You can support the film HERE
Imogen love is a British Caribbean London-based birth doula, sound therapist, artist and mother. Imogen is a multi instrumentalist, having worked with sound as a tool for self connection for over 20 years. Imogen offers heart-led holistic support for pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Her care addresses the mind and body using complimentary sound, meditation, nutrition and exercises. Imogen’s visual practice has seen her art direct and photograph commercial fashion campaigns, largely inspired by her own fascination with human connection and nature.
Use the community code SAMARA-10 for a 10% discount on the Birth: A New Story Course
Through the lens of philosophy, pre and perinatal psychology, traditional midwifery, anthropology and modern medicine, this course invites us to widen our understanding about birth and its deep interrelationship with the rest of our lives. It explores what is possible beyond the dominant story about birth and how we can collectively create a new story that is in service of thriving life.
Through the lens of philosophy, pre and perinatal psychology, traditional midwifery, anthropology and modern medicine, this course invites us to widen our understanding about birth and its deep interrelationship with the rest of our lives. It explores what is possible beyond the dominant story about birth and how we can collectively create a new story that is in service of thriving life.
USE THE DISCOUNT CODE SAMARA-BIRTH-10 to get 10% off the course.
You can register HERE
This episode is a rich conversation between Theodore Lowry, host of the Story Paths podcast, and myself. It was an absolute pleasure to be interviewed by Theodore and to have the opportunity to bring all my contemplations, research and sensing together into a wholesome conversation which completes the first season of the birth a new story podcast, before I take a pause to give my full attention to the film which is entering its post production phase.
In this conversation we explore how birth, like life, unfolds in different fields of belief. We contemplate the natural design of birth or birth's holy architecture as a reflection of our human potential for deeper states of love, trust and empathy. Of course, we cover the deep interrelationship between birth and sex. And we also allow our minds and hearts to imagine a world where a council of pregnant women is consulted for important world decisions and a world where humans live in kinship with the life force that created us.
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
Eva Maria Bredler is a PhD student, editor, and dancer from Germany.
In her PhD, she’s exploring human rights in the context of pregnancy and childbirth. Her work seeks to bring the body back into the law – a sphere mostly inhabited by rational, autonomous legal subjects without bodies or relationships. As such, the law is unable to grasp pregnancy and childbirth as connected and embodied experiences. While doing research at the University of Oxford, she fell in love with social dancing. Trained as a ballet dancer, she is now focussing on Bachata and wants to inspire people to reconnect both to their own and other people’s bodies on a deeper level.
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE Photography by Imogen Love
Matiga is a Space holding Birthworker & Massage therapist from South East London. Walking with women and families along different stages of their maternal journey, she is honoured to witness the transition to earthside by many bright souls that have trusted her presence.
Matiga is currently being gently called to support during the other major life transition, that being departures, and she is excited to see where the roads lead next.
To learn more about Matiga's offerings, please visit https://www.makebadoula.co.uk/
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
Raised in the hip hop and muslim community in South London, Nicola Mahdiyyah Goodall has been involved in birth for almost thirty years. She was guided by her adopted mama Rifat Peggy Nafisa Brown - a traditional midwife taught by God, her local Grand Midwives and her local indigenous elders in Portland. Officially trained in 2002 with Michel Odent as one of the first Paramana Doulas. She works actively not only as a doula, but is also part of many different initiatives which promote good health for women.
She is the founder of the Red Tent Doulas training initiative and the director of the Wysewomen - a series of learning circles aimed at women sharing with women through storytelling, publications and healthy social media, to bring back traditional practices in our modern world, a growing apothecary and a publishing company. Red Tent now includes End of Life doula, traditional postpartum, TCM and radical educators preparation. She utilises her many ancestral lines and endeavours to weave them all together to bring back the traditional universal healing modalities we have discarded.
To learn more about Nicola Goodall please visit: https://nicolathebirthkeeper.com/
For Red Tent Doula courses and information please visit: https://redtentdoulas.co.uk/
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
In this conversation, Samara Concepción invites Natalie Feary to share how she created the conditions within and around herself to experience an ecstatic home birth after a difficult J incision caesarean.
Natalie is a mother to two children aged 9 and 5 and was born and grew up in London with a Mexican mother and English father. She has worked extensively as a politics and business journalist for both print and broadcast media and is the co-owner of two Mexican restaurants by the name of Santo Remedio in London. Natalie had a wonderful birth experience with the birth of her second child, Cecilia, which was transformative in many ways.
BIRTH: A New Story is an upcoming documentary film by Samara Concepción that explores what is possible beyond the medical model of birth.
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
This episode is my second interview with birthkeeper, birth educator and birth activist, Kemi Johnson.
In this episode we focus on dissolving some of the most deeply ingrained myths about birth with the intention of creating new possibilities for families beyond the dominant story about birth.
Kemi Johnson is an experienced Birthkeeper, former NHS and former Independent Midwife in the UK. She provides services to women and families who are seeking more than the conveyor-belt style of care and education that the NHS is providing people with currently.
As well as working with first-time mothers-to-be, Kemi also helps people unravel their thoughts regarding previous birth experiences. They walk away lighter, more informed and able to plan future births with strength and confidence restored.
Half of Kemi’s work is dedicated to coaching other Birthkeepers in their power to support families all over the world.
To find out more about Kemi’s work, please visit https://www.kemibirthjoyjohnson.com/
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
Kemi Johnson is an experienced Birthkeeper, former NHS and former Independent Midwife in the UK. She provides services to women and families who are seeking more than the conveyor-belt style of care and education that the NHS is providing people with currently.
As well as working with first-time mothers-to-be, Kemi also helps people unravel their thoughts regarding previous birth experiences. They walk away lighter, more informed and able to plan future births with strength and confidence restored.
Half of Kemi’s work is dedicated to coaching other Birthkeepers in their power to support families all over the world.
To find out more about Kemi’s work, please visit https://www.kemibirthjoyjohnson.com/
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
Wholistic Sexuality teacher Sheri Winston is a groundbreaking, award-winning author and teacher who offers empowering, entertaining erotic education for everyone.
She’s the author of the award-winning Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure (which I personally couldn’t recommend enough) and Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice. She’s also a contributor to the award-winning Secrets of the Sex Masters.
Sheri is the founder of the Intimate Arts Center. She offers pleasure-centered sex-ed for grown-ups via a wide variety of practical and transformational intimate arts educational recorded online classes, books and blogs.
Sheri’s unique holistic offerings are informed by over two decades as a sexuality teacher, on top of decades of practice as a certified nurse-midwife, gynecology practitioner, registered nurse, childbirth educator and massage therapist.
Sheri delights in inspiring people to have a lot more pleasure, fun and fulfillment!
To find out more about Sheri’s offerings, please visit https://intimateartscenter.com/
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
I deeply believe that the way we welcome new life into our world touches all of us, whether we are aware of it or not. I see pregnancy, birth, the postnatal period and parenting as the foundations of our collective health. The lives and losses of lives in Palestine have ripple effects on the unfolding of our human story.
What could be more important, more precious, to society, governments and our collective humanity than caring for the source of all human life itself?
This project is a Prayer for All Mothers and Children.
My invitation, through this meditation, is to help create the space that is needed to go within and feel all that there is to feel, in the trust that this will, in time, deepen our relationship with what is truly being felt within us. Here’s my offering to you this month, loved ones, and I hope it opens/nourishes you in some way.
With immense Love,
Samara
Music composed by Tommy Khosla
Carly Mountain is a writer, psychotherapist and women’s initiatory guide, who specialises in working with sexuality, relationships and embodiment. She is author of Descent & Rising: Women’s Stories & the Embodiment of the Inanna Myth.
Carly facilitates people at the threshold of change to deepen intimacy with themselves and their lives. Her writing and work seeks to uncover what has been exiled or hidden within, that is longing to be remembered and reconnected with. A mythopoetic process that leads us back into intimacy with all that we have been estranged from, so that we can become more of who we are, and have always been.
To find out more about Carly’s offerings, please visit https://carlymountain.com/
You can support Birth: A New Story HERE
Mars Lord is a life coach and a birth activist. A triple award winning doula, mentor, educator and coach with over 15 years of experience.
Mars created Abuela Doulas, a doula preparation course primarily, but not exclusively, for Black and Brown women, and is the Founder of BLA (Black Lives Abuela) Scholarship. This scholarship is to help Black women who wish to become doulas to train and not be held back by socio-economic disadvantage.
She is Inclusion Consultant to several large companies causing them to look deep into their practise to make systemic and structural change.
This interview was recorded in April 2022, following the Shrewsbury maternity scandal in the UK. Mars also refers to the 2021 draft of a highly concerning proposed new guideline on inducing labour by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
For more information about Mars Lord please visit https://www.marslord.co.uk/
SUPPORT Birth: A New Story HERE
Naolí Vinaver is a Mexican midwife who combines traditional Mexican and contemporary home birth practices, with a profound respect for the physiology of natural birth, having attended over 1800 home births in both Mexico and Brazil. Naolí is a passionate speaker and educator, teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars in over 30 countries around the world.
In this interview Naoli shares her love for the journey of expansion, discovery and transformation that every woman embarks on through pregnancy and birth. Naoli offers her fascinating perspective as an anthropologist on how the medical model of birth became the norm and invites us to consider what safety means beyond survival. Naoli gifts us a deeply holistic approach to subjects such as induction of labour and physiological birth. I absolutely adore Naoli’s ability to embrace the physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of birth, and beyond, all at once.
For more information about Naoli Vinaver please visit: www.naolivinaver.com
Support BIRTH: A New Story here
Jennie Joseph is a British-trained midwife who fights to ensure every person has their healthiest possible pregnancy, birth and postpartum experience with dignity and support.
Jennie created The JJ Way® which is an evidence-based, maternity care model delivering readily-accessible, patient-centred, culturally-congruent care to women in areas that she terms 'materno-toxic zones'.
Jennie is the Founder and President of Commonsense Childbirth which operates a perinatal training division, a clinical division, a national Midwifery school and the National Perinatal Task Force, a grassroots organisation whose mission is the elimination of racial disparities in maternal child health in the United States.
A proud member of The Council of Midwifery Elders, she serves on the Advisory Council for the Congressional Black Maternal Health Caucus, is a Fellow of The Aspen Institute, and has been recognized as a TIME Woman of The Year 2022 for her work in promoting perinatal equity.
For more information about Jennie Joseph please visit https://jenniejoseph.com/
Support BIRTH: A New Story here
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. She works with families throughout the childbearing years to resolve the effects of Pre and Perinatal challenges and with adults retrospectively. She is the author of ‘The Secret Life of Babies: How Our Prebirth and Birth Experiences Shape Our World’ and ‘It’s Never Too Late: Healing Prebirth and Birth At Any Age’, which is a practical guide for parents, caregivers, and health care providers I personally couldn’t recommend enough.
In this interview Mia invites us to perceive conception as a spiritual event and babies as emissaries of the greater whole, she shares how babies communicate information, including their memories of their birth experience. Mia also shares concerning research about the imprints caused by common birth interventions which rely on drugs and instruments and how parents can help their infants and children discharge their birth trauma through compassionate listening. Mia also covers how our pre and perinatal experiences shape the future of our world and how we can intentionally co-create the world we want to live in through the way we treat mothers and babies.
For more information about Mia Kalef’s offerings
In this conversation, Samara Concepción invites Natalie Gyte to share her free birth experience and the journey which led her to that choice. Together, they explore pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period as a continuum, rather than separate chapters.
Natalie is a new Mama to Rose, and a partner to Luke. She has played basketball for England and for team Great Britain at the junior Olympics and has competed in boxing for 8 years - winning a national title in 2019. Natalie is currently navigating a down shift into slow living as she journeys into Motherhood. And she describes this beautiful phase of life - of loving and raising her child - as her highest calling.
BIRTH: A New Story is an upcoming documentary film by Samara Concepción that explores what is possible beyond the medical model of birth.
Find out more at www.birthanewstory.com
Birth: A New Story is a gathering place for visionary voices to explore what it means to be human and welcome new life into the world with reverence.
Samara Concepción is a birth doula and a women’s health practitioner based in London. These conversations intend to offer you a holistic perspective on pregnancy and birth. One which deeply values your innate body wisdom and the inherent intelligence of birth.