The Inner Rhythms Podcast

Episode 69 - Reclaiming Your Power in Birth with Karissa Bollinger

• Iris Josephina • Episode 69

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🐚Topics covered

  • 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

📝Website: http://www.goldenteacherwellness.com

📷Instagram: 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



About the Host

I’m Iris Josephina, a 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. 


Let’s stay connected:

📸 Instagram: @cycleseeds

📧 Join my newsletter: https://www.cycleseeds.com/

💻 Visit the Cycle Seeds website: https://www.cycleseeds.com/

📝 Check out the blog: https://www.cycleseeds.com/blog

🎓 Holistic Hormone & Cycle Coaching Certification Training: https://www.cycleseeds.com/hhcc-training-2025-selfstudy-vip

📚Join my courses: https://www.cycleseeds.com/courses-masterclasses

📊 Chart Your Cycle Masterclass: https://cycleseeds.plugandpay.nl/checkout/chart-your-cycle-97



[00:00:00] Iris Josephina:Y'all this episode. Oh my goodness. So I'm gonna give you a little bit of context. Um, so I am really in a space of my life again, where I feel comfortable and confident researching about birth and pregnancy and postpartum and all the things I have to do with it. Uh, especially after my loss. This was. Or were topics that I wasn't really comfortable to touch, but I feel that I'm in a space again where I'm like, okay, I feel, you know, I can open this up again.

[00:00:39] Iris Josephina: And that's how I came across Issa's work when I was just doing my own little research in my own little bubble and. Carissa is a physiologist, a birth worker, and she's the founder of Wave Work, and I was immediately fascinated by. What she created. 'cause wave work is a method that bridges biomechanics, nervous system science, and altered states of consciousness to prepare the body for birth.

[00:01:11] Iris Josephina: And her work really reframes labor as an initiated state of expanded awareness and teaches women how to condition their physiology for intensity, coherence, and trust. And after supporting hundreds of women through birth trauma healing and psychedelic integration, Carissa created wave work to bring the body back to the center of birth.

[00:01:36] Iris Josephina: And she's really passionate about helping women rehearse the intensity before they meet it rewired in nervous systems for safety, and then return to their power as creators of life. And I immediately connected to Carissa's work because. You know, I've seen it all. I've been a birth worker, I've worked in birth, I've connected, you know, with midwives, gynecologists, the system, , about birth preparation and how to prepare for birth.

[00:02:06] Iris Josephina: And simultaneously, I have also worked with indigenous midwives and indigenous birth preparation and on the one hand, you know, I found certain birth preps like too dry and too disconnected, and too scientific, and on the other hand, I found it too. Let's call it spiritual and ungrounded. And when I found Carissa's work, I was like, yes, she is completely into biomechanics.

[00:02:39] Iris Josephina: She understands the nervous system. She's a physiologist, but she's also a birth worker, and she understands that. Birth and the threshold of birth really tip us over into altered states of consciousness because this is how I experience it. This is how I feel it. I have like this prediction in my body that my birth experiences are going to be extremely trippy.

[00:03:07] Iris Josephina: And I've heard people talk about birth as. A plant medicine journey or like massive altered states of consciousness. And so for myself, when I felt this, you know, this opening to research about pregnancy research, about birth research, about postpartum, I'm like, okay, I want to find a course to prepare myself.

[00:03:34] Iris Josephina: And I am someone who loves to go to the edges when I do things, when I learn new things. And what I love about Carissa's work and how she brings it into the world is that she understands that we need to be prepared in our physiology, in our body, in our nervous systems. 40 intensity that is labor, and 40 intensity that is birth.

[00:04:02] Iris Josephina: And when I, you know, when I found all of that out, I was like, she gets it. So I wrote her and I invited her onto the podcast because I think she's a really inspiring person. And we had a blast. You'll, you'll see we had a blast. And I hope that this conversation can bring you different perspectives on.

[00:04:26] Iris Josephina: Labor, pregnancy, birth, all things, and that it may open you up for potential in your body. Like I believe our physiology is such a fertile ground for all this potential and to meet ourselves in so many ways. And I feel like I said, that birth will be one of those gigantic trippy initiations. And I feel that with, With Carissa's work, I have a very aligned companion to prepare myself and my partner for, the process whenever, you know, whenever we are blessed to be pregnant again. So enjoy this conversation. Let us know what you feel about it and in the. Show notes. You'll also find a discount because you're listening to this podcast.

[00:05:21] Iris Josephina: for Carissa's Wave Work course. You cannot find this discount anywhere else. It's just exclusively, uh, for this podcast. And so, go check it out when you feel inspired and enjoy listening to this episode.

[00:05:37] Iris Josephina: You are listening to the podcast of Iris Josephina. If you are passionate about exploring the menstrual cycle, cyclical living, body wisdom, personal growth, spirituality, and running a business in alignment with your natural cycles, you're in the right place. I'm Iris. I'm an entrepreneur, functional hormone specialist, trainer and coach, and I am on a mission

[00:06:03] Iris Josephina: to share insights, fun facts, and inspiration I discover along the way as I run my business and walk my own path on earth. Here you'll hear my personal stories, guest interviews, and vulnerable shares from clients and students. Most people know me from Instagram where you can find me under at cycle seeds, or they have been a coaching client or student in one of my courses.

[00:06:26] Iris Josephina: I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into today's episode.

[00:06:30] Iris Josephina: Welcome everyone to a new episode I am here with Karissa and she is the founder of Wave Work. or she created the method of wave work and I was absolutely mind load and inspired when I first saw her work. So welcome to the show, Karissa.

[00:06:50] Karissa Bollinger: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being on.

[00:06:54] Iris Josephina: So let's start at the beginning, like, who are you and what is the path or the initiation that let you into birth work in the first place, and then to like make, create the method that you have created.

[00:07:10] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, totally. How many hours do you have? I'm just kidding. We'll start with, we'll just start with the basics here. so my. My trade is in physiology, female physiology, and I got my bachelor's degree focusing on that, and I really thought that my initial path was going to be oriented around pre-physical therapy and moving in the direction of just, you know, being based in the body.

[00:07:43] Karissa Bollinger: And my work really led me to some truly incredible corporate opportunities. So I'd say like the vast majority of, my, my corporate career has been within the. Corporate wellness space. So I've worked in Manhattan and in Boston for a few years, at MIT and really just kind of supporting people through their wellbeing, within the context of their work life balance.

[00:08:13] Karissa Bollinger: It went much deeper than that within the framework of my roles and, I did a lot of, you know, initiatives within these places of work to really promote getting people into their bodies and helping them separate out of the logical thinking brain and getting them back into living inside their bodies and what that meant for them.

[00:08:35] Karissa Bollinger: As you know, just. Productive members of society. and amidst all of this, I've always had this kind of, you know, deep yearning. I think I'm just one of those people who beginning in like middle school, I've had this, this low lying, fire lit within my core to just make an impact and like really help people, within their

[00:09:00] Karissa Bollinger: especially women within their wellness. I grew up as a dancer and teaching dance classes, and I was like, I'm going to have some kind of, I didn't know at the time, I was like making things up in seventh grade. I'm like, I'm gonna have a dance studio. I'm gonna have a fit. Like, I'm gonna have some kind of like mental health, like fitness space.

[00:09:15] Karissa Bollinger: So this was kind of like the, before I came into what this, what this really is. I've always had this. nothing is enough, kind of, especially, especially this day and age, especially for women. So I've had this passion. and meanwhile I'm going through, you know, a lot of my own, a lot of my own like threshold work, through some health challenges that I've had in hormonal health.

[00:09:41] Karissa Bollinger: things that have brought me to awaken to, you know, what the medicalized. System looks like for women right now. and has really led me down the path of realizing that my passion for helping women really started with I have to go through my own initiation, through, you know, holistically supporting myself.

[00:10:05] Karissa Bollinger: And that was very messy. And, it was a long journey of me just discovering that. What women have access to is not enough. And most women just don't have the resources or the bandwidth to even figure out, you know, how they can support themselves holistically. so that being said, I'm on my own journey with that.

[00:10:26] Karissa Bollinger: And then, ultimately I just, I hit this breaking point of recognizing that, you know, the corporate. Space for me was not supporting my health in that way. and that was kind of my point of, yeah, my breaking point of taking the leap on, you know, I've have, I have all these resources now and really just pouring into getting myself.

[00:10:52] Karissa Bollinger: Specifically involved in pre postnatal work as much as possible. And, through my own education in that space. And I just poured years of work into working for other companies to give me just volume of working, in the trenches with women, especially through their, their birth, preparation journeys.

[00:11:13] Karissa Bollinger: And it just evolved into. Me meeting so many women, globally that were inviting me into their birth space. And I was like, I don't even know what, what that looks like. I guess I have to become a doula. I guess I have to like, I entered the, the doula workspace just as a byproduct of women wanting to invite me into their, their birth support space.

[00:11:39] Karissa Bollinger: So. That being said, I kind of dove into that and never looked back. I just, I believe that like my calling kind of unfolded as, as I unfolded, and so it was just really, really beautiful. 'cause I had never, like my history with like birth related work is that I can remember as a child, my. I'm the oldest daughter of three and by a lot by like 10 years.

[00:12:08] Karissa Bollinger: So when my brother was born, I was 10 and my parents invited me into the birth, the hospital room with them. And I remember when the older of my two brothers was born, I'm watching my mom get an epidural. She's screaming and they messed it up. And there was so much trauma there. And I remember thinking, I never wanna give birth.

[00:12:38] Karissa Bollinger: Like how do women do this all the time? This is awful. Like, and then thinking about all of the women who are just giving birth every day, and it just kind of gave me an aversion to like. I'm personally childless right now and I do, you know, have a dream of having my own children. But it was so interesting because I just remember, you know, I held that with me so closely and I didn't actually ever think about it until this work started unfolding with me and how I've just distanced myself from.

[00:13:12] Karissa Bollinger: you know, just birth in general. even when my friends were pregnant, I'm like, I don't, you know, I don't understand like why you wanna go through that, right? so then I start supporting all of these births and I'm like firsthand, you know, seeing behind the curtain, especially with a lot of hospital births and, it's really.

[00:13:34] Karissa Bollinger: Sad and there's a lot of grief there for me that I had to also move through. and so how this all unfolded was really just watching, just recognizing this, like, again, back to that like yearning within me of like, you know, I'm, yes, we're here as like birth workers and I'm obviously very like body based.

[00:13:53] Karissa Bollinger: My work is in neuroscience and physiology and biomechanics and all of that beautiful stuff and. A woman can have all of these tools, and yet if she's in this birth space and she's outsourcing her power to an authority or even a doula, you know, she's taking so much of this baggage with her into her postpartum experience, even if she had this ideal birth experience, from start to finish and.

[00:14:22] Karissa Bollinger: you know, birth after birth, after birth, even, you know, home births that I've attended and, like I said, births that are, you know, seemingly fitting the mold of what women would probably want their birth to look like. Right. you know, there's still this outsourcing of power that's not keeping them sovereign in that space.

[00:14:42] Karissa Bollinger: And this is a collective issue. and again, like even the duals who have like all of this. You know, extra education and knowledge to pass on to their clients, to prep them, which is amazing. And I feel very grateful that I have this, extra support that I can provide from my own, framework of knowledge.

[00:15:03] Karissa Bollinger: But you can't, I always talk about through my content, you can't logical, logical mind your way through birth. It has to be in the body and it has to be embodied. And so 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, you know, having.

[00:15:31] Karissa Bollinger: The sovereign birth experience that you most women ultimately I think would like to have. And that shapes, that's shaping literally how, you know, women are mothering and how we're entering relationships and how we're carrying all of this, you know, through this threshold of trence. So, that is, you know, kind of where

[00:15:55] Karissa Bollinger: this work has led me. And so from being within, this, you know, the sacred spaces of all of these births, I just felt so called to help women and like, you know, make much better use of my time through creating tools for women to, you know, prepare themselves in the way that actually makes. Sense for them to have these types of births.

[00:16:24] Karissa Bollinger: and I still love supporting births. I don't do it as frequently, but I, I really believe in pouring myself now into this, you know, this isn't my method. This is something that just kind of was birthed through me through these experiences. and I feel so passionately about, you know, even giving birth workers this.

[00:16:42] Karissa Bollinger: Framework, this, this toolkit to, you know, better support their clients as well. So this is something that just kind of was inevitable for me, and it was like, I, I almost like if I, if I didn't create this program or course or framework, I, you know, I would be unwell. I would genuinely be like not living in, you know, in my truth.

[00:17:08] Karissa Bollinger: knowing everything that I know and like just having. The blessing of like, you know, all of the years of obsessive education that I've, you know, poured into myself to not share that in a way that, feels resonant for women. And, you know, a lot of women don't even have the language for, you know, how I speak about birth right now, but they feel it.

[00:17:28] Karissa Bollinger: And that to me is, is so powerful. And that's, that's really the point of it, is it's to be felt beyond, you know, understanding. So. Yeah.

[00:17:39] Iris Josephina: Beautiful, and I love how. Your path to get here has been like a true journey of initiation on so many levels, actually starting when you were 10 years old when you witnessed your mother birth, and completely, maybe even a bit like shut down around this whole.

[00:18:00] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah.

[00:18:01] Iris Josephina: This whole process that birth is, and then you open up to it again when you've, you know, when you got older.

[00:18:07] Iris Josephina: And it's something I can very much relate to. I think my own birth, which was two and a half months early through c-section, very traumatic for both me and my mom, has led me into being so interested in natural birth

[00:18:24] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah.

[00:18:25] Iris Josephina: Accidentally witnessing birth on my anthropological research in India and then becoming a doula.

[00:18:31] Iris Josephina: So I can, I can understand like the layers of your journey and also the, the feeling of something being a non-negotiable. That you just have to do this because you feel it is your, your life's path, your life's work, and then feeling not sharing this with the world, that that would be a disservice towards.

[00:18:52] Iris Josephina: Your, your people, your audience, but also your innate calling in this lifetime. So thank you for, for sharing that. And you've already shared a little bit, about how this, the kind of work that you're doing now has kind of been birthed in the birth room and the work that you do or the, the, the method that you.

[00:19:18] Iris Josephina: Carry out into the world is called wave work for those who hear about it for the first time. what makes it different from like the typical birth prep that most of us encounter when we go to our midwife or to the hospital or just find in the, the more mainstream spaces.

[00:19:38] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, totally. I love this question because, you know, even as a doula, as I was really starting to build my f my framework for, okay, how am I preparing my clients? For birth and I'm out and I'm searching for, you know, all of the best beyond, you know, my body based practices. I'm very anchored in like pelvic floor work and, you know, teaching women to connect there.

[00:20:03] Karissa Bollinger: But beyond that, like childbirth education, right? And what are the tools that I can provide? And, you know, really what's out there is, you know, teaching about childbirth. In a very fundamental sense, right? Like, here's the anatomy and here's how the baby moves through the cardinal positions. And you know, teaching generally, yes, it's important to, you know, if we're looking at ACOG and looking at the guidelines for birth, right?

[00:20:35] Karissa Bollinger: Like movement is important, hydration is important, nourishment is important. Having, you know, emotional support is important. And then I think like. the basic information that women kind of understand that they, they get told is that, and I speak on this a ton, but I go much deeper into it, but how, you know, the most, common reason for stalled labor is not to do with something malfunctioning mechanically in the body.

[00:21:03] Karissa Bollinger: but it does malfunction mechanically. As a byproduct of, environmental factors and misalignment and misattunement with the birthing body. So I think the interesting thing, not interesting, it's frustrating that, you know, this information is out there and then, you know, the, the misattunement, environmentally speaking is birthing in. Hospital room with all of these bright lights and these people coming in and outta the room and strangers and, you know, that gets stored in the body as, fear and lack of ability to be totally vulnerable with this process. and so it's like. This catch 22 for women where like, maybe they understand that to a degree, but it's like, well, I'm, you know, I'm birthing in the hospital, so that is what it is.

[00:21:57] Karissa Bollinger: Right. And, personally, like I don't take a stance on, you know, home births over hospital births versus, you know, free births versus, you know, birth center birth. It's just, you know, once you have acquired this information, you make your own judgment call in terms of what feels. Aligned for you. you know, I'm going through this process and I actually started, it was really interesting.

[00:22:24] Karissa Bollinger: I started working with a lot of women in like this birth prep space and I started putting women through. They're like, well, what is birth going to feel like? Like how can I prepare my body beyond like learning, you know, breath work or, you know, doing like self-hypnosis work and entering trance state and you know how to shut out the external world if that's all you can do.

[00:22:48] Karissa Bollinger: And so I was like, well, you know, you're going to have to figure out how to allow your body to meet. Pressure and intensity and discomfort and pain, and we can label it, you know, whatever we want. You know, some people have quote unquote pain-free births or orgasmic births, and other women are like, I had a great birth, but it was so painful.

[00:23:07] Karissa Bollinger: And I think there's a lot of nuance there with someone's relationship to pain. And then beyond that, it's like just the label itself and like what that word holds. And if it's not a word that holds, you know, more neutrality, then you're going to, you know. Put it on some side of the spectrum, but whatever we wanna call it.

[00:23:27] Karissa Bollinger: contraction pressure, wave intensity. I was working with these women who were, you know, like, how do I do this? And I was like, well, let's put you in, let's put you in positions of discomfort and. Basically simulate practice going through kind of like the work to rest ratio of being in a birthing position, holding some intense discomfort, trying to maintain a trance state.

[00:23:54] Karissa Bollinger: And then beyond that, we would, we would integrate then almost like you're on a little journey. And then we, look for these different patternings in the body where you're holding resistance physically. In your fascia or where they're holding tension in the mind or where they notice their mind going if they left the trance because of the discomfort or you know, what that looked like.

[00:24:14] Karissa Bollinger: Right. So it just started developing into this like beautiful kind of, this beautiful system and like, you know, my clients would come out on the other side of birth and say like, that was the most valuable thing that. I could have learned going into birth, like my body was genuinely ready to maybe not meet the true intensity of a pressure wave or a contraction, but they were.

[00:24:46] Karissa Bollinger: Beyond the childbirth education class or, you know, like putting their birth plan together, that didn't even get followed, you know, at all. because there's so many, you know, birth is unknown, so you can have, you know, whatever birth plan you want. And at the end of the day, if you're not ready to surrender to. You know what's going to come your way, be that the actual intensity of the contractions, where they're gonna happen, when they're gonna happen, who you're going to be with, when that occurs, right? This is taking the power back, right? This is a woman who has met intensity before and she knows that she has to take responsibility for the intensity that's about to come, and then everything around her can support her and amplify all of that for her.

[00:25:33] Karissa Bollinger: So, to answer the question, wave work, The, the actual system of it is really, taking a woman through the layers of birth. So the different, facets of birth that I see, in my mind, broken down, which is physical body prep. So like what are the biomechanics of birth? how do we connect to not just strengthening the pelvic floor, but building neuromuscular relationship to the pelvic floor and what that means for birth, where we're holding.

[00:26:01] Karissa Bollinger: You know, pregnancy discomforts and pains in the body, and maybe how that translates to, where we're holding tension in the fascia and what that might indicate in terms of your birth experience and how the baby is going to navigate. so that's kind of what I call, like wave one and just deepening this like.

[00:26:22] Karissa Bollinger: Body-based work, and understanding that. And then wave two is really like understanding the emotional component of all of this and how we store, you know, we, our tissues are. Especially the cervix that just holds memory, pelvic floor holds, the tissue holds all of our emotional memory. And so once you have this foundation of, you know, being in your body, understanding how to move the biomechanics of birth, having a really deep and strong connection to the pelvic floor, then we can move into this emotional layer.

[00:26:53] Karissa Bollinger: And there's so much in the mainstream birth prep space on, Clearing fear, clearing emotions. And I think that's just like, I understand what they're trying to do and say and yet I think it's almost a little bit toxic to not invite fear into the birth room and to say, well, I have a fear of death. I have a fear of dying during childbirth, which I think is.

[00:27:21] Karissa Bollinger: Not discussed openly because women don't want to accept that. That is a main fear and Right, like fear, you know, we avoid feeling fear because fear feels like death. So if we can start to use emotional xi, and basically catis is to befriend our emotions versus catharsis, which is to release, to remove to, To clear these emotions. If we can start to teach the body like this is what, you know, I'm just referring to fear because, you know, there's a lot of fear leading up to birth, but, you know, fear is a byproduct of, you know, it's right below our, our rage and our anger as women who we've been told to. You know, it's shameful to feel those emotions, especially in our, you know, hormonal, seasons and.

[00:28:14] Karissa Bollinger: If we can really 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. It feels, you know, the nervous system is lit up. and where we, where we hold that, if we can start to not be afraid of fear itself, then we can actually have this power to move through that energy versus. onto it in the tissues. And where that gets stored is really like in the SOAs muscle. and that muscle being tense and tight during birth is actually going to limit the, the mobility of the pelvis itself. And so, you know, there's a lot of birth prep out there too, like some amazing, you know, body-based work to like release the SOAs and do that.

[00:29:01] Karissa Bollinger: And yes, that and you know, I think the main medicine that women need to release the SOAs is to feel. Deeply and create containers for themselves where they can feel these, you know, scary emotions. And, alchemize that, and as a byproduct, we're kind of, Hydrating our tissues and we're allowing them to release and surrender because we're not negating the charge that's within the body.

[00:29:32] Karissa Bollinger: So that's kind of like the wave two. And then beyond that, we move into, talk a lot about the altered state of birth and, remaining in trance state and how birth is very psychedelic. and I think that's just like a, a trendy way for me to like kind of explain that. Yeah, I mean, there's this whole hormonal cascade that's occurring and if you are remaining in, in this trance state through a specific breath that I, that I teach that connects, to pelvic floor and to allow you to use this breath, not only to remain in the body and to remain connected to our root, but This breath also is going to allow us to create our own oxytocin. So as birth workers, as doulas, right? We're always like, how can we get our clients to create more oxytocin? How can we, but if the birthing woman understands this and can take responsibility for, oh, I understand that it is my job, it is my responsibility to remain in this trance state.

[00:30:40] Karissa Bollinger: It is not anyone else's job to, yeah, to help. bring me back into it or remind me or coach me through, you know, aspects of it. Great. Sure. But, once you're in this trance state through breath and through, you know, amplification environmentally, and I talk a lot about like the frequency match of your environment, people, nervous systems in the space, anything, anything in the, in the birthing space.

[00:31:06] Karissa Bollinger: Then you have access to all of the primal intelligence, which is the last wave, and the rhythm, the ritual, the relaxation of birth. So you won't have to be told, let's try this birth position. Let's go move your body. Let's go, you know, do X, Y, and Z to try and move things along. You are, if you are in trance, you have, you have a constant channel. what you need to do and how you need to birth your baby. And beyond that, you know, advocating, right? Like there's a lot of work that needs to be done around, advocacy in the birth space especially, but women can't advocate for themselves if they're not remaining in their body during birth and know what they even, you know, if you are stuck in a state of fight or flight during your whole birth experience.

[00:31:57] Karissa Bollinger: You don't even know what you need because you think you know what you need. 'cause we're in this logical beta brain, right? But if we're in our trans state and we're accessing these theta brainwaves, right? Then it's like, oh, well I obviously need to move my body like this. I obviously need to be in this position.

[00:32:13] Karissa Bollinger: This is what feels, I have a connection to my baby. We're in, you know, we're co-creating this experience together. And then. Everyone else who you invite into your space can then support and, you know, assist facilitation of whatever it is that you need. versus expecting people to, to save you, to take care of you, to tell you what to do.

[00:32:38] Karissa Bollinger: This isn't their birth right. And this is where that outsourcing starts to happen, is when we can't access the last wave, which is the primal intelligence of birth. And then once we've kind of like gone through this whole, four waves separately, then the wave work, wave work is this, this simulation almost of all of these waves merged together in rehearsal and just to teach the nervous system.

[00:33:05] Karissa Bollinger: Like, okay, now we're going to practice, you know, we have early labor simulations, which is. Typically more dynamic women are, having longer rest periods. Not that it's not intense, but, we can move our body more, we can go out for walks, we can get the heart rate up a little bit. can stay a little more distracted in that space, and then we anchor it into active labor and we hold isometric and these, you know, positions that are really challenging, uncomfortable for the duration of, you know, a.

[00:33:38] Karissa Bollinger: Average labor wave and we bring in the trance state, we bring in the breath, and we allow for creation of the experience and noticing how the body wants to move and create its own rhythm and what it craves during that time. And then. we shift into a labor position so that we can, you know, experience the push breath, the breath that I teach to remain in the theta state, the trance state.

[00:34:12] Karissa Bollinger: we practice this breath in all of these various positions so that it's, you know, again, something the body has remembered. When the time comes and, it's really, really powerful work. And even to do like one or two rehearsals before birth with this breath, can really change the way a woman feels in her birth experience and the power that she feels.

[00:34:38] Iris Josephina: Hmm.

[00:34:40] Karissa Bollinger: And I've seen it so many times firsthand at this point that it's so undeniable and just so incredibly powerful that, and it's accessible to every single woman, right? Like there's not a single person that can't practice something like this and rehearse something like this. Whether you have resources for a, a birth, you know, support, doula, midwife, or what have you, right?

[00:35:06] Karissa Bollinger: Like every single woman can take control. Through her body if she understands how to do that. So that's what Wave work is. And the last layer to that is then when you do have a birth support team, you can bring those them into this practice with you. And I love that because. Birth really is like this shared nervous system experience.

[00:35:30] Karissa Bollinger: So if you have a partner who's like, you know, especially men, men don't really, this isn't their thing, right? Like, and if a woman's, you know, trying and maybe doesn't even have all the tools herself, like how can we expect a partner other than a doula to, to understand, how to support. To actually support, right?

[00:35:51] Karissa Bollinger: Like there's a difference between like, what can I do for you? Or maybe the doula taught, you know, some counter pressure techniques and we're, you know, making sure we're managing the room and all of these great things. But when a partner, and especially a doula, right, because there's a lot of doulas out there who feel like they need to be saviors.

[00:36:10] Karissa Bollinger: And I was there. So I get that. But if we can teach these birth partners how to maintain regulation in their bodies as a, you know, as a means for amplification of what woman is doing,

[00:36:31] Iris Josephina: Hmm. I

[00:36:32] Karissa Bollinger: that's, yeah. Because if we're not, if we're not focusing equally on the people in the space and not regulating the nervous systems of the.

[00:36:41] Karissa Bollinger: the support. The woman can do all of, all of the work she wants, and then we still have this mismatch in frequency in the space, and she's, you know, whether she's in it to win it or not, you know, she's adopting that. The veil is very thin, right? So we're, we're absorbing any. Energies in the room. So it's really important for everybody to really be taking responsibility in this space and saying, you know, I am like, even as a birth worker now, like I will be the first one to say, I'm going to step out for a moment.

[00:37:10] Karissa Bollinger: I'm not, you know, I need to regulate myself for X, y, or Z reasons, right? It doesn't really matter. The point is that it doesn't matter what the reason is. You have to be attuned and aware enough to make that decision and, have the tools then to. You know, regulate yourself before you come back into the space.

[00:37:31] Karissa Bollinger: So then when we bring this rehearsal, we can bring these people into the rehearsal. And then it's really interesting because we have this whole integration session at the end. And, not only talk about what, what she was feeling and how, you know, what, what that mirror was like for her, but what was it like for, for the birth?

[00:37:53] Karissa Bollinger: Support team. what was it like for your partner to be with you through that process and see you in a trance state? See you using your vocalization of your tone, your vocal toning, and is that foreign to your partner? And is that gonna be like, ooh, like I've never heard her sound like that before. I've never heard her be in, or I've never seen her be in her body like this before.

[00:38:15] Karissa Bollinger: Right? So there's so, so many layers to this and it can go really deep or it doesn't need to, right. But, It's, yeah, it's a, it's a really beautiful practice for, for everyone who you're expecting to be in your space, with you, and then everyone's on the same page. Right. And, creates, it creates this really, really powerful birthing experience no matter what the outcome is then.

[00:38:38] Karissa Bollinger: Right. Because it doesn't matter. I mean, there's nuance to like. Where we're birthing, right? And we try and do our best, but some women just don't have that opportunity and that access. So that's kind of the point of wave work too, is to say like, you can still take your power back. Right? so yeah.

[00:38:58] Iris Josephina: Yeah. That's beautiful. What came to mind when you were sharing is that it's also, it seems to also be very important that you work with your team long before. The moment is there and I feel a lot of, a lot of the ways in which. Birth teams are constructed these days. It's just like, oh, you're in the, I am.

[00:39:21] Iris Josephina: I'm from the Netherlands. And there you go to a midwifery practice. There is multiple midwives. You've seen them once and then, oh, it can be one of these nine people, you know, present at your birth. And then you have seen them one time. You've not attuned to their nervous system before that. So I feel that there is already, A mismatch before the whole process even starts. And these people can have immensely good intentions, but if they're not aware of that, I can see when you were, when you were sharing, I could see like the vibrational mismatch when, when that

[00:39:57] Karissa Bollinger: And you can see it.

[00:39:58] Iris Josephina: Yeah.

[00:39:58] Karissa Bollinger: It's almost, yeah, if you, if you just start, and that's like the power of even just like women mentioning, like just from my content alone and how I. Share it through language. It's like you, it's so undeniable when you start to look at, all of those pieces of the puzzle, and, and make, and it's not to say that we need to fire everybody.

[00:40:22] Karissa Bollinger: And like, you know, that's kind of the nature of, you know, birth to, like, you have to hire somebody that you don't. You haven't known your whole life, or maybe you have and that could be like a blessing. That's not most people though. you know, there has to be this level of trust and faith and like, you know, but, but also the more attuned you are with yourself and the more energy sensitive you can become, the easier it is to, you know, kind of make that judgment call and have discernment, right?

[00:40:55] Karissa Bollinger: It's, this is, this work is all about, Increasing your level of discernment at the end of the day so that there's this, less of a gap in time for how long you need to be in someone or something's energy for it to feel misaligned. And, you know, that's this numbness, numbness epidemic that we're experiencing with, you know, the medicalized.

[00:41:19] Karissa Bollinger: Well, not even just the medicalized birthing system, but as a society, especially in the United States, right? And it's, it's, this is the, this is the work that everybody needs to do so that we can have this rebound rate of, you know, pivoting and shifting gears as fast as possible. And that only can happen if, you know, we're taking responsibility for, you know, enhancing our own attunement.

[00:41:48] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah.

[00:41:49] Iris Josephina: Yeah, beautiful. As you're saying all of this, I'm thinking like, oh, my partner is so super intuitive and he picks up so much, so he's already having

[00:41:58] Karissa Bollinger: Oh, amazing.

[00:41:59] Iris Josephina: this extra sense where, yeah, his intuition is incredible,

[00:42:04] Karissa Bollinger: It's so great to have a partner who's on that level too.

[00:42:09] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then d going into this work on the same page, because this is another thing, like in a lot of cases, women prepare on their own and then the moment of birth happens and then this partner all of a sudden has to be there and he is not been attuned in the entire process. And I've seen, I've seen this as a doula and I'm like.

[00:42:31] Iris Josephina: I've invited them in like over and over and over again, and they won't show up and then in birth, like they faint or they, they have all these experiences and I'm like, that's because you didn't prepare.

[00:42:42] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah. And then, you know, there's this joke about, you know, being a top of the bed man and the reason, you know, so many men. Adopt that is because they just haven't been exposed enough to the nature of childbirth, and it's not, you know, it's not their fault either, and we can't shame them for that.

[00:43:06] Karissa Bollinger: And yet there's gotta be a willingness on both sides to, you know, do equal amounts of work.

[00:43:16] Iris Josephina: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:17] Karissa Bollinger: And I think men are really waking up and it's, it's

[00:43:19] Iris Josephina: Yeah, I feel

[00:43:20] Karissa Bollinger: that. And I, I am so grateful because women are, are doing the work. I mean, they are, they're, they're putting. The effort in. And you know, I think men are just like a little bit behind, a few years behind, like where women have a, you know, timeline wise, there, there are collective awakening.

[00:43:39] Karissa Bollinger: But yeah, it's, it's really, really amazing to see even just like, you know, some of the content that I put out there, just like. Men, you know, just really being here for it and, you know, like sharing. And it's, it's powerful when, when men can be in that space and not afraid of the power of a birthing woman.

[00:44:04] Karissa Bollinger: That's what it is, right? Like women are powerful and, yeah, that's the paradigm shift that we need to. To move towards is, you know, men recognizing that their fear isn't actually like the childbirth itself, itself. It's like seeing my woman be this like powerful birthing person and I don't know how to hold that.

[00:44:26] Karissa Bollinger: 'cause no

[00:44:27] Iris Josephina: Hmm.

[00:44:27] Karissa Bollinger: taught me and I've never seen it before. So,

[00:44:31] Iris Josephina: Yeah. Oh, bless them. Bless all these men waking up.

[00:44:35] Karissa Bollinger: truly I know.

[00:44:37] Iris Josephina: So you also teach that your cervix will not yield or open or do what it has to do when the nervous system feels unsafe. And I think this perspective, to me, it sounds absolutely logical.

[00:44:54] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah.

[00:44:54] Iris Josephina: not many people like publicly connect the cervix to the nervous system.

[00:45:00] Karissa Bollinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:02] Iris Josephina: and how, how do you explain this and how do you help people, support their nervous system to really allow for this cervix to do what it needs to do?

[00:45:15] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, such a good question. And I think, you know, this goes back to in the beginning when I was kind of referring to the, most frequent, most prevalent reason for stalled laborers is. Is, you know, fear or mismatch in frequency, because that's what I mean. alchemized fear is a mismatch in frequency and attunement, right?

[00:45:42] Karissa Bollinger: So it's not to say, I guess I should preface this, part of the conversation with, you know, it's not that the cervix will not open, but we can help support. The cervix as a frequency gate, which is what I like to call it. Because when you think of it as a frequency gate, you know, a woman can be, and I'm sure you've seen this as a doula, many times, but the classic example I guess is a woman at home.

[00:46:14] Karissa Bollinger: For a period of time moving along really well. She feels really comfortable. She has her partner there, she has her doula there. The lights are dim. Maybe labor started at night when melatonin starts to rise and oxytocin starts to rise and you know things are moving and grooving. All of a sudden we. Have to go to the hospital if that's where she's choosing to birth.

[00:46:40] Karissa Bollinger: And then we get to the hospital and it stalls, right? And that has nothing to do with, again, the mechanics of birth or her body not able to birth her baby or the size of her baby or what have you. This is quite literally an energetic shift that occurred and you know, many things. Kind of simultaneously, you know, being the, this is a symptom of a lot of factors, but main one being a, there's a shift in environmental frequency and less, you know, less of a match for the cervix needing this high level of attunement

[00:47:27] Iris Josephina: Mm.

[00:47:28] Karissa Bollinger: and alignment and. Likely the woman not knowing how to maintain her trance state while she's moving. If she's choosing to birth somewhere other than where she feels truly comfortable and vulnerable, then this, this is why this work is even more impactful and a more important, because it doesn't then matter, you know, where you're moving.

[00:47:55] Karissa Bollinger: Location-wise, you're going to be able to maintain this, connection to the cervix as a frequency gate. So when we use, like I said, when we use this breath to stay in trance, we're able to continually kind of create more efficient. Contractions through this. So when we're, when we're using breath to create more oxytocin, then we're able to just create efficiency.

[00:48:29] Karissa Bollinger: So, it's really powerful and like I said, you've probably noticed like as soon as a woman like kind of shifts like she'll stall and that's like, that's the frequency gate speaking. That's, you know, a misalignment in, in her energy field. So, It's like, it's, it's giving permission. The, the cervix is basically giving the body permission to birth a baby into a place that's safe.

[00:48:59] Karissa Bollinger: It's safety, right? So if we don't feel safe, and maybe she thinks she feels safe, but she doesn't, right? And then I've seen, you know, so many births for like the opposite of that too, where, you know, when, when a woman is not progressing. Like, whatever, you know, time doesn't exist during this too, right?

[00:49:20] Karissa Bollinger: Like we, that's, that's the whole like timeline collapse, timeline collapse, is, we have to remember that there's no like dilation. Centimeter per hour. We have to remember that as long as the body feels safe, we can move from five centimeters to 10 centimeters and pushing in an hour and, yeah.

[00:49:49] Karissa Bollinger: Or, or the opposite, right? So, or we're moving from, you know. Early labor to now we're all of a sudden in active labor after five hours and then we stall, right? So this can move in any direction and it can happen at any point. But the common denominator is always that when you know, labor tends to stall and every birth is different.

[00:50:11] Karissa Bollinger: And I'm not saying that you, you know, can have like the super, the most fast birth just because your entire environment is aligned. Like there's so many energetic layers to this too. But yeah, I would say fundamentally speaking, we can do a much better job to create efficiency with the cervix as like this frequency gate that it is, when we understand this work too, so,

[00:50:42] Iris Josephina: Yeah. Beautiful. This also makes me wonder, because obviously you need, you need this, this trans state to access to this trans state, but I, I have seen women who couldn't access this part, and I'm just curious, what does this mean for. Regardless how birth unfolds and regardless what the entire journey is, where it took place.

[00:51:08] Iris Josephina: If a woman cannot access this trans state or has like a difficulty, what does that mean for her experiential outcome of the birth? Like how does she look back on her birth and have you seen the differences in that by any chance?

[00:51:26] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, I mean, I really do believe this is why we have, you know, such an epidemic of postpartum depression too. It's,

[00:51:36] Iris Josephina: I was aiming at.

[00:51:37] Karissa Bollinger: yeah, many, many layers to this. Of course. obviously metres in and of itself is, is massive, right? It's a, the biggest shift in hormones and physiology. In life, it's huge, massive shift in responsibility.

[00:51:56] Karissa Bollinger: It's huge, massive shift in identity. And then when you layer on, you know, a birth, a type of birth where, you know, you mentioned the trance state specifically, and having trouble like staying within that and staying in the theta brainwave state, You add that baggage almost to maybe a woman, even if she wasn't told, you know, anything shameful by anyone in her space.

[00:52:24] Karissa Bollinger: Maybe she believes, you know, she failed because she wasn't able to have this perfect, you know. experience for whatever reason, you know, whether it was her inability to maintain that. And usually, you know, if women do prep work, you know, there's usually something external that starts to unfold that, this is never black and white ever.

[00:52:50] Karissa Bollinger: But, yeah, I mean this really shapes the way women, mother. It's carried with them. And then, you know, you add in postpartum lack of sleep, like the sleep deprivation aspect is huge. Hormonally obviously, and like contributing to, to mood and ability to be present in the motherhood journey. And, yeah, it's, it, it really is.

[00:53:18] Karissa Bollinger: so many women too, and. I think women are starting to talk more openly about it and, and realize that, you know, it's not necess, it's not shameful, it's just the system's lack of proper preparation for an experience that is, so primal, right? Like we are so grateful for the current technology that we have and.

[00:53:49] Karissa Bollinger: The medical system when we need it. And you know, most births don't need anything other than, you know, a present woman who's able to be in her body and no one tells women that. That's why, we need to spread the message far and wide so that, you know, this isn't just about birth trauma. This isn't just about having a certain type of birth.

[00:54:17] Karissa Bollinger: This is about the rest of your life, how you're carrying this experience with you. You know, there's always going to be a level of trauma in birth. You know, it's physical trauma to the body, you know, it's huge energetic rupture. It's a threshold and it's an ego death, and. It's all these things that women don't realize, right?

[00:54:38] Karissa Bollinger: And like, you know, if you're not used to moving through like a birth and death cycle on the regular and like, you know, shedding parts of yourself that, and grieving and crying and meeting fear and meeting, you know, this emotional body that we've, you know, suppressed so deeply, yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna really, we're gonna struggle.

[00:54:58] Karissa Bollinger: Through the postpartum season and beyond. and then chalk it up to like, there's something wrong with you when there's not, when there's nothing wrong with you, except that a system that failed women, entirely so.

[00:55:13] Iris Josephina: Yeah, I feel that modern culture has, you know, made it so easy for women to disconnect from this primal intelligence because not so much in our society facilitates connecting to that. And it's, it's really painful. Like the more that I dive into it and see it happen and hear stories and witness, it's very hard.

[00:55:35] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah.

[00:55:35] Iris Josephina: feel that this kind of work can potentially help people to begin to remember that. and when you were sharing just now, I, there was like an image that I had that just popped into my mind. I studied with two indigenous midwives, one from Colombia and one from Mexico. And. They share that at a certain point in labor and in birth, regardless of whether it's a c-section or a natural birth, there will be a moment where the birthing person or a woman throws her eyes back into her.

[00:56:13] Iris Josephina: Mind and they described that moment as this is where the woman's soul collapses, gets outta the body to get the baby and come back to the body.

[00:56:25] Karissa Bollinger: Mm.

[00:56:26] Iris Josephina: and that's always like, stayed with me because they were like so adamant about this. And now that I'm hearing all the things that you're doing and you're sharing, this is why it's so important to be in the body so that you know where to return to when that moment comes.

[00:56:44] Iris Josephina: yeah, that's just a little addition. That's what I thought about when you

[00:56:48] Karissa Bollinger: Wow. Wow. That's incredible.

[00:56:51] Iris Josephina: Yeah. 'cause imagine you're not in, in the body and you have to like put your entire soul out. Like you don't know where to return if you're not present.

[00:56:59] Karissa Bollinger: Right. Right. And if you're not, you know, acquainted with, you know, other realms the way we are and that, that whole concept is foreign, especially not being in the body. Yeah,

[00:57:15] Iris Josephina: Yeah. And then I also have a, one of my last questions, 'cause I know we're like on time, can wave work also support, People like in the postpartum and through loss and through preconception, and what does that look like?

[00:57:35] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, I, you know, wave work is just such a metaphor for life and, and really just how we meet thresholds in life And birth is just obviously the physical manifestation of. That, ultimate threshold that we can experience. but it's, it's really not how we, you know, it's not just about how we birth, it's how we're integrating thresholds.

[00:58:00] Karissa Bollinger: So, especially women who maybe didn't get to have the birth experience that they wished for. for whatever reason, whether that be postpartum and they're recognizing like, you know, I, outsourced my power. I didn't get to allow my body to, to move through the process, through breath, through movement, through fascia repair, whether that was because of intervention or cesarean birth or loss even.

[00:58:35] Karissa Bollinger: Wave work really like allows the body to move through that energy of birth. And honestly, I think it's really powerful to utilize the framework of wave work to birth projects, to, I, I mean, I birthed wave work by utilizing wave work, and. It's, yeah, like I said, it's, it's really just an, an opportunity to allow the body to move through the waves of contraction release and to, you know, allow you to, to move through this next threshold, this new identity.

[00:59:16] Karissa Bollinger: And, so it can be, I mean, you mentioned more like, postpartum loss. You know, I think preconception is a, an incredible time to use to start, you know, preparing with wave work because there's never too late. There's never too early, really. I mean, it's your timing is your timing and I get these questions all the time.

[00:59:38] Karissa Bollinger: It's like, I'm 38 weeks. Like, would this benefit me? I am, I think I wanna have children in three years. Like, can I start now? You know, the answer is always, always yes. Because this is. Individual, timing and beyond that, yeah, this is fascia memory. This is just hormonal recalibration, via, you know, like vagal toning and lymphatic drainage and, you know, fertility is a byproduct of that.

[01:00:11] Karissa Bollinger: And, you know, it's, it's just an opportunity too. Like I said, to move through the wave at every phase and, stop fragmenting ourselves so we can become whole through every portal in life.

[01:00:28] Iris Josephina: That's beautiful. And to close off, I wanted to ask you if you could. Whisper one thing to every woman who is preparing to meet birth, like what would you want her to remember about her body?

[01:00:46] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, that's such an important, important closing remark. And I think, you know, we've created such a performance out of birth and we compare to other women and we compare to, other birth stories. And, at the end of the day, you know, I think the takeaway message is really that, you know, birth isn't. A performance, it's something that you need to just allow to unfold.

[01:01:14] Karissa Bollinger: And when you have the right tools, you are the rhythm. and you don't, you know, you don't really need, you know, you don't really need anyone else or anything else to, you know, move you through whatever that experience is going to look like for you. Because birth is, you know, I always say birth is.

[01:01:34] Karissa Bollinger: The, the ultimate mirror, and you're going to receive medicine from that, and you're going to receive. Exactly what you need from your birth. You get, it's almost like, you know, a psychedelic journey, right? You get the journey that you need, not the one that you want. So, you know, that's why it's so important to kind of know when to put a pin in intellectualizing birth and when to start getting it into the body.

[01:02:00] Karissa Bollinger: Because at the end of the day, like I said, you can know everything you need to know about the science and the prep and the, you know, all of the things. And yet you're still going to be incredibly humbled at the end of the journey in one way, shape, or form. And that's going to be the medicine of the experience for you.

[01:02:23] Karissa Bollinger: So,

[01:02:24] Iris Josephina: Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And if people who listen to this are super inspired and they wanna find you, what are the best places to find you and your work?

[01:02:37] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah, I'm on Instagram and on TikTok at Wave Work dot Birthing. Those are the best places.

[01:02:45] Iris Josephina: Perfect. And I'll also paste your links in the show notes so people can find you. Thank you so much for all of the incredible work that you've done to get here, and thank you for sharing your work with the world and feeling.

[01:03:00] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah.

[01:03:01] Iris Josephina: feeling this devotion for people to know this, and thank you so much for your time to come on here and share about it.

[01:03:10] Karissa Bollinger: Yeah. I'm so happy to. Thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it.

[01:03:15] Iris Josephina: Okay, this wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Want to know more about me? The best way to reach me is via at Cycle Seeds on Instagram, and if you heard something today and you think, oh my God, wow, I learned something new. Feel free to share the podcast on your social media and tag me or leave a review of rating.

[01:03:37] Iris Josephina: In this way, you help me reach more people like you. Thank you so much. I.