Susannah teaches yoga in Central Scotland: Inverkeithing & Dunfermline. Pregnancy is a very special time and she loves working with mums to be and their babies. It is a precious time and she has been lucky enough to have and raise her two lovely children. Susannah’s labours taught her the wisdom of the body, the effect of fear and the paramount importance of breathing. She is passionate about ‘working with labour’ and having yoga based skills to allow birth to happen naturally.
Susannah has been practicing yoga since the early 1990s and started teaching in 2003. She trained with The British Wheel, Inner Yoga Trust and of course YogaBirth. In 2012 she published ‘Yoga and Breathing for Pregnancy and Birth’ in association with YogaBirth.
Susannah works part time as a primary teacher in the Nuture field and also as a yoga adviser for Twinkl Publishing, where she creates educational yoga resources and writes wellbeing blogs.
Ruth Polden is a Feldenkrais Practitioner, Yoga Facilitator and Mentor. Her work is inspired by Vanda Scaravelli and informed by somatic movement practices: in particular the Feldenkrais Method®, Contact Improvisation and Mind Body Centering. She works (teaching and speaking) throughout the UK, US and Israel. Ruth is a tutor on the faculty of The London Yoga Teacher Training Group and a senior tutor and lecturer on The YogaBirth Training Couse: preparing yoga teachers of the future. She co-created The Bliss Space an online community supporting mothers to celebrate their motherhood experience. Ruth was one of the founders of Motherwise The Israel Natural Childbirth Centre: the first educational centre of its kind in the country and a catalyst for change and choice in childbirth for women in Israel. (where she lived for 20 years.) Her teachers include Sandra Sabatini, Peter Blackaby, Lisa Mcrory, Monica Voss and Donna Farhi.
Ruth is a YogaBirth teacher and Active Birth Teacher and trained with Janet Balaskas in 1991. She has been following her passion supporting and empowering women through their life journey for over 25 years.
During her career as a dancer Ruth performed, choreographed in Europe and Israel. She was a lecturer on the dance faculty at Eastbourne University and Dance Foundation Course Hammersmith Education Centre.
She enjoys dancing, music, walking (on the beach in particular), cooking and sharing good food with loved ones. She lives in Sussex with her beloved husband and 2 incredible children to whom she is eternally grateful.
Natalie was inspired to train as an active birth teacher in 2003, following the birth of her first child. She became a doula two years later and has been supporting mothers during their pregnancy with yoga and in birth as a companion, ever since.
There are various ways a woman can build her confidence for birth, but experience has shown her that nothing empowers and prepares a mother’s body and mind quite as well as yoga for birth. She has seen mothering journeys transformed by that simple act of showing up every week. Stretching and breathing, setting aside time and space where there is nothing else to do but listen to their bodies. Confidence, strength, and ease increase in equal measure and that’s powerful. Natalie’s class is a community, gathering over tea and cake at the end, that coming-together is key. We talk, we share, we listen. It’s a circle of mothers, and women feel good inside it, a growing sense that they are part of something.
Natalie teaches birth preparation to couples and often provides doula phone support to women in her yoga class. It’s effective because she’s familiar to them.
She has three children: Constance who was born in a free-standing Edgware Birth Centre in 2001, Pearl at home in 2003 and Walter, also at home in 2006. Natalie is the author of two books, How to Have a Baby and Why Home Birth Matters and she runs the support site, www.tellmegoodbirthstory.com
Lulu was an original member of Doula UK (2001), Maternity Reflexologist since 2002, trained as a HypnoBirthing Instructor in 2005 and qualified as a YogaBirth Teacher in 2006.
In 2007 she opened the Pre and Post Natal Department at The Power Yoga Company and still teaches there 3 days a week. She continues to take great pride in it’s growth and in building a supportive community for mothers.
In 2013 she set up the same at Lumi Power Yoga and teaches there twice weekly as well as running pregnancy classes in a ballet school in Chiswick and one-to-one with private clients.
Lulu runs couples workshops every two months or so at both yoga centres and really enjoys delivering engaging, warm and interactive sessions that are informed by her Yoga, HypnoBirthing and the knowledge gleaned from attending around 300 births since 2001.
Lulu discovered YogaBirth early in her second pregnancy after hearing wonderful things about Lolly Stirk. Joining Lolly’s classes proved to be transformational on many deep levels; inspiration and confidence to plan for a conscious and beautiful home birth, a renewed awakening to believe in her potential and uncover deeper instincts and a sense of purpose and fulfilment that led her to do the work she has been loving ever since.
Louisa originally practised yoga as an effective way to treat the aches and pains that accompany her work as a professional musician. Over the past 25 years she has explored a wide variety of yoga styles and other body disciplines, and brings a sound understanding of functional movement and healthy posture to her classes.
She is passionate about empowering women to have the best birth they can. Having worked with pregnant and birthing women, and through the births of her own three children, she has learnt that the antidote to fear is knowledge; and a good dose of courage is very welcome too. Her pregnancy classes combine childbirth education with a deep and flowing yoga practice, ensuring that the knowledge becomes embodied on an unconscious level. Postnatal classes focus on reconnecting with the body and breath and rediscovering your pre-pregnancy strength.
