Thank you for joining us at Shakti Stories!

Shakti Stories is on a mission to empower The Feminine for all people to flower and thrive.
Shakti is Sanskrit meaning 'the female principle of divine energy’. It is important to me to honour the Hindu lineage and Vedic philosophy from which the concepts of Shakti (creative power) and her consort Shiva (consciousness) are birthed.
What I mean by "The Feminine" is an internal and eternal principle that transcends gender, but can also be expressed through gender.
For centuries, women have been twisting and contorting themselves in various ways to fit into the norms & expectations of the world as we know it.
We are now waking up to all the ways that we’ve been limiting our deeper wisdoms or hiding aspects of our whole truth. The Feminine is not only "passive" and "nurturing".
Expressing more of our essence means becoming aware of the true potential that we have in the body we reside in. The Feminine can be safety, mystery, active receptivity, power, eros and pure aliveness.
Today’s greatest threat to women’s freedom is what Marion Woodman called the “addiction to perfection”. This “never good enough” mentality means that no matter how much we do, it is never enough.
Inspired by great leaders in the field of Feminine Psychology & Spirituality such as Marion Woodman and Sally Kempton and my teachers Dr. Ana Mozol, Dr. Leslie Ellis, Dr. Jalaja Bonheim and Tami Lynn Kent, I have created this podcast with the hopes of broadening our understanding of feminine psychology and growing together in our embodiment of purpose and pleasure.
Shakti Stories seems to have a life of its own; I am creating it, but also along for the ride!

Ep.25 “I Trust My Body”: Women as Storytellers and Preservers of Wisdom with Jessica Austin
Jessica Austin is a powerful woman and doula, living with metastatic cancer and mothering her 1-year-old. She is a carrier of so much community medicine and, in my books, she is basically a magical unicorn.
In this conversation, we discuss women as storytellers and explore the importance of sharing around birth and birthing.
If you love the authenticity in her sharing here, you might also listen to her podcast "If I'm Not Here To Tell You" which she has created so her daughter can always hear her stories in her voice. She explains in this conversation how she decided to share her story with the world to promote the idea of community learning, as we can all learn through listening to a real human share their truth, even (and especially) when it holds the pain and the beauty of life and death.
She shares in this episode around how:
~ Birthing is a wild mammal having a completely spontaneous process (5 mins)
~ Birth is traditionally a community experience - until it got put behind closed doors and how we started viewing the body and the baby as objects (8 mins)
~ We're glorified "scientific knowledge" and kicked community learning to the side (10 mins)
~ If we don't share our stories, they die with us... sometimes social media can be a way to share our true stories and document our personal legacy (20 mins)
~ Your Story Matters! (40 mins)
Follow Shakti Stories Podcast for related posts on Instagram.
You can also check out her links @jessicaaustinchildbirth to be inspired by real birth stories, and explore ways of supporting her work!
Photo by Kendal Blacker Photography.