A woman in red lying held within the roots of an ancient tree

Level I · The Whole Womban Healing Academy

Whole Womban:
The Return

A three-month journey of reconnecting with your womb, healing your relationship with your body and remembering how to listen to yourself again.

Begins 1 March 2027Online, open worldwideBy application
Begin The Return
A woman in red kneeling at a river, her hands resting in the water

There is a place within you that remembers.

Beneath the noise, the roles, the responsibility, the conditioning and the constant movement of life, your body is still speaking. Your womb is still speaking. Your cycle is still speaking.

Whole Womban: The Return is a three-month journey into deeper relationship with your own physical, emotional, energetic and spiritual self. Together we will explore your relationship with your womb, your menstrual cycle, your nervous system, your emotions, your ancestry, your intuition and the deeper rhythms moving through your life.

This is a return to yourself, to the wisdom of your body, the voice of your womb, and the parts of you that are ready to be felt again.

Come home to your own womb space

So many women move through life disconnected from the very centre of themselves.

  • We learn to push through our cycles.
  • Ignore our bodies.
  • Override exhaustion.
  • Dismiss intuition.
  • Hide emotion.
  • Normalise pain.
  • Disconnect from pleasure.
  • Live predominantly from the mind.

For many women, the relationship with the womb becomes something we only think about when something is wrong: when we are menstruating, trying to conceive, pregnant or in pain. The Return is an invitation to create a different relationship. To begin experiencing your womb not simply as an organ, but as a living part of your body worthy of attention, care and connection.

This is about becoming more connected to your body, your cycle, your intuition and the woman you already are.

Available worldwide

Join from anywhere in the world

Whole Womban: The Return is designed for women everywhere. The three-month journey is delivered online, so you can take part from wherever you are. You do not need to live in New Zealand to be part of this work.

  • Prerecorded teachings you move through in your own time
  • Live monthly circles with Sophia
  • Guest teachers
  • Guided practices, meditations and rituals
  • A private community of women walking alongside you

The journey culminates in a Level I ceremonial initiation and attunement, and there are two ways to receive it.

If you are in Aotearoa New Zealand

You are welcome to join Sophia in person for the Level I Initiation Day. A full day of ceremony, womb connection, ritual, embodiment, sound, cacao, integration and attunement.

If you are overseas, or cannot travel

You will complete a dedicated online ceremonial initiation day and receive the Level I attunement remotely. This is not a lesser version of the experience. It is built as its own container, so that women anywhere in the world can complete The Return and receive their initiation.

One journey. One initiation. Women gathering across the world.

Why Whole Womban Healing exists

Because women are more than one part

There are many beautiful teachings available for women.

  • Some focus on the body.
  • Some on menstrual cycle awareness.
  • Some on trauma and emotion.
  • Some on nervous system healing.
  • Some on Reiki or energy.
  • Some on intuition.
  • Some on womb spirituality.
  • Some on ancestral work.

But women do not experience themselves in separate categories.

  • The body affects the emotional world.
  • The emotional world affects the nervous system.
  • The nervous system affects how safe we feel in our relationships, our sexuality and our bodies.
  • Our history shapes how we inhabit ourselves.

And for many women, spiritual and energetic experience is also part of how they understand their lives.

Whole Womban Healing was created to bring these layers into relationship with one another. Physical. Emotional. Energetic. Spiritual. Not as competing explanations, but as different dimensions of the same woman.

A whole woman approach

Healing cannot always be separated into parts

A woman seated cross-legged, hands resting in a triangle over her womb

Physical

  • Your body
  • Your womb
  • Your menstrual cycle
  • Your hormones
  • Your breath
  • Your nervous system
  • Your relationship with rest, movement, nourishment and touch

Emotional

  • Your story
  • Your grief
  • Your anger
  • Your relationships
  • Your identity
  • Your boundaries
  • Your motherhood journey
  • Your inner child
  • The things you have learned to suppress or carry

Energetic

  • Your energetic boundaries
  • Your capacity to receive
  • Your own energetic field
  • Reiki
  • Sound
  • Breath and ritual
  • The ways you experience energy moving through your body

Spiritual

  • Your intuition
  • Your relationship with the Earth
  • Ancestral connection
  • Sacred feminine wisdom
  • Personal ritual
  • Your relationship with mystery, spirit and your own deeper knowing

Four dimensions of the same woman. You.

Your cycle

Reconnecting with your cycle

Your menstrual cycle is not an inconvenience to work around. It is one of the most intimate rhythms of the female body.

For many women, our relationship with menstruation has been shaped by embarrassment, pain, contraception, fertility, pregnancy, motherhood, cultural messages, or simply never being taught how to understand what our bodies are doing. Within Level I, we begin rebuilding that relationship, with curiosity rather than judgement.

A woman holding an anatomical model of the female pelvis filled with peonies
An anatomical illustration of the female pelvis, drawn amongst flowers and a moon

Bleed

The inward turn. Rest, release and the quietest part of the month.

Rise

Energy returning. Curiosity, beginnings and a sense of opening.

Bloom

Fullness and expression. Often the most outward, connected time.

Soften

The turn back inward. Sensitivity, honesty and what needs tending.

We will explore:

  • The menstrual cycle and its phases
  • How hormones shift across the cycle
  • Observing your own cyclical patterns
  • Menstrual awareness and cycle tracking
  • Energy across the month
  • Rest and movement through different phases
  • Emotional patterns within the cycle
  • Your relationship with menstruation and blood
  • Pain and body signals
  • Womb awareness
  • Reconnecting after contraception, pregnancy, birth or disconnection
  • The cycle as a source of self-knowledge
  • Cyclical living without rigid rules
  • Understanding when symptoms require professional medical support

There is no one way to move through your cycle. This is an invitation to understand your own body, its rhythms, its needs and what each phase feels like for you.

Your cycle becomes something you are in relationship with, rather than something that simply happens to you.

The journey

Three months, three movements

Month One

Root

Body, Womb & Safety

A woman resting in the roots of an ancient tree

The first month is about coming home to the physical body. Before we go deeper, we begin by listening. You will explore your relationship with your womb, menstrual cycle, body and nervous system. This month creates the foundations for everything that follows.

Can I begin listening to my body instead of overriding it?

  • Connecting with your womb space
  • The physical womb and female anatomy foundations
  • Menstrual cycle awareness and mapping your own cycle
  • Reconnecting with menstruation
  • Body literacy and recognising body signals
  • Nervous system foundations, grounding and breath
  • Embodiment and creating safety internally
  • Rest, boundaries and receiving
  • Self-touch and gentle self womb and abdominal massage
  • Relationship with the Earth
  • Creating your personal womb practice

Month Two

Remember

Emotion, Story & Lineage

An elder woman braiding her long silver hair

Once we begin listening to the body, we often begin hearing the stories held alongside it. Month Two explores the emotional landscape around the womb. Not with the belief that every emotion is stored in a specific organ, but with an openness to exploring how our experiences shape our relationship with our bodies.

What does my body remember, and what am I ready to meet with compassion?

  • Your womb story and your first period
  • Menstrual shame and your relationship with femininity
  • Motherhood, pregnancy, birth and fertility experiences
  • Pregnancy loss
  • Sexuality and body image
  • Grief, anger and shame
  • Boundaries and relationships
  • Mother wounds, sister wounds and inner child work
  • Inherited family patterns and maternal lineage
  • Ancestral connection
  • Emotional expression, sound and voice
  • Self-Reiki, ritual and guided journeying
  • Compassionate self-inquiry

Month Three

Reclaim

Intuition, Pleasure & Inner Knowing

A woman in linen with a flower crown, arms raised to the sky in an open field

Healing is not only about revisiting pain. It is also about recovering life. Month Three turns towards the parts of the woman that may have become quieter through years of responsibility, survival, conditioning or disconnection.

What becomes possible when I begin trusting myself again?

  • Intuition and trusting yourself
  • Pleasure, sensuality and desire
  • Creativity and expression
  • Receiving and personal power
  • Energetic boundaries
  • Understanding intuitive sensitivity and discernment
  • Sacred feminine wisdom
  • Earth connection and ancestral guidance
  • Spiritual allies and personal ritual
  • Purpose and future-self work
  • Creating a relationship with your own inner knowing

The foundation

Before practitioner comes woman

Within the Whole Womban Healing Academy, practitioner training does not begin with techniques. It begins with the woman herself.

  • Before learning how to work with another woman's womb, you spend time developing a relationship with your own.
  • Before learning to recognise another woman's nervous system, you begin understanding yours.
  • Before guiding another woman towards her intuition, you practise listening to your own.
  • Before holding another woman's emotional experience, you learn to sit beside your own.

This is why Level I exists. Some women will complete The Return and never become practitioners. That is enough.

Your relationship with yourself is at the heart of this work.

Level I

Open now

Whole Womban: The Return

The journey on this page. Three months of returning to yourself, completed through ceremony and initiation.

Level II

In development

Practitioner training

Where the work turns outward, for the women who feel called to it after walking The Return for themselves. Details will be shared with Level I women first.

What is included

Three months of being deeply supported

The hands of many women resting together in a circle
  • Three months of guided self-healing
  • Prerecorded teachings
  • Monthly live circles with Sophia
  • Guest teachers
  • Womb connection practices
  • Menstrual cycle education
  • Cycle tracking and reflection practices
  • Nervous system education
  • Guided meditations and breathwork
  • Embodiment practices
  • Self womb massage practices
  • Reiki and energetic practices
  • Journalling and emotional inquiry
  • Ancestral practices
  • Sacred feminine teachings
  • Intuitive development
  • Rituals and integration practices
  • Private community
  • A beautiful workbook and journal
  • One private Whole Womban Healing with Sophia, in person at Okura or online
  • The full Level I initiation day
  • The sacred Level I attunement
  • Private teachings around the Level I sacred symbol
Sophia standing at the healing table, hands resting over her own womb

Included in Level I

Your own healing session with Sophia

This journey is not only about learning through a screen. Every woman completing Level I receives a private Whole Womban Healing session with Sophia, in person at the Okura sanctuary if you are local, and online for every woman who is not.

Your session is an opportunity to step out of the learning mind and simply receive. It may weave together conversation, breath, nervous system support, energy healing, Reiki, sound, meditation, womb connection and intuitive guidance, depending on what is appropriate for you. No two sessions need to look the same.

This is your space to be met as a whole woman.

The Level I initiation

The Return

After three months of returning to your own body, womb and inner world, we complete the journey through ceremony and initiation.

  • The Level I Initiation marks a threshold.
  • A moment to honour what has shifted.
  • To integrate what you have learned.
  • To receive.
  • And to consciously deepen the relationship you have begun creating with yourself.

If you are in Aotearoa New Zealand

You are welcome to join Sophia in person for the Level I Initiation Day. A full day of ceremony, womb connection, ritual, embodiment, sound, cacao, integration and attunement.

If you are overseas, or cannot travel

You will complete a dedicated online ceremonial initiation day and receive the Level I attunement remotely. This is not a lesser version of the experience. It is built as its own container, so that women anywhere in the world can complete The Return and receive their initiation.

Both pathways lead into the same Level I initiation.

Through ritual, womb connection, breath, sound, meditation, embodiment and ceremonial practice, you will prepare to receive your first Whole Womban attunement. Sophia will transmit the Level I attunement through the ceremonial process she has developed through her spiritual practice and guidance. You will also receive the Level I sacred symbol privately, and learn how to work with it within your personal practice. The symbol itself is never shared publicly.

This is not an initiation into becoming a practitioner. It is an initiation into deeper relationship with yourself.

Sophia sitting on the sand beside her drum, candle and crystals

The essence of Level I

  • I return to my body.
  • I return to my womb.
  • I return to my cycle.
  • I return to my intuition.
  • I return to my truth.
  • I return to myself.

The place

A place to return to

The healing room at the Okura sanctuary
Native bush surrounding the sanctuary

Sophia's healing sanctuary sits in Okura, on Auckland's North Shore. This space has been slowly tended as a place for women to step away from the speed of ordinary life.

Surrounded by land and nature, it offers room to soften. To breathe. To receive. To gather. To reconnect. It is where the in-person Level I Initiation Day is held, and where private sessions are received by the women who can travel to it.

If you are joining from elsewhere in the world, none of the journey is closed to you. Your initiation is held in its own online ceremonial container, and your private healing session with Sophia can be received by distance.

Sophia Cataldo seated on the rocks at sunset, hands resting over her womb

About Sophia

This work has been lived before it was taught

Whole Womban Healing did not begin as a course Sophia decided to create. It grew from her own life. She has walked the womb healing path for years, first through her own experiences and later through holding hundreds of one-to-one sessions with women.

Her relationship with her womb has not always been simple.

  • At 15, she experienced an abortion.
  • At 20, she underwent treatment for cervical cancer, including a LLETZ loop procedure.
  • Across different chapters of her life, she also navigated hormonal and menstrual challenges, pelvic pain, recurrent urinary tract infections, recurrent thrush and pain during sex.

These experiences became part of a much longer journey of learning how to listen to her body rather than disconnect from it. Through years of personal healing, professional support, study, embodiment, spiritual practice and building a different relationship with her own body, Sophia's experience today is profoundly different from where it began. She now lives without many of the symptoms and challenges that once shaped her relationship with her womb and body.

This is not shared as a promise that another woman's body will follow the same path. It is shared because Whole Womban Healing has been shaped by a woman who knows intimately what it means to feel disconnected from her womb, and what it can mean to slowly find a way home.

Training & experience

Shaped by study, and equally by experience

Sophia's work has been informed by years of learning across complementary, embodied and spiritual practices. Her training and studies include work through the Institute of Feminine Arts, including an extended womb awakening training, as well as training through Body Lane, alongside Reiki, breathwork, coaching, energetic healing, nervous system work, shamanic practice, ritual, intuitive development and psychology studies.

But Whole Womban Healing is not simply a collection of qualifications. It has been shaped equally by experience.

  • By sitting with hundreds of women.
  • By hearing their stories.
  • By witnessing grief, motherhood, transition, disconnection, longing, pain, awakening and remembrance.
  • By continuing to walk her own healing path alongside the women she supports.

The approach

A body of work that brings the pieces together

Whole Womban Healing has grown from Sophia's search for the kind of work she wished existed when she began her own journey. Something that did not ask her to choose between:

  • the grounded and the sacred
  • understanding the body and listening to intuition
  • nervous system education and energy
  • emotional healing and ritual
  • science-informed knowledge and spiritual experience

The Whole Womban Healing approach brings these worlds together within one integrated pathway. There are individual trainings in many of these areas. What makes this work distinctive is the way they are woven together around one central relationship: the relationship a woman has with herself.

  • Her body.
  • Her womb.
  • Her cycle.
  • Her emotions.
  • Her energy.
  • Her intuition.
  • Her ancestry.
  • Her inner world.

And, eventually, her ability to hold another woman without abandoning herself in the process.

Sophia Cataldo sitting in meditation on the rocks above the sea

I am not teaching this from the outside

  • I know what it is to feel disconnected from my womb.
  • I know what it is to feel frightened by my own body.
  • I know what it is to experience pain, shame, confusion and the sense that something within me needed fixing.
  • And I know what it has meant to spend years slowly creating another relationship with myself.

This Academy has grown from that journey. From my study. From my spiritual practice. From the women I have had the privilege of sitting beside. And from the knowing that kept returning: women need spaces where all of them are welcome.

  • Not only the body.
  • Not only the mind.
  • Not only the energetic.
  • Not only the spiritual.

The whole woman. The whole Womban.

That is the work I am here to share.

Sophia

Who this is for

You may feel called to The Return if...

  • You feel disconnected from your womb or body
  • Your menstrual cycle feels like something you endure rather than understand
  • You want to learn more about your own cyclical rhythms
  • You have spent years overriding your body's signals
  • You want to rebuild trust with yourself
  • You are craving a deeper relationship with your intuition
  • You want to understand your nervous system
  • You feel called to explore your emotional world more deeply
  • You are moving through motherhood, change, grief or transition
  • You want a spiritual practice that still feels grounded
  • You are curious about ancestral or energetic work
  • You want to develop rituals that genuinely mean something to you
  • You long to feel more at home within yourself

You do not need to arrive healed.

You do not need to be spiritual.

You do not need to know anything about womb work.

You begin exactly where you are.

Investment

$2,222

NZD, for the complete three-month Whole Womban: The Return journey

The journey begins 1 March 2027

The first day of autumn in Aotearoa. Open to women anywhere in the world.

Pay in full

$2,222

NZD

6-month payment plan

$370.33

NZD per month for 6 months

Your place includes:

  • Self womb massage practices
  • Reiki and energetic practices
  • Journalling and emotional inquiry
  • Ancestral practices
  • Sacred feminine teachings
  • Intuitive development
  • Rituals and integration practices
  • Private community
  • A beautiful workbook and journal
  • One private Whole Womban Healing with Sophia, in person at Okura or online
  • The full Level I initiation day
  • The sacred Level I attunement
  • Private teachings around the Level I sacred symbol
Begin The Return

Places are held by application. Nothing is paid until Sophia has read your application and offered you a place.

Questions

Before you begin

Come home to your womb

You do not need another version of yourself to become. Perhaps the invitation is simply to begin listening to the woman already here.

Her body. Her cycle. Her feelings. Her needs. Her intuition. Her womb.

Whole Womban: The Return is three months devoted to beginning that relationship again.

Begin The Return

Your body has been speaking all along. The Return is an invitation to listen.