LYRA- Inspirational Women Series with Sabrina

KB: I read a bit of your caption today regarding how you got into general wellness, or at least what got you kickstarted, and I was hoping you could tell us a bit about that as well!

SW: I guess my story of where it all started for me in relation to actually having studied a science was with my own fertility journey. I always had really difficult menstrual cycles that were just really irregular, and when I tried to get help for them I was just given the pill and didn’t really know much else. But then I started having a weird reaction to it so I stopped taking it and it happened to be around the time when I was really wanting to become a mom, but my body needed to detox off the pill because my cycle went back to being really irregular.

I ended up looking for ways to help me with that and regulate my cycle, so I could finally become pregnant. I sat with my parents and my mom told me to do a juice fast, and my dad told me to take an herbal tea formula that he created when I was really young which he actually sells. It’s called Timely Relief, and that was to help balance my hormones and help me to get pregnant. At that point my cycle was gone and I tried both of those things, and within 2 days my cycle started.

A few months after that alhamdulillah I became pregnant. That was pretty much the beginning when I realised like ‘oh my gosh’ I was struggling for so long, and it was really powerful for me to see that these types of natural approaches were able to help me get to the goal of becoming a mom. Since that was my journey to become pregnant, I decided I wanted to do things as natural as possible for the pregnancy and birth, and then I started to find out about postpartum healing.

“..I just wish more women would take time to honour this sacred part of them, or their feminine self, I just wish we could honour that within us…” 

 KB: So, once you generally started focusing on Ayurveda, holistic wellness, etc. at what point did you get into postpartum care and womb wellness?

During my pregnancy I was really focused on learning as much as I could to help myself heal after birth, and that's when I got introduced to Ayurveda, and was like ‘oh my gosh there’s a whole science behind natural healing’, and I was really interested in learning it. When I was studying Ayurveda, I just knew I wanted to work in women's health. And then is also when I learned about vaginal steaming, because I was scared that my cycle would come back and be as horrible as it was before. That whole therapy really inspired me to work with women completely, so I work with womb care but also postpartum care through vaginal steaming and Ayurveda.

"These are such sacred times but we really don’t get a chance to tend to ourselves in the ways that we need to and are unique to the feminine body"

KB: What do you wish people knew regarding vaginal health, or what misconceptions do you feel people may have?

SW: What comes to me right away is that I just wish more women would take time to honour this sacred part of them, or their feminine self, I just wish we could honour that within us, and take care of ourselves in relation to the fact that we have these cycles and things that need our attention. I want women to honour them and not work against them, so for example with our Western culture being so fast paced, we’re keeping up with a masculine approach to living, which actually makes it really difficult on our feminine health and overall wellbeing. I just wish women felt more comfortable to slow down and pay attention to themselves, which is also during pregnancy and after having a baby. These are such sacred times but we really don’t get a chance to tend to ourselves in the ways that we need to and are unique to the feminine body.

KB: Do you often get people who are confused by the work that you do?

SW: Some people are definitely confused by the work that I do, especially with vaginal steaming, because it’s just something that isn’t well known in Western culture. So, it’s just something that they haven’t heard about before, and even with postpartum care, people are like why do you even need that? It’s just explaining that these are traditional practices. For example, there were never postpartum doulas because the entire village supported the woman. So nowadays we do need to have services like this that actually bring awareness because it isn’t within our culture or society anymore. But usually people receive it quite well, or they just laugh.

 “Feeling like I was successfully able to hold space or create the environment for a woman to feel comfortable enough to open up and talk about things that are very private to her, I feel like that’s such a gift when I’m able to do that, not only for them but for me” 

KB: What is the most rewarding part of your work, and where do you hope to go from here? 

SW: Feeling like I was successfully able to hold space or create the environment for a woman to feel comfortable enough to open up and talk about things that are very private to her, I feel like that’s such a gift when I’m able to do that, not only for them but for me. From here, I hope to continue serving women in their postpartum healing specifically, and I also hope to do a bit more focus on postpartum care long term. So, for example if people don’t recover in the period directly after birth, then they go on into their motherhood feeling very depleted and low in energy, sad, etc. So, I want to put more effort into supporting women in that time as well.

KB: That’s all so amazing and so valuable. Where can we all learn more about your work and what you’re sharing?

SW: You can find me on Instagram @sabrina.womb