Motherhood
A Transitional Journey
I was given the Active Birth book by a friend when I was pregnant for the first time. That pregnancy didn’t stay but the book did, and my son was born 3 years later on the same day that my first pregnancy ended. I then joined Janet’s pregnancy yoga classes at the Active Birth Centre after discovering that it was a 10-minute walk from my home in Archway.
The pregnancy classes at that time happened in Janet’s home and they made a huge difference to my experience of pregnancy. I had been pretty much banned from all my usual yoga classes as at that time teachers were anxious about working with pregnant women in the class, or if they let you attend you had to sit out lots of the yoga with no alternatives given.
What a relief to find Janet’s classes and be able to practice throughout the rest of my pregnancy while being empowered with information and the philosophy of Active Birth – by the very woman who coined that phrase. I went on to have two very positive experiences of birth, in which my active birth and yoga preparation played a big part.
Before I had my children I worked as an artist, both selling work and teaching in art college. I continued to teach and make art for the first years after they were born but when they were 4 & 2, I decided to re-train in my second love – since the age of 21 – yoga! Like many women, becoming a mother had a transformational effect on all areas of my life.
I trained at the Active Birth Centre over two years to become an Active Birth Yoga Teacher. I qualified in 1997 and was then invited by Janet to join her at the ABC to work with women during pregnancy and beyond.
Teaching yoga brought out a different side to my creativity, I can’t imagine my life without it.
Trainings in Developmental Baby Massage and Baby Yoga followed and I went on to co-direct the centre, I built up and developed our wonderful therapy clinic for women, babies and the whole family which was an incredible source of support alongside what we offered in our classes & workshops.
I taught postnatal yoga from the start, but after a few years I started to develop the postnatal programme, I wanted to work with mothers and babies in a way that was appropriate for where mothers were physically and emotionally, and babies developmentally.
Out of this came New Baby & Me, aimed at mums and babies in the first three months after birth. Mama Yoga classes are the follow on, to New Baby & me, and give mothers a sense of continuity and ongoing support as their babies grow.
The last 23 years have been quite a journey and 2020 was another chapter, most notably the closing of the Active Birth centre and the move onto zoom… followed by the cancellation of my spring & autumn family retreats in Ibiza, as well as my planned return to Brussels for further trainings with a wonderful group of teachers there. Hopefully these will all go ahead once we get through this pandemic and discover a new normal.
2020 has been a time for all of us to reflect. on what we can offer our communities. It has led me to focus on how I can develop my support for new mothers and families within a society where we all need to better take care of new mothers’ emotional, physical and mental well-being.
I will be sharing some of these new mothers stories here, and I hope you will find these stories inspiring, encouraging and much more.