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Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training

Teacher Training | Training Dates | Teacher Retreats | Registration
Testimonials | About the Instructor

The Whole Birth® Yoga Teacher Training is a unique opportunity to grow personally and professionally while you serve and enrich your community. The Whole Birth® Yoga Teacher Certification Training is open to all perinatal health professionals, childbirth educators, doulas, and yoga instructors interested in offering a complimentary, mind-body approach to pregnancy, birth and parenting preparation.

The Whole Birth® Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training is six days in length (40 hours) and includes observation, discussion, participation and practice of the fundamental elements of the Whole Birth® Prenatal Yoga class. The Whole Birth® concept of meeting each woman as whole requires a sincere inquiry into our own understanding and embodiment of wholeness. Students should be prepared for the self-reflective nature of this training, which includes intensive periods of meditation. Applicants should have a minimum of one year experience of yoga and meditation practice.

Whole Birth® Instructors provide a warm and open environment for women to support one another and to inquire together as to what it means to be bringing life into the world. Yoga in it's truest meaning of connection is explored in the training. There will be equal time given to the non-asana aspects of teaching the Whole Birth Yoga and Support Classes. This includes facilitating discussions that deepen women's connection to thier bodies, hearts, families and each other.

There is currently a growing demand for prenatal yoga classes taught by qualified instructors. As yoga has entered the mainstream of healthy activities, pregnant women, both in the United States and internationally are finding that yoga is a perfect match for their perinatal fitness needs. Yoga enhances flexibility, strength, and balance without overexertion. With it's emphasis on relaxation and body and breath awareness it dovetails nicely into childbirth preparation as well.

The Whole Birth® Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training course is 6 days in length and includes a balance of experiential and didactic learning. Topics will include:

• The Body/Mind Dynamics of the Childbearing Year
• Anatomy and Physiology for Prenatal Yoga
• Teaching pain management yoga skills for labor
• Group Facilitation Skills
• Themes for Group Inquiry
• Teaching from the Heart
• Teaching from the Body
• Teaching in the Moment - Mindfulness-Based Education
• Yoga Postures for Pregnancy, Birth and Postpartum
• Poses to avoid & poses to suggest for specific symptoms

There will be time each day to observe Robin teaching a demonstration class to pregnant women and for participants to practice giving instruction.

Doulas, Labor and Delivery Nurses, Childbirth Educators, and Midwives can empower their patients/clients with new and effective tools for coping with labor and skillful ways to enhance their comfort in pregnancy. Whole Birth® Prenatal Yoga Classes also create and strengthen a needed sense of community and friendship among the participants and a forum for discussing issues pertinent to pregnancy, birth and family making. This training will also provide a rich understanding of the body/mind dynamics of the childbearing year and how to encourage a woman's trust in her own resources for birth and mothering.

Whole Birth® Yoga is rooted in the foundation of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is a way of being fully present in our lives that cultivates self-understanding, acceptance, compassion and wisdom. Mindfulness practice is non-secular, does not conflict with any belief or religion, nor does it necessitate adherence to a new ideology or belief system.

Whole Birth® Yoga is inspired, in part, by Robin's training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. MBSR is a well-researched, highly effective approach to pain and stress management. For over 10 years, Robin has been applying the principles of MBSR to the field of birth preparation with extraordinary results.

Click here to listen to an interview with Robin and one of her students on Progressive Parents radio.

Teacher Training | Training Dates | Teacher Retreats | Registration
Testimonials | About the Instructor

Whole Birth Resources
Based in Santa Cruz, CA
phone/fax 831 425 7731
info@wholebirth.com