope you’ve received, I’ve certainly received a lot through this conversation, and I hope that you all have too.

Virginia Vigliar: It was really beautiful. Thank you so much. So, the course—just to answer a few pragmatic questions—is going to be released on the 25th of February, so end of February, and you can already register for it. It’s pre-recorded, and there are also going to be a lot of beautiful practices, meditations. We’ve created a hypno-birthing track for the collective, which I’m so excited about. I heard it the other day, and it’s great. There will also be live classes, live lessons with Samara. Samara, if you want, you can share a little bit about it. But just to let you know, there’s an early bird discount, and you’ll receive an email with all the information for the discount and to register. Samara, if you want to talk about the practices, the live sessions...

Samara Concepcion: I’ll just say generally that I’ve always wanted to create a birth education course for the collective, which is why Advaya and I got together. If I were to create a course on my own, it would most likely only reach mothers and parents, which is huge in itself. But I really love that this course was intentionally curated for the collective. We explore birth through the lens of philosophy, pre- and perinatal psychology, traditional midwifery, anthropology, and modern medicine. It’s a very rounded course with practices like integration practice at the end of each module. In the live sessions, I’ll be here to answer questions, and we can also dive a little deeper in person.

Virginia Vigliar: Yeah, amazing, thank you. Everyone, thank you for your beautiful questions, and thank you, Mia and Samara. It was really beautiful.

Contributors

Mia Kalef Picture

Mia Kalef is a Chiropractor, Craniosacral Therapist and founder of Emerging Families, a program of therapy, education, and research for the Pre and Perinatal Period.

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Samara Concepción Picture

Samara Concepción is a holistic birthkeeper, a women’s health practitioner, and a multi-disciplinary artist, based in London.

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