Épisodes

  • When Rest Doesn't Restore You

    When Rest Doesn't Restore You
    Jun 10 2026

    Have you ever taken the holiday, had the lie-in, booked the massage, rested for days and still felt exhausted? In this episode we explore a truth many women quietly experience: sometimes rest doesn't restore.

    Drawing from my own recent experience of deep rest, nervous system overwhelm, nausea, and a body that ultimately demanded my attention, we unpack the difference between physical rest and nervous system restoration. Through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, motherhood, pelvic health, we explores why so many women remain depleted despite doing all the "right" things. Why does a weekend away sometimes leave us feeling no different? Why can stillness feel uncomfortable? Why do some women feel numb, restless, or disconnected when they finally stop?

    This episode explores:

    • Nervous system regulation for mothers
    • Why burnout and exhaustion aren't always solved by sleep
    • The connection between chronic stress and the pelvic floor
    • Sympathetic activation, hypervigilance, and high-functioning survival mode
    • Dorsal shutdown, numbness, and emotional exhaustion
    • How the body communicates through symptoms, periods, pain, and sensation
    • Why conventional self-care often misses the deeper issue
    • The role of rhythm, repetition, sensory grounding, and embodied rest
    • How women can begin receiving rest rather than simply doing rest

    If you've ever wondered why you're tired despite resting, why your body won't switch off, or why your periods, pelvic floor, libido, or energy levels are changing, this conversation offers a different perspective. This isn't about fixing yourself.

    It's about creating the conditions where genuine restoration becomes possible.


    Reflection Questions
    • What is your body's default setting when you finally stop?
    • When you land in rest, do you feel relief, numbness, or something else?
    • What actually brings you back into your body?
    • What would your body need in order to truly receive rest?
    Resources Mentioned
    • Your Vagina Lies to You: The Key to Happiness
    • Gold Standard Pelvic Journey
    • Postpartum Care Journey
    • Insight Timer Meditations

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    34 min
  • Resentment Is Information

    Resentment Is Information
    May 14 2026
    What if the tiredness you call fine has another name? In this episode, we meet Claire- forty-three, functioning beautifully, quietly furious, and we follow the resentment she's been sitting on for years, held in her pelvis, gripped in her jaw, carried in shoulders. This isn't about blame, invisible loads, or one more thing to fix. It's about what the body keeps trying to tel us when we do not pause to listen or when we are too busy to listen. What becomes possible when we stop managing our resentment and get curious about what it's truly pointing to. Because the pelvic floor doesn't lie.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    20 min
  • Why Analogue Feels Like Mothering Myself

    Why Analogue Feels Like Mothering Myself
    Apr 22 2026
    Connecting to ourselves in the digital world is what this episode explores. Less digital noise and more embodied living. Here we chat all things digital through the nervous system lens and how this links to pelvic floor healing and mothering ourselves. And I keep coming back to this question: What if some of the most regulating, healing, mothering choices we can make are beautifully simple? Technically, analogue transmits through waves, digital through 1s and 0s. But for me, analogue means more than this. For thirty minutes we explore the best analogue tools for digital detox and emotional wellbeing. More holding Found Here:The Vagina Book Gold Standard Pelvic JourneyPostpartum Care JourneySubstack Insight TimerMain Websitehello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychat

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    33 min
  • You’re Surrounded By People- So Why Do You Still Feel Alone?

    You’re Surrounded By People- So Why Do You Still Feel Alone?
    Apr 9 2026
    It’s 2026. We’re done with fixing. We understand the solutions. The question now is quieter, but sharper: why aren’t we living what we already know? Women keep saying they want community. “I just want community.” But what if that’s not quite true? We like the idea of community.Connection. Depth. Being seen. But real community? It asks something of you. More holding Found Here:The Vagina Book Gold Standard Pelvic JourneyPostpartum Care JourneySubstack Insight TimerMain Websitehello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychat

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    29 min
  • Why aren’t we living what we already know?

    Why aren’t we living what we already know?
    Mar 26 2026
    It’s 2026. We’re done with fixing. We understand the solutions. The question now is quieter, but sharper: why aren’t we living what we already know?Where do women go when they’ve done the therapy, read the books, named the wounds… and still feel like something isn’t landing?Meet Jenna.I’m sharing fictitious client profiles so you can see the inner workings of the work I’ve done with women for over a decade. (TW: there are words that some readers may find challenging if they haven’t tended to them).Jenna is 35.She wants a partner and hasn’t found one because life just hasn’t met her there.She’s a creative, but working a job that drains her because it pays. This was a recent switch because her creative work felt draining as it didn’t feel like it paid enough. A cycle creatives know well.She feels guilty for even being in a space like this- the one where we talk about the pelvis. Like tending to herself is indulgent. Frivolous.In her twenties, Jenna was raped. She hasn’t told anyone. There were no visible scars, so she learned to downplay it. But her body didn’t.She lives with vaginismus which is pain with penetration.A body that closes. A body that says no, even when she doesn’t fully understand why. Jenna isn’t in crisis. She’s in holding.Grief from losing her father, who was her safety. A mother who now needs more, but has always struggled to give. Friendships that don’t quite land. A life that looks fine… but doesn’t feel like hers.She comes home from work and goes flat. Scrolling. Not eating well. Not tending to herself.She finds herself easily slipping into her freeze response tools.Jenna doesn’t need fixing.She doesn’t need to “heal her trauma” in the way she’s been taught. She needs to understand what her body is holding. Where her patterns come from. Why her system moves the way it does.Because when a woman can see that: she stops fighting and ignoring her innate needs.Jenna doesn’t need more information. She needs spaces where her body can speak.Where pain isn’t rushed. Where nothing is performed. Where she doesn’t have to explain why she feels the way she feels.Spaces where the deeper questions can exist:What is my body protecting me from?What happens when I finally acknowledge what I’ve lived through without talking it all through again?Can I trust myself to feel this… without needing to fix it?Jenna isn’t looking for answers, either. She’s looking for something she hasn’t had before: a place to land.And maybe that’s the real question for all of us now:Where do women like me go… when we’re ready to stop doing more therapy, and start listening to ourselves? More holding Found Here:The Vagina Book Gold Standard Pelvic JourneyPostpartum Care JourneySubstack Insight TimerMain Websitehello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychat

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    24 min
  • The Hidden Dissatisfaction of Mothers Who “Did Everything Right”

    The Hidden Dissatisfaction of Mothers Who “Did Everything Right”
    Mar 20 2026
    Mother Profile: SofiaIt’s 2026. We’re done with fixing. We understand the solutions. The fire horse year asks one question: how do we live with what we already know? Where is the community for women who have done the books, the therapy, the circles, and still feel… quiet dissatisfaction?Meet Sofia. I’m going to do some fictitious client profiles so you can see the inner workings of this work I have done with clients for ten years on a 1-1.So Sofia, she did everything “right.” Two children, career, a partner who works full-time, a mother who loves her grandchildren more than her. Life should feel softer now the children are at school. Because, now has has more time, right? Instead, she notices things she can’t name: sex that sometimes hurts, joy that doesn’t feel quite whole, knowledge that comes from all the ‘work’ she has done but it’s not integrated. Sofia isn’t in crisis. She’s in integration pressure. She doesn’t need more answers because she has them from books and therapy. She did counselling for years. she needs places and people and spaces to land.. Spaces where desire, resentment, motherhood, power, money, and pleasure can be spoken without pretense. Real community. Evidence that another way of adulthood exists.No therapy. No webinars. Just women who see it, live it, and share it, sometimes maybe even, over a quick chai latte after a school run.The question for Sofia, for all of us: “Where do women like me gather when they are done pretending?” More holding Found Here:The Vagina Book Gold Standard Pelvic JourneyPostpartum Care JourneySubstack Insight TimerMain Websitehello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychat

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    32 min
  • Betty on vaginisumus, postnatal tending and birth

    Betty on vaginisumus, postnatal tending and birth
    Feb 11 2025
    Betty Sharpe is a Kent doula who actively supports at births around East Kent. She runs Folkey Birth Club which is a local CIC holding birth cirles and nourishment circles. Betty chats about her experience of vaginismus and what it looked like to have the birth she wanted but the lack of postnatal care she realised she needed. Within this episode we discuss tears, childborth, tending to ourselves and just the general culture around the system- whether we are having painful sex or having a baby. Betty Sharpe: https://www.kentdoulacollective.com/betty-sharpe Folkey Birth Club: https://www.folkeybirthclub.co.uk/ Website www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatWebsite www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatWebsite www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatWebsite www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatMore holding Found Here:The Vagina Book Gold Standard Pelvic JourneyPostpartum Care JourneySubstack Insight TimerMain Websitehello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychat Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    58 min
  • Lindsey Isla on vaginismus, being child free and tracking

    Lindsey Isla on vaginismus, being child free and tracking
    Jan 14 2025
    Lindsey Isla creates content online for us all to consume on all things lifestyle, interiors and fashion. This episode of Fanny chat discusses what it means to be diagnosed with vaginismus and how she now looks at this, what choosing to not have children looks like in today's society and how tracking her cycle changed her world. We also close with a beautiful testimony to what it means to be landing into the arms of the feminine.Lindsey Isla: https://www.instagram.com/lindsey_isla/ Lindsey on Substack: https://lindseyisla.substack.com/Website www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatWebsite www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatWebsite www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatWebsite www.thisisnaomigale.co.ukBuy In Your Vagina bookUseful social linksYouTubeSubstack Insight Timerhello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychatMore holding Found Here:The Vagina Book Gold Standard Pelvic JourneyPostpartum Care JourneySubstack Insight TimerMain Websitehello@thisisnaomigale.co.uk@thisisnaomigale #fannychat Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    1 h et 4 min