Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training – A Journal – Part 2
By Marcela de León Pérez
YogaBirth teacher trainee, Marcela has been working hard on our teacher training course and has continued her reflections. Here is how she got on throughout August.
05/08/21
The summer holidays have meant that I’ve had to change the dynamic of the things that I need to do for the YogaBirth Teacher Training. With my two kids around most of the time I’ve had less time to sit and read and to sit in at Scaravelli and YogaBirth classes. However, I’ve had more time to read some of the books of the extensive reading list that the course requires.
As a Doula and Birth Educator, I have read many of these books before but it is so enriching to dive into them again from a different perspective. The reading list we get doesn’t only include books but many articles and papers that are kept in our Dropbox shared folder and we can access this at any time which I find very valuable as a working mum.
10/08/21
I have been exploring my own yoga practice more lately and after only three months into the YogaBirth training, I can see how it is influencing the way I move and approach each pose when I am on my mat. I really enjoy playing with incorporating some of the elements of Scaravelli Yoga that I’ve been learning from the teachers whose classes I’ve attended.
20/08/21
I recently had the opportunity to attend a fascinating workshop co-taught by Catherine Annis and Gary Carter: ‘How do we translate yoga practice into teaching’. It was very inspiring to hear a little bit of the journey of two very experienced teachers, sharing their wisdom on the importance of focusing on simple foundations of yoga practice.
The workshop made me reflect a lot on the anatomy of our wonderful human bodies, with the spine as its central axis: a flexible, moving, adaptable structure. And on how our bodies adapt during pregnancy and the fact that the extension and flexion of the spine starts from when we are embryos.
26/08/21
As the months go by and we deepen more into the YogaBirth course, I value more and more the fact that it is being taught online as that has offered me enormous flexibility to be able to attend.
Although I would love to be in the same space as my teachers and fellow students, the opportunity to be able to do this training online has meant that we can join from all over the UK. And not only that, but attending Zoom classes (both Scaravelli Yoga and YogaBirth classes) would have been really different in person.
I feel very lucky to be able to study with teachers that are based far away from me. The fact that the training is all online in my personal opinion has not impacted at all on the quality of teaching and whilst I dearly miss seeing my teachers and friends in person, I know that there will be time for that when we meet for annual CPDs in the future.
30/08/21
I am looking forward to our next weekend together in September. During the summer I have spent more time reading the resources and suggested articles, papers and books that are part of our reading list.
All of this background reading is so important and because the training is a year long, we as students have the time to reflect on and process all of this information which is such a fundamental part of the course.
All YogaBirth teachers whose classes I’ve observed have so much knowledge on many things related to pregnancy and childbirth. And I believe that this is because of everything they learn during the course but also because of the annual CPDs that offer a lot, so that as teachers we can continue to learn.
If you’d like to enquire about training with YogaBirth, email us by clicking the button below.
Photos by @sarahstirkphotography