BIRTHING THE NEW PARADIGM, TOGETHER with Marianne Wobcke

Birthing the new paradigm, together.

Hosts of the 2024 Creative Mental Health Forum are honoured to be joined by Indigenous Midwife, award wining Arts and Health Practitioner and PhD Researcher, Marianne Wobcke, as a special guest facilitator.

During her two hour feature workshop on Saturday 4th May 2024, Marianne invites us all to participate in the ‘road trip’, a multi-media experiential journey into the territory of peri-natal dreaming.

Through our shared dreaming, we join together in birthing the new paradigm – a healing paradigm in which arts and creativity are at the heart of all health, healing and wellbeing.

Marianne's radically creative new VR work "Perinatal Dreaming: Understanding Country" launched as part of the Big Anxiety workshops 2023

Perinatal Dreaming: Understanding Country is a ground-breaking virtual reality experience developed by fEEL felt Experience and Empathy Lab and led by artist, midwife and nurse and trauma support worker, Marianne Wobcke. As one of thousands of Indigenous children forcibly removed from her mother at birth, Marianne has spent her career researching and supporting perinatal and intergenerational trauma, focusing especially on work with mothers and babies.

The VR artwork presents a visually stunning immersive audio-visual experience evoking early life in the womb and entry into the world, taking us through experiences the ‘good’ and ‘toxic’ womb and first encounters with breast, skin and the world. Designed as a unique art experience, the piece can also be used in conjunction with therapeutic work. It is informed by Indigenous knowledge (Dadirri and Kanyini) as well as understandings of trauma and attachment.

Launches of this new work are planned in Sydney, Brisbane and Warwick during September and October 2023. In May 2024, Marianne brings her work to share with attendees at the 2024 Creative Mental Health Forum and Self Care Retreat.

Marianne introduces 'The Road Trip' experiential journey

Underpinned by the principles of attachment, play and imagination, the Road Trip invites participants on an internal journey of self-discovery with its genesis in our personal and collective Indigenous, creation myth.

Internal experiences are enhanced by immersion in a powerful contemporary soundtrack with evocative images, that sequentially explore pre, peri and postnatal feeling domains, intra-psychic locations with associated stories, connected to subconscious levels of the psyche.

The Road trip has a pedigree that spans decades of my clinical experience working with birthing and dying clients. For over 10 years I was Indigenous lead, working with Tav Sparks and the Grof Transpersonal Training, facilitating Holotropic Breathwork with individuals seeking transformation, healing and expanded states of awareness.

The death/rebirth hero’s journey is the perennial template for storytelling. It has been reimagined and popularised across mainstream culture by renowned mythologist, Joseph Campbell and Hollywood’s film and music industries. The hero’s journey has been of enormous significance historically across a diversity of Indigenous initiation processes, including Birthing on Country. Perennially embedded in a holistic world view, it is innately feminine, therapeutic, transformative, restorative and healing. The cycles of death/rebirth cross the life span from conception to death, and its therapeutic application, essentially considers age-appropriate implementation. Committing to seeing the entire journey through, provides opportunities to develop self-awareness and esteem, build self-confidence, self-regulation, emotional, cognitive, biological and social resilience and capacities.

A culturally safe environment is critical, for this inevitably vulnerable, inner exploration. Meticulous attention when designing the holding space, creates an opportunity for participants to collectively surrender their guard, and relax into the feeling dimensions of pre-peri and postnatal existence. Conscious attention, to the feeling and thought genres that potentially emerge is consistently reported to have therapeutic value for certain individuals.

Research is increasingly validating how inherited and perinatal trauma, imprints and corrupts our perceptions, sabotaging our biology and innate sense of wellbeing. Identifying and disrupting these patterns is a fundamental strategy of the Road Trip process, as well as establishing a connection to independent domains including the nurturing womb and the nourishing breast. The music and images support an internal shift from fight/flight/freeze/faun; to a restorative cascade of feminine hormones, promoting relaxation, bonding, attachment, wellbeing and creativity.

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The Road Trip rules require a commitment to personal and collective responsibility:

To treat oneself with positive regard and respect at all times.
To treat others with positive regard and respect at all times.
To treat the environment with positive regard and respect at all times.

This workshop is not suitable for pregnant women in their first and last trimester.

Or individuals experiencing acute mental health symptoms.

If there are any concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

– Marianne Wobcke

About Marianne

Marianne Wobcke is an Indigenous Midwife, Registered Nurse, trauma support worker and artist, born in Meanjin (Brisbane); with maternal connections to her grandmother’s land and Girramay mob in North Queensland. Inspired by 20 years of extensive experience with birthing and dying clients; Marianne enrolled in Queensland College of Art’s unique Indigenous program, to explore her Stolen Generation legacy and passion for the healing potentials of creative approaches. She graduated with First Class Honours in 2010, awarded several Griffith University medals and Golden Key life membership.

Recipient of the 2021 Australia Council “Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development” for her pioneering work integrating culturally aware, trauma-responsive creative approaches for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander birthing women, her inspiration to many has been recognised. Demonstrating her ongoing commitment to her profession, culture and art, Marianne is currently a dual arts/health PhD Candidate at Griffith University, School of Health Science & Social Work and QCA, continuing to explore the connection between art, holistic health and wellbeing.

Indigenous lead with The BIG ANXIETY RESEARCH CENTRE (BARC), UNSW she has presented “The Road Trip’ workshop for audiences interested in personal growth and transformation in regional and urban locations. As part of her PhD research, she guided a collaboration on a Virtual Reality, version of her maternal dreaming story; Perinatal Dreaming, with launches in Sydney, Brisbane and Warwick during September and October 2023.

Watch Marianne’s interview on the occasion of her Ros Bower award, learn more about her incredible drive and passion for the arts, healing, and birthing the new paradigm:

BIRTHING THE NEW PARADIGM, TOGETHER with Marianne Wobcke