Ep 172: Evolving Together: The Aligned Birth Podcast's New Journey

In this special episode, we’re thrilled to share some exciting changes coming to The Aligned Birth Podcast. We’re transitioning to a new seasonal structure, complete with intentional breaks for rest and creativity. This shift will allow us to dive deeper into specific topics that matter most to you.

As part of this new direction, we’ll be bringing in expert guests for insightful interviews and exploring fresh content formats to keep our discussions engaging and relevant. We're excited about this evolution and the opportunity to grow our community, reaching more listeners like you.

Tune in to hear all about our plans for the future and how we aim to continue supporting you on your journey with even more focused, thoughtful episodes.

Transcript

Dr. Shannon (00:01.842)
Hello, this is the Aligned Birth Podcast. You've got both hosts today. You have Dula Rachel and Dr. Shannon here, and we are the hosts of the Aligned Birth Podcast. And I guess, I don't know what we're gonna call this episode, but it's kind of a what's to come, what's next for the podcast. We thought we'd hop on and kind of give.

some updates on where we're at in life and what we're thinking and what we want to do and move forward with. And so this might be our last episode for just a minute as we work towards a few things. And we're excited about that. And so that's what we're going to chat about today is what's next for the Aligned Birth podcast. Hello, Rachel.

Rachael Hutchins (00:55.646)
Hi, Dr. Shannon. I am thrilled to be here again with you today and talking about this very important topic for us. And I'm excited. I'm, you know, I don't want it to feel like it's, it's not the end at all. It's an iteration of the podcast. We've been going for three years. That's crazy. And we have a hundred and what?

Dr. Shannon (01:08.198)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (01:13.073)
Mm -mm.

Dr. Shannon (01:18.14)
That's crazy. Our pilot season has been three years. Yeah. Our pilot season has been three years.

Rachael Hutchins (01:26.722)
Our pilot season. Wow. I didn't know pilot seasons could last so long and have so many episodes. We have as of today, probably 171 episodes, I'm guessing by the time this one goes. It's been so much fun. We've produced, released, edited one podcast a week, essentially for three years. And...

Dr. Shannon (01:37.19)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (01:50.588)
Mm -hmm.

Rachael Hutchins (01:52.958)
we are now I think an experiment with trying a different structure. So moving towards seasons and what I'm excited about is just trying something new, something that kind of feels like it aligns with how we with our energy and our our flow and how we want to have time to create, time to promote and time to rest. We just did a whole episode on rest.

Dr. Shannon (01:59.846)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (02:20.742)
Mm -hmm.

Rachael Hutchins (02:21.218)
paying attention to kind of what feels good, what doesn't, what has resistance, what gives us energy. And I'm so happy that we got to do that episode before kind of releasing this information. So yeah, I'm super stoked for what's next.

Dr. Shannon (02:39.196)
You know, this like, what's next? This, when did we start this conversation? Like last week. So that's what's really funny because we hit, summer is typically hard for us to record. And so it's just the ebbs and flows of life. And then it got to the point where it's like, okay, we're gonna read broadcast in here. And then it was like, our schedules weren't meshing up to get to record again.

Rachael Hutchins (02:45.494)
Yeah.

Dr. Shannon (03:08.803)
and it just, we're hitting some, some snack. just, it kind of not felt exhausting, but it was also like push, push, push, push, push. We needed to listen. We needed to check in. And I'm glad that we kind of had those discussions to say, okay, how are you feeling? Cause I'm feeling this. Are you feeling this? If not, then let's talk about what we can do.

Rachael Hutchins (03:19.877)
Mm

Rachael Hutchins (03:28.552)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (03:34.778)
you know, where can I lean in and where can I not? But I think the key thing was having our communication and then it just quickly turned into, okay, we're gonna pivot. Pivot. And so not be done. But it's like this with anything, right? I mean, three years, that's crazy. We've made little changes throughout the episodes or throughout the years too, as far as the recording platforms were used and just lots of different.

Rachael Hutchins (03:53.548)
Mm

Dr. Shannon (04:03.832)
things that we've done, which has been nice, but I'm really excited because I think it will allow us to be more intentional. And you've already said that by me, and like more present with it because we do have our own businesses while we do this. And here's the kicker too, when we both started talking about this is we were like, the podcast brings me joy. The podcast like will continue.

Rachael Hutchins (04:19.554)
Mm -hmm.

Rachael Hutchins (04:31.575)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (04:32.528)
This is something that is so, good that we love, but it maybe needs to change what it looks like a little bit. And so, and that way that we can be our best selves and showing up for our families and the things that we want to say yes to and showing up for our businesses and our people, but then also still showing up for the podcast as well. Because we don't want to, we're not done, but I'm excited.

Rachael Hutchins (04:57.27)
Yeah. Yeah. I just appreciated like after kind of a hectic summer and we missed a couple of recordings, like you were so like considerate. You reached out and I'm like, Hey, like where are we at? Like, let's make sure we're both good. Like I love the podcast. I want to make sure you're, you're good. Just like that consideration and that empathy and that like intuition. And I wasn't quite sure what I was feeling, but I, once I kind of finally sat with it.

and like thought about it. Like I realized I was having some resistance and just certain things because of the stress of like running a business and kids schedules and other obligations I've taken on and you have equal number of things going on. So when I finally stopped and took a, you know, sat with it and just literally let my mind like feel and listen to all the ideas, I realized I liked

Dr. Shannon (05:27.419)
Mm

Dr. Shannon (05:31.878)
Mm

Rachael Hutchins (05:55.584)
You know, I needed to come out pivot. Like you said, I love that word pivot and try something different. Just try to kind of shake up the the because we literally we create and we put out episodes constantly. And so what other options did we do we have for that to be creative, be super intentional, put out really good stuff, but also respect, rest and

Dr. Shannon (06:00.687)
Mm

Dr. Shannon (06:10.674)
Mm -hmm.

Rachael Hutchins (06:24.096)
I, I want to keep loving it. Like I love it so much. So many of my clients listen and love it. had someone who wasn't even a client who was in one of my classes and she was like, you have the podcast. I recognize your voice. And I was like, wait a second, what, you know, and I know you have patients who listen and who have came to you after listening. Like I think the ripple effect is meaningful. And I, I,

Dr. Shannon (06:26.307)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (06:31.312)
same.

Dr. Shannon (06:39.81)
What? huh.

Dr. Shannon (06:44.165)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (06:52.146)
Mm

Rachael Hutchins (06:53.884)
love and appreciate you so much and our relationship and like what we've been able to do. I definitely do not want it to stop but re kind of thinking about the the structure has kind of is.

Dr. Shannon (06:56.401)
huh. huh.

Dr. Shannon (07:07.746)
You're so good at that and I do love our partnership because I get stuck into like I will just I'll keep going. Okay, this is what we're doing. We say we're gonna do this and we're gonna go down every weekend remember and I won't necessarily check in with myself because I'm like that productivity Queen go listen to the rest episode because you can hear all my issues there. Here's the other issue, but Rachel's like mm -hmm. Let's try this and you're you're very creative even though you may say that you're not creative, but

Rachael Hutchins (07:23.276)
Yeah.

Dr. Shannon (07:35.17)
in the like, hey, how does this feel? What does this sound like? And I was like, wow. In my mind, I was like, I didn't know that that was an option or that that could work or that we can pivot. So I'm always appreciative of your ability to, I don't know, anything new or fun that we do is always Rachel doing. I'm like, this is exciting. Yeah.

Rachael Hutchins (07:55.821)
Well, I didn't even know. I think it was like, was again, sitting with it and being open to letting my, my, for the first time, my mind receive alternative ideas of what we could do with the podcast. And then I shared it like with you very like, this isn't a final thought, just a working thought. And then you ran with it and had other ideas and we just sort of like went from there and it just felt like it clicked without like, none of it was really fully like,

Dr. Shannon (08:19.654)
Yeah.

Rachael Hutchins (08:25.442)
planned out, which I love that, that we're able to do that and feed off each other with our ideas and our, you know, I think we both appreciate and respect like energy and balance, knowing that there's never a perfect flow, but the aiming for flow.

Dr. Shannon (08:32.58)
Mm

Dr. Shannon (08:36.688)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (08:40.464)
And that's why we wanted to talk about this because I mean, we don't necessarily have to come on here and do a whole episode and tell you guys that we're going to like, we're going to do this. But I think the whole point of it is I want to hear, I want people to hear the brainstorming thing, but I want to like, this is to show that you can pivot and you can sit with things and you can listen to yourself and you can come up with a new way of doing things and it may or may not work.

Rachael Hutchins (08:45.076)
Yeah.

Rachael Hutchins (08:51.926)
Mm -hmm.

Rachael Hutchins (09:05.269)
Yeah.

Dr. Shannon (09:07.942)
You're not gonna know unless you just try. So it's kind of like we're gonna, we're trying, we're putting this episode out before we've even done anything moving forward. And really all that we're doing is just doing seasons. We're still doing the episodes. We're still creating the content. It's just a matter of when we're creating it. And so I think it's important to show that and a little bit of that skill of like the thinking outside the box a bit.

and the collaboration, the communication that goes along with it. I'm excited.

Rachael Hutchins (09:39.478)
Yeah, yeah, so what we're going to try to do is spend we're going to kind of break the year up kind of into four month intervals so using the rest of the year as our creation time so we're going to spend from now which we're now by the time this comes out it will be September so September through December as our we're going to be doing our interviews doing our conversations kind of intentionally picking.

roughly 16 episodes that we'll hopefully kind of track along with like the trimesters of pregnancy, doing like four trimesters of pregnancy, first four being, you know, first trimester, second trimester, third, and then fourth trimester and having those topics be aligned and then leading our awesome interviews with different professionals in. really, really intentionally choosing the topics that we feel like have the biggest impact and then getting all of those created, edited,

ready to go and then come January we will we will get to kind of launch these this you know launch the season and this will technically have to be season one because that's just how the platforms work which is comical yeah so it'll be like season one and then each week there'll be an episode same kind of format delivery as before but then it'll come the end of April

Dr. Shannon (10:49.372)
Mm

Yeah, we just finished our pilots. Yeah, it'll be season one.

Rachael Hutchins (11:09.95)
the podcast will go into its rest phase. So we'll be in like promotion launch phase where we're releasing new stuff and then come, I guess, end of April, beginning of May, the podcast will wrap and then we get to go into our rest phase, which is going to hopefully be like summertime, kind of May, June, July, August, summertime, and then start a school so that we're not, we're not really in creation mode and we're not in release mode. get the kind of

And then I think that's where ideas get to come from. I'm hoping that that will allow us time to sort of receive new ideas and then come, you know, August, September, we start creating again. So that's the idea.

Dr. Shannon (11:53.318)
That's the idea. Yeah, that's the idea. Well, ebb and flow with it. We'll see how it feels. But I like the idea. I like the idea. think it's, I don't know. I think it works with where we're at in life and business and home and school and everything. So I'm excited to see.

I don't know where it goes, where it takes us.

Rachael Hutchins (12:26.26)
Yeah, and we are kind of the working idea, so you know if you have any topic ideas or like things that you want us to for sure cover or. You know, if you want to share your feedback, we would love if you sent us an email, you can send that to aligned birth podcast at gmail .com we you know again working work in progress here.

Dr. Shannon (12:35.696)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (12:49.592)
Yeah, We have a little bit of An outline started like you had said like that that first little bit we want to do when with the trimesters of pregnancy and you mentioned too like I still want it to incorporate like the interviews because that is something that I Really like as well and we'll probably have like solo episodes like it'll all kind of be the same It's just not gonna be as like all that time

Rachael Hutchins (13:10.144)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (13:19.787)
But I know we did this because we had the issues with scheduling and trying to get things on the books because we, I guess we each individually said like yes to things that we really wanted.

And so it's not that the podcast has to give, but it was like, like I'd said, like pivot. And so was a way to kind of maintain that as well too. Cause I know I have a high schooler now, I have a middle schooler now. Things are a little bit different there. The business is, you know, a bit older and busier. so, you know, life just happens. So we wanted to say, still say yes to the podcast.

but it looks different. So.

Rachael Hutchins (14:14.762)
Mm -hmm. We'll try it out and maybe we come back to this format or another another version of it But I'm stoked I think this is gonna be good

Dr. Shannon (14:21.926)
Yeah.

I know. I think it'll be good. And there's other things too. So we're still going to meet up because we try to meet up outside of recording as well. And I still want to do, we still have a list of other things and growth areas that we've wanted to grow in. And I think we haven't really been able to put any energy towards that because the constant creation and posting puts energy in a different space. So I'm excited for what

Rachael Hutchins (14:47.756)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (14:54.544)
that other aspect can open up for growth within the podcast.

Rachael Hutchins (14:59.306)
Yeah, I think that's really cool to mention too because the this might feel like this is pulling back when really we're going to the work. I think the workload will be similar for us. It's just what we're delivering. I'm hopeful will be even better than what we've done before and working alongside someone who can help us grow. So we reach more people. So really it's might feel like and sound like it's pulling back, but it's

Dr. Shannon (15:06.395)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (15:14.938)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (15:22.608)
Thank you.

Rachael Hutchins (15:26.006)
I think just leaning in in a different way. And then I'm hopeful it will result in more abundance and more people listening and more quality episodes. That's my hope for it.

Dr. Shannon (15:28.614)
Yeah.

Dr. Shannon (15:41.114)
Yeah, and space for us to put the content out in different manners and forms. Because I know we've mentioned things before, like I've wanted to have this book and all these little things with it, but it's like you can't get it done in the energy and space that we were in. it's, I think this is a good, I think it's a good shift, my friend. Eek, I'm excited. I know, I know.

Rachael Hutchins (15:57.068)
Yeah.

Rachael Hutchins (16:02.218)
I do. I believe in it. Me too.

Dr. Shannon (16:07.11)
And I've done some interviews on other podcasts as well too. So we have, and we'll still do that and incorporate those into, you know, our episodes and shows. I'm excited about what our topics are gonna be though and how that, how that will flow. Yeah, yeah.

Rachael Hutchins (16:21.89)
curating the the top 16 when in a year we have like 50 -52.

Dr. Shannon (16:27.122)
Mm -hmm. Top 16.

Dr. Shannon (16:32.484)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, isn't gonna be the American Idol of episodes.

Rachael Hutchins (16:37.674)
Yeah, yeah. But I also like the idea of focusing on what I think we enjoy talking about most and what we think is most helpful versus feeling like, you know, spread thin on what are we going to talk about? We get to really

Dr. Shannon (16:52.528)
That was always a difficult point for us too of like, and that's that we don't have things to talk about, but it's like, can we talk about this in a different way? Have we done this episode? and this gives us, yeah, a chance to.

Rachael Hutchins (16:59.287)
Mm -hmm.

Rachael Hutchins (17:03.498)
It'll be like a really solid, solid. And I'm hopeful when we talk about things that we enjoy talking about and teaching about and sharing about that it'll come across as, as sincere and not that it doesn't, but like, I don't know, it'll feel like just purely authentic.

Dr. Shannon (17:17.511)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (17:22.244)
Yeah, yeah, because it always is. Yeah, it's, I know it'll come from us a bit differently. But it did make me sit down and have to like think of my calendar for the rest of the year. And whenever I do that, I'm like, my gosh, I was in the office yesterday. Yeah, I was in the office yesterday and I was like.

Rachael Hutchins (17:23.957)
and like impact.

Rachael Hutchins (17:31.722)
Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. We haven't done it this way. So I'm, I'm guessing.

Rachael Hutchins (17:42.946)
The rest of the year. I know.

Dr. Shannon (17:49.338)
It's almost December guys. was like, that's what it felt like when I was like, I had to like put my schedule out and stuff. I was like, okay, whenever you're working here and stuff. I was like, that's what happens. It's, it is the years over and every year I'm like, no, no, it's going to be different. It's not, but you know, all good things.

Rachael Hutchins (18:00.556)
I'm pretty sure once October hits, it's over.

Rachael Hutchins (18:08.842)
And it's not, well, I know and hear us, know, again, hold it loosely. Cause I think the end of the year has its own element of busyness and demands. And so we're here trying to like, we want to have everything done by the end of the year. So that's a big expectation too. And if that feels like it's too much, then we'll adjust.

Dr. Shannon (18:18.565)
Mm -hmm.

Dr. Shannon (18:28.186)
Yeah, no, we'll definitely adjust because that's, we just have to be very intentional with it. So yeah. Planning ahead. -huh.

Rachael Hutchins (18:34.88)
Here's to being intentional, here's to good rest, here's to allowing space to create, you know, and to evolution.

Dr. Shannon (18:40.016)
Yeah, learn from this. Exactly. We're planning for postpartum. We've been in it for a minute and we're ebbing and flowing with it. yeah, let's see any other, let's see thoughts or things that you want to mention about what's next. I feel like, I feel like that was most of what we wanted to kind of.

Rachael Hutchins (18:46.768)
Hahaha

Rachael Hutchins (19:04.95)
I think we've covered it girl. I just want people to stay tuned and reach out with topic ideas.

Dr. Shannon (19:10.962)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know we're still, doing our Instagram thing. So, you know, we're putting our stuff out, but yeah. So thanks for listening to episode 170 something of the pilot season of the Aligned Birth Podcast. Season one is gonna start soon.

Rachael Hutchins (19:29.282)
I can't wait to begin season one.

That's not fair. Season one will begin January 20,

Dr. Shannon (19:40.955)
Yes, even though this podcast started three years ago, yeah, so Yeah, everything's living there. Everything's staying. We're excited to pivot and We're excited to have you guys on this journey with us. So stay tuned

Rachael Hutchins (19:44.64)
All those episodes will still be there.