Show Notes
Guest: Maya Ittah, MSACN, CMT — holistic practitioner, clinical nutritionist, bodyworker, circle facilitator, and steward of land-based women’s spaces in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Connect with Maya:
TerraVie (Living Earth) – Holistic Bodywork & Nutrition
Open Heart Commons: Self Breast Massage & Storytelling Circle
Topics we cover:
How a multicultural, globe-trotting childhood shaped Maya’s approach to healing and community
Massage school as a gateway into holistic health, energy work, and listening to the body
The journey from massage therapy to applied clinical nutrition and integrative coaching
Healing the mother wound, generational patterns, and the feminine lineage through present-moment work
Why circles are like living cauldrons and wombs: the alchemy of women gathering to share stories
Yoni steaming as ritual: from “spa treatment” to deep energetic and emotional clearing
Breast massage as spiritual and energetic reclamation: shifting from objectification to nourishment
How our relationship with our bodies mirrors our relationship with the Earth
Food as information, seasonal nourishment, and tuning into what actually feels good in our bodies
Winter as a time for broth, introspection, river plunges, and quiet gestation
🎵 Music credit:
Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by Arkawa
Used with permission. More at arkawamusic.com
🌐 And as always, visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.
There’s a certain kind of remembering that only happens in circle.
When I first met Maya, it was in one of those sacred spaces — a women’s circle, like so many of the connections that eventually weave their way onto this podcast. The very next day I found myself sitting on a stool by the river at her yoni steam gathering, wrapped in the scent of herbs, surrounded by women, steam, songs, and stories. It felt ancient and familiar all at once, like stepping into a memory my body had been carrying but my mind had forgotten.
In this conversation, Maya and I explore what it means to reclaim our bodies — especially our breasts and wombs — from a lifetime of objectification, medicalization, and disconnection. She speaks about breasts not just as sites of sexuality or feeding babies or being screened for disease, but as extensions of the heart: channels of love, grief, generosity, and stored emotion. Through breast massage and self-breast care, Maya invites us to meet this part of ourselves with softness, curiosity, and reverence, rather than criticism or shame.
We also talk about lineage and the mother wound — the ways patterns, scarcity, and unspoken pain are handed down through generations, and how present-day practices like yoni steaming, ritual, and gathering on the land can help us transmute those stories. Maya shares about her relationship with her own mother, her daughter, and their shared commitment to “ending the cycle here,” doing the work in their bodies, hearts, and spirits so their descendants can inherit something different.
As you’ll hear, the Earth is a central teacher in Maya’s work. From wildcrafting and seasonal eating to braving cold river plunges in winter, she keeps returning to the idea that our bodies are not separate from the landscapes we inhabit. The way we nourish ourselves — or don’t — mirrors how we treat the planet. And the healing we do inside our own skin ripples outward into the wider world.
This episode is an invitation to slow down, breathe, and listen: to your breasts, your womb, your ancestors, your plate, your land, your own quiet inner “yes” and “no.”
I hope as you listen, you feel a little of that circle energy we felt by the river — the vortex that opens when women gather, remember who they are, and choose nourishment over numbness.
Much love,
Sarah
