Born Free Method: The Podcast

I first took note of Nicole from her feature in the documentary "The Business of Birth Control". She is the author of the book "Fix Your Period", which now proudly sits on my shelf. Nicole is regularly harangued by OBGYNs on social media for spreading 'misinformation' about menstrual cycles, but Nicole's message is simple: bleeding induced by hormonal contraception is not the same as a bleed from your natural cycle. And she's right. Her work goes deep on how to remedy any issues that arise without the menstrual cycle, and she is an advocate and educator on fertility awareness methods. In short, Nicole is a gift to the women's health community.[00:09:00] - Nicole is regularly called out by OBGYNs for “misinforming” women that ovulatory bleeding is different from bleeding while on hormonal contraception (they're wrong; she's right...and that's not merely my opinion. It's basic physiology)[00:13:30] - Why is menstruation important?[00:20:45] - An overview of the menstrúal cycle (ovulation is the star of the cycle; not menstruation)[00:26:45] - What do estrogen and progesterone do in the body?[00:31:00] - Fixing your period (your “5th vital sign”) through lifestyle[00:37:30] - Fertility awareness methods[00:47:00] - What do different colors of menstrual blood mean?[00:54:00] - The adrenals and fertility[00:57:00] - Changes to cervical mucus[01:00:30] - Additional fertility considerations (preventing and achieving pregnancy)[01:03:45] - The man’s responsibility in preventing pregnancyLinks from the show:Nicole's website and InstagramBuy her book: Fix Your PeriodNicole's podcast, "Period Party"My online store (discounts on many other products mentioned in my podcast)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Immune Intel AHCC - Use code BELOVED10 to save 10% on the only functional food (in this case, the mycelia of shitake mushrooms) clinically demonstrated to optimize your immune system and clear persistent HPV! Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

In 2020, I left the hospital system. I spent 15 years training, sacrificing, and ultimately becoming disillusioned with "the system" to which I had so desperately yearned to be a part. On my last shift as an OBGYN, I was awakened in the middle of the night to perform a (truly needed) emergency c-section. The noise and inhumane nature of c-sections, including the lights, the chatter, and the dystopic nature of removing a baby from an incision in the abdomen was the final straw for me. I wrote this essay in one sitting as soon as I got out of the operating room. It's an homage to the process of becoming a doctor and not finding happiness or sanity within the medical industrial complex. In some ways, it's also a love letter to my fellow physicians and practitioners, as I hope it will give more OBGYNs permission to lean into the feelings that arise in a system that overmedicalizes death, overpathologizes birth, and underappreciates the sacred art of healing. My online store (discounts on many other products mentioned in my podcast)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

Luke and Alyson are a rockstar duo. Luke knows just about everything there is to know about EMF and optimizing your home environment through EMF blocking and mitigation. Alyson is a shaman and author of the book ‘Animal Power’. In this episode, we go deep on romance, conscious conception, shamanism, and EMF mitigation! Luke and I have a separate interview coming out that goes even deeper into EMF, but this episode gives you a teaser! Alyson also does a live power animal reading, and my result was quite a surprise![00:08:00] - Alyson and Luke’s love story[00:18:45] - The stoic path and surrendering to love[00:24:30] - How and when did Alyson tune in to her shamanic powers?[00:33:30] - Reference through relationships[00:39:00] - Surrendering to the conception journey after 40[00:47:00] - What has been your hardest conversation through this conception journey?[00:53:15] - Birth control and sovereignty[00:59:00] - Copper IUDs and energetics[01:02:30] - Animal power[01:09:00] - Nathan’s live animal power readingLinks from the show:Alyson's podcast: Ceremony CircleAlyson's website (go buy her book, Animal Power, and its companion card deck)Luke's Lifestylist Podcast (he was gracious enough to have me as a guest!)Luke's EMF Masterclass (Save 10% with this link)Luke's blue-light blocking glasses: Gilded (Save 10% with code NATHAN10)My online store (discounts on many other products mentioned in my podcast)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

Doctors losing their licenses. Friends divorcing friends. Whiffs of mass psychosis. And a betrayal of bioethics…What could we learn from the COVID moment? I couldn’t think of a better person to ask than my friend Charles Eisenstein. His newest book, The Coronation, is a collection of essays that he wrote during the last two years. And it’s a must have for anybody who wants to go deep…How do we find courage in these times? What would it look like if we listened more and spoke less? Have Charles and I been wrong about this all along? What might we learn from past witch hunts to guide the current one? How do we untangle our culture’s death phobia?[00:10:00] - Charles lost friends during COVID due to essays[00:15:45] - Pandemic or mass “hysteria"[00:20:15] - Conspiracies against “the weird kid in school” and the perversion of bioethics[00:26:00] - More doctors are doubtful about the COVID response  than meets the eye[00:33:00] - Taboos and evil spirits[00:37:00] - The best way not to be burned during a witch hunt is to accuse your neighbor of witchcraft[00:40:15] - Courage comes with stones; acquiescence with “safety”[00:45:00] - Charles’ essays have been prescient re: COVID[00:49:30] - What if the only way to save your life was for everyone on earth to isolate and no longer have contact with their loved ones?[00:57:00] - Maybe COVID was an opportunity to build something better?[01:03:45] - Direct experience and gaslighting[01:10:00] - The tentacles of death phobia[01:13:00] - Germ and terrain theories[01:20:00] - We always have the choice of sovereignty[01:35:00] - How can we engage in hard conversations instead of locking horns? “What is it like to be you?”Charles' books, including his most recent title "The Coronation: Essays From the COVID Moment"U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren't ‘Following the Science,’ Officials SayEpisode 72 of The Holistic OBGYN Podcast: "A Brief-ish History of Western Medicine, Witches, and Women Healers"My first interview with CharlesThe Psychology of Totalitarianism, by Mattias DesmetCharles' interview with C.J. HopkinsMan's Search for Meaning, by Viktor FranklFind me on Instagram and my website.Sponsored by:Fit for Birth (save 20%!)Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message:... Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

Ricki and Abby have been making great films, two of which have impacted my career in profound ways. The Business of Being Born was the first, and their latest film, The Business of Birth Control, was the second. The film provides a second look at hormonal contraception, which is being offered to women of all ages for every gynecologic issue under the sun, far beyond merely "avoiding pregnancy". The film also highlights the power of education and fertility awareness methods in empowering women (and men) to better understand their bodies as an alternative to synthetic endocrine disruptors, which have wide-ranging consequence in a woman's body...You're going to LOVE this interview![00:16:45] - Ricki and Abby found their way into women’s health unintentionally; these films are personal[00:21:45] - These films are not anti-feminist[00:30:00] - BigPharma prioritizes profit over people[00:35:00] - The good and the bad of planned parenthood[00:45:00] - Why should we be concerned about hormonal contraception?[00:52:00] - It’s not normal to be “stable” throughout the lunar cycles[00:59:00] - How can men show up for the conversation?[01:05:00] - To vasectomy or not?[01:15:00] - Fertility awareness methodsReferences from the show:Screen The Business of Birth Control (code BELOVED50 saves you 50% off the price!)The Business of Being Born (on Prime)Sweetening the Pill, by Holly Grigg-SpallVasalgelFind me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

If we aren’t willing to study and learn from history, we are bound to repeat it…As far back as human written history can reflect, women have been in the healing professions. When our cosmologies reflected the dignity of the feminine, women healers may have even ruled the space. When men began to understand their role in procreation, these cosmologies shifted to a patriarchal, masculine worldview, which is intact today.This shift is cosmologies and growing interest in power by the State, created an environment in which women were progressively devalued. And their magick was trasnsmutated culturally from a source of healing to a source of perceived threat to the Church, State, and the ruling white, upper classes. This solo cast takes you on a journey from Ancient Sumer to our modern industrial complex. Spoiler: things are not going well in our society. As women and healers are devalued, societies decline. This is not speculation; it’s written history.[00:07:00] - Early creation myths and ancient Sumer, Greece, and Rome[00:29:00] - Early Christianity and the Dark Ages[00:37:00] - Hildegard von Bingen[00:40:00] - The war against nature was a war against the feminine[00:47:00] - The Witch hunts[01:02:00] - 18th century and the Renaissance[01:15:15] - “Regular” doctors and the movement of healing to hospitals[01:19:15] - The Popular Health Movement[01:30:00] - Germ theory[01:35:00] - The birth of the nursing profession and the father of gynecology[02:02:00] - The AMA and the Flexner Report[02:13:00] - Current stats on US maternity care and practitionersReferences (just a sampling):Woman as Healer, by Jeanne AchterbergThe Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, by Lindsey FitzharrisCesarean Section: An American History of Risk, Technology, and Consequence, by Jacqueline Wolf, PhDWitches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre Englishhttps://history-of-obgyn.com/uploads/3/5/4/8/35483599/1966-kobrin-american-midwife-controversy-rev-dec2015.pdfFind me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

Jodi Pawluski, PhD, is a real scientist. Not "science" that can be subjected to belief systems or political propaganda but a real clinical researcher who focuses on the neuroscience of motherhood and parenthood. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss everything from the neurochemistry of peripartum depression to the impacts of isolation on families and child development. She's a rockstar, and she's got 65 PubMed entries to prove it...[14:30] - Pyschotherapy versus pharmaceuticals for peripartum depression[23:45] - Modifiable risk factors and depressoin[24:45] - Mommy brain and memory in the perinatal period[34:30] - Societal pressures and perspectives on motherhood[41:45] - Does it take a village to raise a kid? To become a parent?[46:00] - Impacts of isolation (ie COVID) on child development and new parents[55:30] - Mental health support for pregnancy lossLinks from the show:Jodi's website, Twitter, and InstagramThe Neurobiology of Postpartum Anxiety and Depression, Pawluski et alSerotonin and motherhood: From molecules to mood, Pawluski et alLess can be more: Fine tuning the maternal brain, Pawluski et alMy online store (discounts on many products mentioned in the podcast)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

FOR THE DADS is a series of podcasts that will provide helpful insights to current or soon-to-be fathers! Cal and Peyton Callahan have become dear friends. I invited them on the podcast for a variety of reasons. They model the tribulations of conscious partnership and child-raising, and they have also created an e-book titled "She BECOMES: A Dad's Guide to His Developing Daughter", which provides information and language for fathers to become involved in their daughters' experiences in developing from adolescence through puberty into womanhood. We also get into the weeds on home birth, fear, issues within the medical industrial complex, birth as the re-birth of a woman, from maiden to motherhood, and the cycles of life. This interview brought tears to my eyes...I know you'll enjoy![13:30] - A love story: growth through partnership[26:30] - Cal was present at a mass shooting[30:00] - Finite versus infinite games[40:00] - A birth story: things get shaken up by kids[49:00] - Mothers are born through birth[55:00] - Home birth: "don't suck from the fear teat"[01:10:00] - Getting dad involved in puberty and fertility awareness (Peyton's e-book)[01:30:00] - Transitions in life / life cycles[01:39:30] - Q: "What is the role of a father?" A: "Be vulnerable"Links from the show:Peyton's free ebook, "She BECOMES: A Dad's Guide to His Developing Daughter"Peyton and Cal on InstagramCal's podcast: The Great UnlearnThe Business of Birth Control (film) (Code BELOVED50 gets you 50% off!)Try Feel Free (Code BELOVED40 gets you 40% off!)Finite and Infinite Games, by James CarseMy online store (discounts on many products mentioned in the show)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

When a baby presents in breech presentation (butt down instead of head down), the general recommendation is c-section. Why? Well...it's complicated. For decades, the perception that vaginal breech birth was inherently dangerous has grown quite strong. In 2000, the Term Breech Trial sealed its fate, and education on how to relieve dystocias like nuchal arms and hyperextended necks for both midwives and OBGYN residents came to an abrupt halt. In parts of the world where vaginal breech is still (somewhat) regular, it's far less dangerous than your doctor would lead you to believe. But now that birthworkers in North America aren't learning these techniques, birthing a breech baby vaginally may, in fact, be more dangerous than it was in the past. In this episode, Rixa Hayes, PhD, and David Hayes, MD, OBGYN, the primary instructors at Breech Without Borders, discuss the history, "safety" data on vaginal breech birth, and the maneuvers that their organization is promoting to re-skill the birthworker community of North America to revive and preserve the lost art of vaginal breech birth. Links from the show:Breech Without BordersRixa Freeze, PhD on Instagram (and her website)My other interview with Rixa Freeze (more on breech)My online store (discounts on many products that I recommend to my family and clients)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe

Another short essay with this one, this time conjecturing on what sets physicians like myself apart from the rest - for better or for worse. Our society has become consumed by "truth". Truth in this sense is not a reflection on consensus reality but rather personal truth, which might otherwise be called "intuition". We can reduce the human experience to the sum of our organs, but this compromises the richness of the full experience that comes with an honoring of the subtle energetics of life, earth, and universe. This approach is confronting for many, but it's also why my clients keep finding their way back to my practice. Stay curious...My online store (discounts on many products mentioned in the show)Find me on Instagram @nathanrileyobgyn and my practice at: www.BelovedHolistics.comSponsored by:FullWell Fertility - Use code BELOVED10 for 10% off the best prenatal vitamin on the market (and check out their vitality and nerve support tonic!)Fit for Birth - With this link, you'll save 20% on personal prenatal exercise coaching (for individuals) or courses to improve your coaching practice (for coaches)!Music by: Labrinth and Preservation Hall Jazz Band--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theholisticobgyn/message Get full access to Born Free Method: The Podcast at nathanrileyobgyn.substack.com/subscribe