Childbirth: From Clinical Emergency to Spiritual Emergence If you want to serve women and birth, join our FREE training event this September and discover yoga's place in the reclamation. Friday 19 September, 9am-12.30pm, Online FREE Register Here For generations, birth has been framed as a medical event — something to be managed, monitored, and “delivered” [...]
I am so proud to have alongside me the most amazing team of inspirational pregnancy yoga specialists and birth workers and today I would like to introduce them to you. Collectively we have one century of experience teaching and supporting the pregnant community. Our common denominator is our shared passion for working in the amazing [...]
How to Become a Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Read an Expert's Guide to Choosing the Right Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training Working with the pregnant community is a deeply rewarding job. As a yoga teacher, I have supported pregnant women for nearly two decades and I still LOVE my job. These days, I don't just teach pregnancy [...]
If, for Childbirth If you can keep your faith when all about you Are losing theirs. Instilling fear in you; If you can trust your body’s ability to birth — when loved ones doubt you And know that this is what your body’s meant to do. If you can plan a due month not a due date, Remember babies [...]
Francoise Freedman director of Birthlight International and medical anthropologist based at Cambridge University, author of many books, doula, teacher, mother of four and now a grandmother has inspired and trained literally thousands of teachers worldwide - including me. Her wisdom, her passion, her dedication, and her originality floor me. She is truly an innovator and her contribution to pregnancy yoga, postnatal [...]
In West London, where I lived through my first unplanned pregnancy, Lolly’s reputation preceded her. It was the early nougties, and pregnancy yoga was new and exciting. I had just discovered Janet Balaskas and the Active Birth Movement, bought the book and tried to find a Lolly class but to no avail. It was not until [...]
Janet Balaskas is credited with starting the Active Birth Movement; a women's movement that led to fundamental change in British Obstetrics and childbirth preparation. The South African mother of four, who originally trained as an NCT teacher, founded Active Birth in response to the oppressive active management of obstetrics during the 80s and 90s. She is the author of many books on active birth and set up the Active [...]
How yoga and mindfulness for pregnancy and birth can help mums-to-be handle the unexpected twists and turns of their journey. There is a space between the stimulus and the response and in that space lies your power and freedom” — Victor Frankel I wanted to labour in that space; that timeless space where everything is [...]
The drive and vision of three female yoga pioneers, Janet Balaskas, Lolly Stirk and Francoise Freedman, initiated a movement that transformed childbirth and laid the foundations for pregnancy yoga in the UK today. Here, they talk to Nadia Raafat about their early yoga experiences, inspirations, pregnancies and births. Janet Balaskas Active Birth (activebirthcentre.com) How [...]
Maternity Chakras The Spiritual Anatomy of Pregnancy Discovering the Wisdom of the Chakras During the Maternity Year Our bodies have an energetic system; a structure of subtle energy pathways, which act as intersections between the different dimensions of our experience; spiritual, mental, emotional, physical and instinctual. This system, known as the chakra system, [...]