Inherited Stories Influencing Your Nervous System | SOVEREIGN Magazine® Podcast with Ashley Dahlem

Trigger Warning: In this episode of the SOVEREIGN Magazine® Podcast, host Nicole George connects with Ashley Dahlem, SOVEREIGN Magazine®’s Birthwork, Body Wisdom & Cyclical Care Columnist, to explore the October New Moon theme of Constructed Reality through Ashley’s article, “Beyond the Story: Returning to What is Real.”

They discuss how a mother’s beliefs about pregnancy, birth, and postpartum are shaped by family, culture, media, healthcare narratives, and everyone present in the birth space, and how inherited stories can influence the nervous system and embodied experience.

Ashley shares how she helps clients identify and question these narratives through present-moment inquiry and somatic embodiment, reframing “surrender” as trust rather than failure. Ashley also describes witnessing a “wild” hospital birth that challenged protocols and modeled sovereignty, choice, and collective healing in medical settings.

Timestamps:

00:00 Trigger Warning

01:06 Meet Ashley Dahlem

01:53 Constructed Birth Stories

05:38 Rewriting the Narrative

08:06 Redefining Surrender

09:12 Vulnerability After 2020

11:59 Wild Hospital Birth

14:44 Closing and Next Episode