Conversations with the Womb

Copyright © 2015 Giuditta Tornetta.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1 (877) 407-4847

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-1563-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-1564-9 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 4/24/2015

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Part I The Womb

Could Our Womb Be A Creative Chamber to Manifest Anything We Desire?

Part II Nine Chakras of Creation and the Nine Basic Human Rights

Chakra Qualities

First Chakra – The Right to Be Here

Second Chakra – The Right to Feel

Third Chakra – The Right to Take Action

Fourth Chakra – The Right to Love and Be Loved

Fifth Chakra – The Right to Speak and Hear the Truth

Sixth Chakra – The Right to See and Know the Truth

Seventh Chakra – The Right to Live a Conscious Life

Eighth Chakra – The Right to My Divine Powers

Ninth Chakra – The Right to be One with the Miraculous

Seeds of Creations

Chronological Bibliography

To my mother Anna, and her womb, who cuddled me into existence.

Acknowledgements

First, I’d like to acknowledge the tremendous journey this book has guided me through. I’d like to express my gratitude for the journey, as it miraculously brought me closer to my daughter and has transformed me tremendously since its inception. I often feel the words are not my own, rather channeled in spite of myself. I am indebted to many people who have doulaed and midwifed this book into existence.

The inspiration for Conversations with the Womb came from the workshops I have had the privilege to lead all over the world with some amazing teachers.

I want to thank Ibu Robin Lim who has taught me love and service like no one else, and Gloria Gagliardo-De Gast who brightens many of my mornings and helped me realize that, even though I no longer bleed monthly, I needed to pay greater attention to that aspect of my womb. Nicola Goodhall reminded me about sexuality and has been such an amazing resource. We call her Nikipedia for the amazing knowledge she holds. To Ellen Watson who opened my heart to dance and to asking my body to speak to me. My gratitude, love and appreciation to my daughter Natascia Tornetta Mallin. I am so amazed and grateful that God has given me the gift of my daughter, whose no-nonsense commentary and amazing writing skills really transformed this book into a readable work. I am grateful for my incredibly talented son, Azzurro Tornetta Mallin, who has inspired me to always do better and has worked diligently on each chapter with me and on many of the book exercises. Thank you to my line editors, Monique Ruffin and Jill McKellan. I was so fortunate to meet and collaborate with the talented artist Maritza Torres for the front cover. I fell in love with her art the minute I saw it. I also want to thank all my clients and all the alumni of Loving the Mother; without them I could not be who I am today. So many of the words and concepts in this book come from all of you.

I would like to acknowledge the following individuals who I consider my soul sisters and my earth angels: Erin Ryan, Anna Tornetta, Rachel Rosenthal, Barbara Smith, Rachel Love, Elisa Zampetti, Ingrid May, Becky Kopoulsky Gerson, Yana Katzap-Nackman, Diana Payne, Diana Tiffin, Gabriela Angueira, April Fissel, and Christa Cole. A special thanks to the women who work with me, I could not have finished this book had you not been there weekly in my office inspiring me to keep writing and finishing this book. You took such good care of our Joy In Birthing Foundation. I love you Katie Duberg, Caroline McKeown, and Danika Charity.

Giuditta Tornetta

Los Angeles, CA

March 2014

Foreword

Warning: this book is NOT a new-age, self-help softy. Perhaps it’s the subject that initially enchanted me. I personally wish I had thought of having a Conversation with my Womb! Giuditta Tornetta did think of it, and she rendered her trailblazing idea into a book that is at once practical, and a wildly esoteric page-turner.

Once I started reading and talking to my own womb, I realized that I had been speaking with her all my life. This is the beauty of Giuditta’s writing, she’s the girlfriend-next-door who comes over with a hot loaf of home baked bread and a bowl of pasta. One whiff and you are brimming over with remembrances of your own wisdom. She’s that good of a neighbor.

Every exercise helped me find authentic questions and answers, concerning my femininity. This book is a journey in the dark, well lit with women’s intuition. I found myself laughing out loud, remembering that I personally never had penis envy. In fact, I felt sorry for people born without a uterus. I mean, why exist with only one brain? What do men think with? Don’t get me wrong, I love men, am well married to one, and have four sons, who are grown men of wonderful character (and super handsome), but I am so happy to have been born a womb-holder.

Her-storically, women were relegated into a squalid societal corner. Men in power bullied us and claimed that we were merely wombs, destined to breed and work our bodies to death as slaves. It was not so simple. The status of individual women was largely dependent upon the economic rank of fathers or husbands. But even royal women were brood mares, only with more sanitized lives, as pretty dolls on shelves, bearing sons. Our Mothers’ Mothers struggled for each basic human right – to education, to freedom of expression, to vote, and to have power over our own wombs.

In the tornado vortex of this revolution, women were burned as witches. Perhaps, as a desperate attempt at survival, we put aside our femininity and forgot, or ignored, that we each have a second brain, a thinking, feeling uterus, a rich repository of powerful hormones. Many of us reviled our potential to be healers, mothers, and tender lovers. Some women even resented the womb’s miraculous potential to cradle our gestating babies. Irreplaceable as our wombs are, we turned from them demanding all the rights that men enjoyed: voting, drinking, smoking, driving, governing, business-ing, etc. Yet, even as a very young person participating in the Women’s Movement, I noticed that men wore ties to work, and these ties looked to me like nooses.

In the throes of the revolution that gave women some freedom, far too many of us un-friended our uteri. It has been a tragic disconnect. Today, as granddaughters and great granddaughters of the Suffragettes, our legacy includes a plethora of complications, the side-effects of living like men. Our blood pressures are rising and we are having heart attacks because we are not talking to and not listening to our wombs.

What we have rediscovered, with the help of sage women like Giuditta Tornetta, is that our wombs are not our enemy. Small minds creating overpowering policy may harm us, society may attempt to dictate our roles and impede our choices, yet being female, having a uterus, a vagina, breasts, is not a curse, it is a blessing beyond compare.

Learning to communicate with my womb brought me remembrances…while gobbling up the knowledge on these pages, I became proud that I made First Moon Rituals for my daughters and my granddaughter. I remember them predicting their menarche, excited to discover symptoms that their womanhood was dawning, breast buds, a wisp of new hair in a secret place. This is when I taught my girls to call menstruation their MoonTime, their Resting. To this day, my grown daughters honor their Dark Moon Time by taking a Red Tent day off of college or work, and really resting. This downtime gently winds our feminine wellsprings, so that when we emerge after our bleeding, we can leap into our power.

I recalled that my own Filipino mother warned me when I began to bleed: "Our people are not like your father’s people. We don’t complain when we bleed, we are proud to be female. Our monthlies, called Regla in our Motherland, are a reminder that we are fertile and powerful. So no complaining! If you make friends with your Regla, you will not suffer." I took my Mother’s stern wisdom to heart, and I remembered her word. When my first birth contraction arrived, at the beginning of labor with my first baby, I was still a teenager. I do believe her voice in my heart carried me through each contraction, so I did not suffer the pain, but grew and blossomed with each tightening and release.

I like to call our Uteri Ships of Dreams, for so much potential is locked safely away in the eggplant-colored place stored deep in our bones. The uterus is the Stargate, through which all saints, beggars, geniuses, truck drivers, ballerinas, and queens must pass through to arrive Earth-side. Now if that fact does not knock your socks off, you must be barefoot already!

So many of our sisters have had surgery and lost their Dream Ships. Still more have the deep scar of cesarean birth. A hysterectomy or a cesarean may save your life. Or, it may be an unnecessary operation, done due to a doctor’s fear or prejudice or lack of patience. According to Direct Healthcare International: Hysterectomy is the second most common major surgery among women in the United States. (The most common major surgery that women have is cesarean section delivery.) Each year, more than 600,000 hysterectomies are done. About one third of women in the United States have had a hysterectomy by age 60.

No matter how we lose, or scar a uterus, all women weep with her sisters. And yet, whether your uterus still lives in your pelvis or is gone, Giuditta’s book teaches us to talk to her. OK, you may need to speak to your womb long distance, but communicate you must. For we women are hardwired to heal through loving communication.

These pages got me thinking with my uterus, that rebel brain, about DNA: hard copy, chiseled in flesh and bone, the gifts of our earthly ancestors. Epigenesis, on the other hand, is soft copy, the potential to sculpt. Epigenesis is a good reason to protect women in pregnancy, nourish them with plenty of healthy foods, uplifting music, fresh air, fitness movement, and pure happiness. Because human epigenetic expression is sensitive to everything in our environment and everything that enters through the conduit of our senses, the work of Doulas in pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum, cannot be overstated. Loving the Mother protects our future generations. BirthKeepers set the stage for each new child to have an intact capacity to love and trust, because dynamic systems are sensitive to start-up conditions.

But Epigenesis does not stop with our primal epiphany. Yes, it is most powerful at the fulcrum of birth, but we keep growing, changing, morphing into ourselves. I believe we can add to who we are, and erase what hurts. This book is a handy tool for self-sculpting, from the deepest inner parts of your female self, out. You get to choose, how your epigenetic story will manifest. You can begin to do this, simply by conversing with your Uterus!

Giuditta Tornetta, you are a Butterfly person, who has used the tools you teach so well that your metamorphosis astounds me. Your are: "She Who Holds Sacred Space for Women, in All our Seasons.

~ mOM Shanti, with LOVE, Ibu Robin Lim

Bali, Indonesia - May 2014

2011 CNN Hero of the Year

Preface

Many years ago I found myself at Esalen having a conversation with my shoulder. I was taking a workshop on Rubenfeld’s Synergy Method of Talk and Touch, which is a modality that integrates bodywork, intuition, and psychotherapy. Rubenfeld Synergy utilizes talk, movement, awareness, imagination, humor, and compassionate touch as gateways—contacting and melting frozen tensions and emotions, freeing the body from pain and the mind from suffering. What intrigued me during this experience was the longing I felt coming from my shoulder to communicate with me, and the release and sense of well-being that ensued once that part of my body felt heard. Scientific research continues to mount showing the truth of a simple principle: the body, mind, emotions, and spirit are dynamically interrelated.

Following that experience, I repeatedly heard different parts of my body calling me to have a conversation with the intention to clear and let go of the emotions and memories that were causing not only emotional but physical pain. Speaking to parts of my body to obtain clarity and healing fascinated me so much that I felt compelled, even called, to speak with my womb.

However, this time, I did not want to simply have a random conversation. My methodical mind longed for an in-depth inquiry where I could touch upon how the many facets of my existence were influencing my womb during the very important life change we call menopause. Taking the time to pause and ask the right questions I chose a tool I call the Nine Chakras of Creations that I created when I wrote my first book, Painless Childbirth.

The chakras (or energy centers) are used in many healing modalities, especially in Eastern cultures, and have their origins in yoga. What I love about using the chakras is that each relates to a specific physical location in our body as well as a life lesson. In studying the chakras I noticed that many disciplines use them parallel to some basic human rights, like the right to be here, the right to be loved, and the right to speak. I also learned that focusing on each chakra, one at a time, could shed light on obstructions that some life event might have placed on it. Going one by one helped me focus on certain aspects I had not previously considered; and each time I released the energy in a lower chakra I could feel the one above longing for the same relief. This way the conversations with my womb began with questions related to the first chakra: my roots, my relationship with the past, my family of origin, my culture and the tribe I come from. This conversation led me to addressing the second chakra, focusing on feelings my feelings, followed by looking at the relationship with myself in the third chakra: love, intimacy and universal relationships. In the fourth: the impeccability of my words in the fifth; all the way to my relationship with the Divine in the ninth.

The lessons revealed in using the nine basic human rights, in tandem with the lessons embodied in the chakras, helped me follow a specific path. On this path, I was able to see and understand the major influences and belief systems that shaped aspects of my history, my memories, and who I am as a person – a woman, and a mother. By using the nine basic human rights embedded in each chakra, I