Mom of the Month: Zuzanna von Salm
Posted on December 16 2020
Zuzanna von Salm
Meditation & HypnoBirthing® Teacher, Aromatherapist, Model and
Soon-to-be Mama of 5
Mom To:
Louisa (3 years old), Pax (2 year old doggie), Bindi (9 month old doggie) and twin girls arriving Jan 15th!
What are you currently excited about either personally or professionally
Personally I'm excited about the challenge and all the love that's about to come with the arrival of twins. This will also translate into my professional life because now I will be able to incorporate teaching about having twins into my HypnoBirthing courses and I'll be speaking from experience.
I am also excited about spending Christmas at home, with my closest family and experiencing the Holidays with my 3 year old daughter. The magic of Christmas is especially pronounced with little kids around!
You are a Meditation and Hypnobirthing teacher, what inspired your journey here?
Before I started teaching I was a model for over 15 years. The pressures of the fashion industry led me to problems like eating disorders, depressive states, panic and anxiety attacks.
When I was 26 years old I decided it was time to help my mental health and return to balance. I wanted to try every healing modality out there until I found the one that would work the most for me. A regular, twice-daily meditation practice was the practice that helped me the most. The results of it were almost immediate. So I started diving deeper into the world of meditation until doing the teacher training was the next obvious step.
The technique I teach is not recommended for women in labor and I thought it wasn't fair that I have no technique to offer for the sacred time of birth.We used the HypnoBirthing method when I was giving birth to Loulou and it made my complicated, 23 hour, unmedicated, home birth sooo much easier. I've always resonated with the philosophy and know that the technique is effective from my own experience and-now- from observing my students. It was the only birth preparation course I've completed during my first pregnancy, I felt so confident and prepared that I didn't look into anything else, and didn't read any books. I still believe that it's the only course you need to prepare for a calm, gentle and intuitive birth.
I love teaching pregnant couples- partners leave the course educated and confident in their support abilities and women-reminded of their power (in birthing and life in general).
We are extraordinary creatures!
As mother's we're forever looking towards other moms for advice, we'd love to hear yours.
I think we tend to be really hard on ourselves when we become moms. A few things that have helped me in motherhood were letting go of perfection and control, accepting people and things just the way they were, moving step by step, slowing down and creating the time to just BE present with my daughter, learning how to see the world through the eyes of a child to understand my child, always returning to a mental space of gratitude.
As a working mom, what do you use to help get you through your work day during these uneasy times?
Meditation is my number one tool that helps me in any challenging situation or times of big change. I did lots of meditating this year;)
I am not very tech savvy and I much prefer teaching in person than on virtual platforms, so I had to adapt quickly to navigating my new, virtual classroom (thank you YouTube tutorials!). Spending time in nature and observing it has been a nice way to return to balance after all of that screen time. As crazy as this year has been, I actually really enjoyed being with my family so much.
What are you working on improving about yourself as a woman and mother?
I am trying to be softer, more feminine. I find that when I am juggling a lot of tasks and logistics it is easy for me to lose that feminine side and become overly practical, very much in my head and not in my heart. Taking time to rest, paint, dance, write, wearing flowy clothes in soft colors and spending time with other women help.
After giving birth to my daughter, I also became very angry. It is an emotion that was pretty much foreign to me before so I am learning how to witness and tame it. I'm also working on learning how to nourish all of the meaningful relationships in my life. It is not easy when you barely have time for yourself!
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