Episode 69 - Reclaiming Your Power in Birth with Karissa Bollinger
You can know everything about birth anatomy, intervention options, & ideal birth positions, yet still outsource your power in the birth room. Childbirth education teaches you what to expect. It doesn't teach your nervous system how to remain sovereign when intensity arrives, when fear surfaces, when your environment shifts frequency. Knowledge alone cannot save you from disconnection during the most primal threshold of your life.
This conversation with Carissa, founder of Wavework, reveals a birth preparation method born in actual birth rooms, witnessing what truly allows women to access their power. We explore why the cervix functions as a frequency gate, how trance state determines birth unfolding, why rehearsing intensity before labor changes everything, & the embodied practices that keep you connected to primal intelligence when logical mind cannot help you.
What if sovereign birth isn't about controlling the experience, but about trusting your body has rhythm, ritual, & wisdom that no authority can provide?
Topics covered
In this episode, we discussed
- Karissa's journey from corporate wellness to birth work through personal initiation
- Why intellectualizing birth doesn't prevent power outsourcing during labor
- Four waves of Wavework: physical prep, emotional alchemy, trance state, primal intelligence
- Rehearsing birth intensity through simulations before labor arrives
- Emotional cathexis versus catharsis: befriending fear rather than clearing it
- The cervix as frequency gate responding to safety & environmental attunement
- Bringing birth partners into rehearsal for nervous system regulation
- Why men struggle witnessing powerful birthing women without preparation
- Connection between birth trauma & postpartum depression epidemic
- Wavework for postpartum integration, loss, preconception & life thresholds
About Karissa Bollinger
Karissa is a physiologist, birth worker, and founder of WaveWork™, a method that bridges biomechanics, nervous system science, and altered states of consciousness to prepare the body for birth. her work reframes labor as an initiated state of expanded awareness and teaches women how to condition their physiology for intensity, coherence, and trust.After supporting hundreds of women through birth, trauma healing, and psychedelic integration, Karissa created WaveWork™ to bring the body back to the center of birth. She’s passionate about helping women rehearse intensity before they meet it, rewire their nervous systems for safety, and return to their power as creators of life.
Where to find Karissa Bollinger
- ๐Website: http://www.goldenteacherwellness.com
- ๐ทInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wavework.birthing/
- Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wavework.birthing
- Join Karissa’s Masterclass and get a $50 usd off (CYCLESEEDS50) https://www.goldenteacherwellness.com/waveworkbirthing
Listen to the Episode
Timestamps
[00:07:10] Karissa's journey from physiology degree to birth work
[00:12:08] Witnessing mother's traumatic epidural creating birth aversion
[00:15:31] You cannot logical-mind your way through birth
[00:20:35] What mainstream birth prep misses about embodiment
[00:23:54] Simulating birth intensity through rehearsal practice
[00:26:53] Emotional cathexis: befriending fear rather than clearing it
[00:30:40] Trance state breath creating oxytocin & accessing primal intelligence
[00:33:05] Wave work rehearsal: early labor, active labor, push breath
[00:35:30] Bringing birth partners into rehearsal for nervous system regulation
[00:45:15] Cervix as frequency gate responding to safety
[00:51:26] Connection between birth access & postpartum depression
[00:57:35] Wave work for postpartum, loss, preconception & life thresholds
[01:01:14] Birth as mirror: you get journey you need, not want
Beyond Intellectualizing Birth: Why Knowledge Isn't Enough
Mainstream childbirth education focuses on anatomy, intervention options, & birth plans. You learn cardinal positions the baby moves through, understand when pitocin might be suggested, know how to advocate for delayed cord clamping. This information matters. Yet women armed with comprehensive knowledge still experience births where they feel powerless, traumatized, disconnected from their bodies.
"You can know as much as you want. You can know all about all of the interventions. You can know all about the physiological process of birth as much as you want. And that doesn't save you from having the sovereign birth experience that most women ultimately would like to have."
The Outsourcing Pattern
Even in seemingly ideal births, home births with supportive midwives, births that unfold "perfectly" from external perspective, a pattern emerges: women outsourcing authority to birth workers, partners, or medical staff. This isn't about the support team failing. This reflects a gap in preparation that no amount of education bridges.
When you cannot access your body during birth, when you look outside yourself for what to do next, when fear pulls you from trance state, you carry this disconnection into postpartum. The birth experience shapes how you mother, how you relate to your power, how you navigate the threshold of matrescence.
What Wavework Is: Four Waves of Embodied Birth Preparation
Wavework emerged from witnessing births firsthand & recognizing what truly prepares women to remain sovereign. Not another checklist of positions or breath techniques to memorize. A comprehensive system teaching your nervous system how to meet intensity, your fascia how to release resistance, your consciousness how to access primal intelligence.
Wave One: Physical Body Preparation
- Biomechanics of birth & how baby navigates through pelvis
- Neuromuscular relationship to pelvic floor, not just strengthening
- Where tension lives in fascia & what that indicates for birth unfolding
- Connection to body as foundation for everything that follows
Wave Two: Emotional Alchemy
Not clearing fear. Befriending it. The mainstream obsession with releasing emotions before birth misses something crucial: you cannot eliminate fear from a threshold experience. You can only change your relationship to it.
"If we can start to teach the body to deeply befriend the sensation, not what the fear is, but the sensation of fear, what does that feel like in the body? It feels electric. The nervous system is lit up. If we can start to not be afraid of fear itself, then we can actually have this power to move through that energy."
Emotional cathexis versus catharsis:
- Catharsis tries to release, remove, clear emotions
- Cathexis befriends sensations without story attachment
- Fear stored in psoas muscle limits pelvic mobility during birth
- Allowing yourself to feel deeply hydrates tissues & permits surrender
Wave Three: Trance State & Altered Consciousness
Birth is psychedelic. The hormonal cascade, the thinning veil between worlds, the access to theta brainwaves that bypass logical thinking. Remaining in trance state through specific breath work connects you to pelvic floor, creates oxytocin, maintains your channel to what you actually need.
When you understand it's your responsibility to stay in trance, not your doula's job to bring you back, you stop looking outside yourself for rescue. The birth team can amplify & support, but they cannot access primal intelligence for you.
Wave Four: Primal Intelligence & Rhythm
Once in trance state, you have constant access to how you need to move, what positions serve you, when to vocalize, how to birth your baby. No one needs to tell you to try a different position or move around. Your body knows. This is where sovereignty lives: in trusting the rhythm, ritual, & relaxation your primal self understands.
"If you're in trance, you have a constant channel to what you need to do & how you need to birth your baby. You won't have to be told, let's try this birth position. Let's go move your body. If you're in your trance state & accessing these theta brain waves, then it's like, oh, well, I obviously need to move my body like this."
The Rehearsal: Simulating Birth Intensity Before Labor
After moving through the four waves separately, Wavework brings them together in rehearsal. This isn't visualization or mental preparation. This is putting your body in uncomfortable positions, holding intensity for the duration of average contractions, practicing trance state breath while pressure builds, noticing where resistance lives.
Early Labor Simulation
- More dynamic movement, longer rest periods
- Heart rate elevation, walking, some distraction allowed
- Teaching nervous system the work-to-rest ratio it will experience
Active Labor Simulation
- Holding isometric positions that challenge you
- Maintaining trance state through discomfort
- Duration matching average labor wave length
- Noticing mind's tendency to leave body when intensity rises
Push Breath Practice
- Specific breath maintaining theta state during pushing
- Practicing in various positions so body remembers
- Integration of all four waves simultaneously
"My clients would come out on the other side of birth & say, that was the most valuable thing that I could have learned going into birth. My body was genuinely ready to maybe not meet the true intensity of a pressure wave or a contraction, but they were beyond the childbirth education class or putting their birth plan together that didn't even get followed."
Integration Session
After rehearsal, processing what surfaced:
- Where did you hold resistance in fascia?
- When did mind leave trance state?
- What did your body want to do naturally?
- What was it like for birth partners to witness you in altered state?
The Cervix as Frequency Gate: Why Environment Determines Dilation
Your cervix doesn't just mechanically dilate based on hormone levels & uterine contractions. It functions as a frequency gate, responding to safety, attunement, & energetic alignment in your environment. This explains the classic pattern: laboring well at home, arriving at hospital, labor stalls.
"The cervix as a frequency gate is giving the body permission to birth a baby into a place that's safe. It's safety. So if we don't feel safe, & maybe she thinks she feels safe but she doesn't, then that's the frequency gate speaking. That's a misalignment in her energy field."
What Creates Frequency Mismatch
- Bright hospital lights when melatonin needs darkness
- Strangers entering room when oxytocin requires intimacy
- Partner's unregulated nervous system when you're absorbing all energy
- Birth workers in savior mode instead of regulated presence
- Yourself leaving trance state when environment shifts
Why This Matters for Hospital Birth
Understanding the cervix as frequency gate doesn't mean you must avoid hospitals. It means you take responsibility for maintaining your trance state regardless of location. When you've practiced staying connected to your body during environmental shifts, the hospital transition doesn't steal your sovereignty.
You can move from five centimeters to ten in an hour. You can labor for hours without progress. Timeline isn't about mechanics failing. It's about frequency alignment. When medical staff say "failure to progress," often they're witnessing frequency mismatch your system is trying to communicate.
Preparing Birth Partners: Shared Nervous System Experience
Birth is a shared nervous system experience. Your partner's regulation (or dysregulation) directly impacts the frequency in your birth space. Yet most partners receive zero preparation beyond maybe learning counter-pressure techniques & when to call the midwife.
Why Partners Faint or Become "Top of the Bed" Men
They haven't been exposed to the primal nature of birth. They've never seen their partner in trance state, making primal sounds, moving instinctively. When birth unfolds & suddenly this powerful, altered woman appears, fear arises not from birth itself but from witnessing power they don't know how to hold.
Bringing Partners Into Rehearsal
When partners participate in Wavework rehearsal:
- They witness you in trance state before birth day
- They practice regulating their own nervous system
- They understand their role is amplification, not rescue
- They recognize when they need to step out to regulate themselves
"It's really important for everybody to really be taking responsibility in this space & saying, I am, even as a birth worker now, I will be the first one to say, I'm going to step out for a moment. I need to regulate myself for X, Y, or Z reasons. You have to be attuned & aware enough to make that decision & have the tools then to regulate yourself before you come back into the space."
Men Waking Up to Birth Work
There's a beautiful collective shift happening. Men are beginning to recognize their fear isn't about childbirth mechanics. It's about witnessing their partner's power & not knowing how to hold that. When we stop shaming men for being behind & instead invite them into preparation, they rise to meet the responsibility.
Connection to Postpartum Depression & Matrescence
The postpartum depression epidemic connects directly to how women experience birth. When you cannot access trance state, when you outsource power throughout labor, when you believe you "failed" because things didn't unfold as planned, you carry this baggage into the most vulnerable transition of your life.
Layering Birth Experience Onto Matrescence
Matrescence already includes:
- Largest hormonal shift of entire life
- Massive identity death & rebirth as mother
- Sleep deprivation impacting mood regulation
- Complete responsibility shift for new being
Now layer unprocessed birth trauma, feeling of powerlessness, belief that your body failed you. The system provides zero preparation for primal threshold, then wonders why women struggle with postpartum mental health.
"This really shapes the way women mother & it's carried with them. You add in postpartum lack of sleep, the sleep deprivation aspect is huge hormonally, obviously, & contributing to mood & ability to be present in the motherhood journey."
Birth Trauma Isn't Just "Bad Births"
Even births that look ideal externally can leave women feeling traumatized when they couldn't access their power, maintain sovereignty, or trust their body's wisdom. The medicalized system's lack of proper preparation for primal experience creates disconnection that shows up as postpartum depression, anxiety, difficulty bonding.
Wavework Beyond Birth: Thresholds, Loss & Integration
Wavework is a metaphor for how we meet any threshold in life. Birth is the physical manifestation of ultimate threshold, but the practice applies to postpartum integration, processing loss, preparing for conception, even birthing creative projects.
For Postpartum Integration
Women who didn't get the birth experience they hoped for, who recognize they outsourced power or couldn't access their body, can use Wavework to:
- Move birth energy through fascia even after baby arrives
- Process what the body didn't get to complete
- Reclaim sovereignty in postpartum season
- Prepare for next birth if that's in their path
For Loss & Grief
The waves of contraction & release, the practice of meeting intensity & allowing surrender, serves grieving bodies processing pregnancy loss, infant loss, or any threshold involving death.
For Preconception
There's never too early to begin. Whether you're three years from trying to conceive or 38 weeks pregnant, Wavework benefits your nervous system, fascia memory, hormonal recalibration through vagal toning & lymphatic drainage. Fertility is a byproduct of this deeper embodiment.
"This is individual timing. People ask, I'm 38 weeks, would this benefit me? I think I want children in three years, can I start now? The answer is always, always yes, because this is fascia memory. This is hormonal recalibration via vagal toning & lymphatic drainage. Fertility is a byproduct of that."
The Bottom Line
Your body is not broken. Modern environments are inverted. Every cell, from melanocytes creating protective melanin to retinal ganglion cells coordinating your master clock, was designed to receive full spectrum sunlight in circadian alignment. When you hide from the sun, slather on sunscreen, wear sunglasses, & flood your evenings with isolated blue light, you create the disconnection that manifests as hormone chaos, sleep disruption, chronic disease susceptibility, & vision deterioration.
The solution sounds almost too simple to be profound, yet it addresses root causes that pharmaceutical interventions never touch: Watch sunrise with bare eyes & exposed skin. Get progressive midday UV exposure. Embrace darkness after sunset. These aren't ancillary practices you add after addressing nutrition & exercise. Circadian alignment is the foundation upon which everything else builds.
Your ancestors honored the sun as life-giving for reasons modern science is only beginning to understand. The heliotherapists of the early 1900s cured tuberculosis & lupus with sunlight before antibiotics existed. Every ancient wisdom tradition & cutting-edge quantum biology research points to the same truth: you are designed for sun, not shelter from it.
"The human body is incredibly wise. And so if you give yourself the right environmental inputs, the body will take care of the rest. You don't have to think about cortisol and melatonin or the intricate dynamics. You just need to do the right things that we were designed to do."
Key Takeaways
- Knowledge about birth doesn't prevent power outsourcing during actual labor, embodied preparation does
- Wavework includes four waves: physical preparation, emotional alchemy, trance state mastery, primal intelligence access
- Rehearsing intensity before labor teaches nervous system how to meet contractions & maintain sovereignty
- Emotional cathexis (befriending) rather than catharsis (clearing) creates sustainable relationship with fear
- The cervix functions as frequency gate responding to safety & environmental attunement, not just mechanics
- Birth partners need nervous system preparation to avoid frequency mismatch in birth space
- Remaining in trance state is birthing person's responsibility, not doula's job to rescue you back into it
- Primal intelligence accessed through theta brainwaves tells you how to move, position, & birth your baby
- Postpartum depression connects to birth trauma from outsourcing power & losing body connection
- Wavework applies beyond birth to any threshold, loss, integration, or creative emergence
Transcript
About the Host
I’m Iris Josephina:functional hormone specialist, orthomolecular hormone coach, and entrepreneur. Through Cycle Seeds and The Inner Rhythms Podcast, I support people in reconnecting with their cyclical nature, deepening body literacy, and reclaiming hormonal harmony from a place of sovereignty and embodied knowledge. Most people know me from Instagram, where I share stories, tools, and inspiration on cyclical living, menstrual cycles, fertility, hormones and more.
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