Alexandria Rema Saleem is a first generation Palestinian-American creatrix. (She's also a dear friend, Womb Room member, and mother of twins!) Her creative work activates from a place of multidimensional healing, to serve as a conduit of ancestral knowledge, collective consciousness, and communal desire. She works between the land, as a regenerative flower farmer, with sacred activism as the foundation of her artistic practice the interweaves through all of the seeds she plants. In this conversation, we explore: How we access the internal spaciousness to discern right action when there is threat in our nervous systems The language of “war,” “genocide,” and how we navigate our activations around language to find connection and relationship Alexandria’s experience of being able to feel family members in Palestine she has never met, through her bodily experience of grief Our quantum capacity to feel (grief, suffering, pain, joy, liberation), beyond the confines of time space How grief connects us to our lineages What it means to hold paradox in the body, and the ways that we use self-punishment, blame, or hopelessness as ways to get out of feeling Letting our yin (emotional expression) resource our yang (discernment, direction, action) Connection to land, food, family and the intergenerational alchemy as the lighthouses of liberation Alexandria is a multimedia performance artist, art director, and set designer whose practice is hybrid, incorporating dance, performance art, film, installation, happenings, and environment design. Her practice holds space for the intimate to become a window into the universal & cosmic; Inviting the collective experience to eclipse individual subjectivity and allow for an evolved empathetic process. She works with individuals, communities, and other creatives to reclaim our human right to have sacred spaces, through world building, dance, ritual, risk, and tenderness. She is co-director of the Center for study and preservation of Palestine, Founding member of the Black Oregon Land Trust, and Co-founder of SWANA Rose Culture and community center.  Some of her selected resources to share include: PFC Palestinian femminist Collective US Campagin for Palestinian Rights Palestinian Youth Movement Alexandria's IG ___________ Join The Womb Room, where we are cultivating coherence, embodied sovereignty, and practicing interdependence 

How do our bodies experience, metabolize and alchemize the energetics of war? We share a conversation with Rachel Leibovich, community member in The Womb Room, and founder of Esperanza's Acres where she practices as a jewish priestess, ritualist and dream weaver in service to community healing and justice.  Rachel came to us in our "matriarchal health care" section of The Womb Room with curiosity about an acute expression of symptoms. She shares the story of how the phsyical healing has been a piece of her alchemical process of navigating identity, community, expression and work as a Jewish woman, amdist the ongoing genocide in Palestine. We share this as an example of how by working our internal landscape, by honoring the expression of the body, we shift the world around us, through accessing our true expression. Deep gratitude.   JOIN THE WOMB ROOM MEMBERSHIP 

What is magic, really -- and how can it be used to support our physical healing? Listen in on a segment of the audio from our recent free class, "Awakening Elemental Magic," where we tell a solstice story of our sister who developed an acute full-body rashed that turned to anaphylaxis...and how we walked with her through a resolve, using our understanding and practice of MAGIC.  We touch on:  germanic healing knowledge and how recognizing our conflicts will often lead to a worsening of symptoms known as a "healing crisis"  how we worked across distance and across multiple bodies to pull an energetic arrow out of our sister's chest  why we orient to magic and healing from an interdependent view, and how we can decrease severity of symptoms by spreading out the charge across bodies  details for SHAMANI: our upcoming 12-week energetic skills intensive for you to awaken your innate elemental magic, and learn to weave change with the unseen.  If this lights you up, join us inside The Womb Room for our inagural cohort of SHAMANI! Enrollment closes on January 2.  CLASS VIDEO REPLAY AND SHAMANI ENROLLMENT Need-based partial scholarships available with priority to women of color. Application Here

What does it practically take to resolve our chronic symptoms, through the lens of Germanic Healing Knowledge? My friend and colleage Freya Kellet and I go back-and-forth sharing our personal stories of instantaneous relief from issues like chronic fatigue, tailbone pain, anorgasmia and more. If you've been exploring GNM but want the real-life look at what it takes to heal, this is for you! We share stories about:  How understanding that consciousness preceding matter allows us to heal instantaneously Qiddist’s spontaneous and permanent resolution of her chronic tailbone pain via memory recall How to look for our conflicts with softness, rather than grasping and drilling down Freya’s first love “freeze” (motor conflict) that caused the chronic tension in her side, butt and leg Why you can’t trick your brain into a conflict, and how perceptual alchemy only works if it’s fully coherent A bit on Qiddist’s first love ovarian / loss conflict and why stabbing ovarian pain was a welcome resolution Anorgasmia and motor conflicts, and how Freya was able to clear the conflict that was preventing clitoral orgasm with her man Freya's “chronic fatigue” and the adrenal / decision making conflicts that drive it Qiddist’s “food intolerances” and resolving her inability to eat American breakfast foods   FREE CLASS: Shamani: Awaken Your Elemental Magic  Join The Womb Room Community Membership  Follow Freya on IG @freyakellet and listen to Freya's German New Medicine Stories podcast       

Is there space for nuance in a time of war? How do we orient when we hold both colonizer & colonized? What's being missed energetically in the cultural and historical context of this war?  These are questions we (Qiddist and Maura) have been pondering as we metabolize the genocide(s) we are witnessing globally, and in particular of Palestine.  We aren't experts, but we are observers -- in response to the yearning for deeper conversation in our community, we share this conversation with humility and curiosity. We explore topics including: the primal desire to be "good and right," and why we must contend with being "bad and wrong" making sense of our own complicity  unearthing the war(s) inside ourselves how we might move from reaction to right action  why we're pausing for nuance, even (especially?) in times of war  some of the historical pieces that we see missing from public conversation  what are the options if the "master's tools won't dismantle the master's house" what it might look like to move from liberation, not just towards it why the internal investigation of the war inside of us is a necessary step to external change BEYOND BOUNDARIES: An interactive skill-share for a new paradigm of embodied boundaries, in service to inner union. This Friday, replay available. WOMB ROOM COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP: root-cause body literacy, matriarchal medicine, and energetic skill-building.

Grief lives in the body. This is a simple truth, and yet in our culture, our collective conversation around grief is often focused on the mind, on “moving on,” and on processing in isolation. So how do we truly embody our grief, and stay open-hearted to the gifts it brings?  Today, I share my conversation with Grace Harman, an embodied grief guide (and member of The Womb Room!) Grace brings her experience as a dance/movement therapist, as well as her own experience of grieving her mother, into her work with people as they remember how to bring the body back into grieving and, by extension, into fully living. We talk about the wisdom of our embodied grief, including: Why grief needs witnessing and moving out of our isolated grief culture Grace’s journey through grieving the death of her mother, and becoming an embodied grief guide Experiencing grief as a portal to spiritual and creative opening How we are held by our ancestors in our grief Being with grief as a healing gift to our lineages (mentioned: The Nap Ministry, Tricia Hersey) How not being in control can actually be a source of power May our conversation nourish you and open your heart to the medicine of your grief.  To connect with Grace, find her on her website and follow her on Instagram Intro and outro music: “Cicada” by AnAkA. Thank you sister! Save your spot in the free Sovereign Womb Masterclass: Opening to the Path of Your Power Apply to join The Womb Room, a year long container for womb sovereignty

Welcome to The Womb Room Podcast, a space for radical female health education, autonomous womb care, and conversations on cultivating a sovereign relationship with your womb. I'm Qiddist Ashe, and I'm a female health educator, birthkeeper, and clinical herbalist. I'm the founder of The Womb Room, and I'm here to support you on the journey to stepping into your power by getting to the root of your pelvic health issues, aligning your life with your cycle, and cultivating a sovereign relationship with your womb. Every week, we’re diving into the real talk we need on periods and menstrual health, unpacking sex, pelvic pain,  and pleasure redefining what nourishment and nutrition mean, and journeying through powerful stories of autonomous birth, do-it-yourself pelvic care, and so much more. If you’re looking for sisterly guidance, radical health education  with a good dose of Spirit medicine and a dash of apocalyptic skill building...you’re in the right place! I believe deeply that our wombs are the key to our power, and I trust in your innate healing wisdom. Let’s jump in.