Supporting Baby Loss and Birth Trauma workshop

Would you like some tangible strategies to deal with this shadow side of teaching pregnancy yoga or being a doula?

Are you a student or new midwife confronting baby loss or birth trauma?

If you are a perinatal professional, you are very likely to have clients that have experienced baby loss, and/or physical or psychological birth trauma from anytime from conception through to the early postnatal months.

Often, Talking Therapies is the first place someone is signposted for support. However, if you are a movement teacher or bodyworker, you will know the huge potential for healing that is available through working with the body. If you’re a doula or midwife, you’ll know how a trusted support person can make all the difference. But that doesn’t make it easy to support the person / couple.

Next training date: TBC (was planned for July 11th 1-3pm (online))

Email Tessa to register your interest

What will I learn?

In this workshop, you will learn to:

  • how to deal with news of baby loss or challenging birthing stories in class / group situations

  • create a safe space for sharing experiences and the skill of reflecting back to help them feel heard

  • use trauma-informed language to reduce the likelihood of triggering trauma

  • explore how different breathing techniques can support different branches of the nervous system and the potential challenges with counting techniques

  • supporting pregnancy post-baby loss or post birth trauma

  • consider the effect of trauma on common positions e.g. semi-supine, counting down techniques, sharing birthing stories, using icebreakers in a group e.g. number of children

  • reflect on your own nervous system regulation and avoiding vicarious trauma

The workshop creates a safe container to acknowledge your own birthing experiences or those close to you/ or your clients. Please contact me if you have experienced birth trauma yourself to talk about whether now is a good time to attend this workshop.

Pre-requisite for workshop: A professional training e.g. midwifery, pregnancy / postnatal yoga teacher training, doula training (but not limited to these). Please ensure that you are somewhere private for the training where you will not be overlooked or overheard by others.

A certificate is available for this training. Please note, this is an introduction to the topic. This training will not enable you to provide specialist Yoga for Birth Trauma.

Important: When you book your place, you will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link.

Nearer to the training date, an email with joining instructions will be sent so please ensure that you check junk mail if you don’t see the confirmation email and add hello@tessayoga.co.uk to your safe list. If you would like a receipt don’t hesitate to contact me.

What workshop participants say…

Thank you very much for yesterday’s course. It was very interesting and helpful for my teaching. I found the content and your delivery was just right and the ability to interact over zoom was done so well. Thank you.

I spent about an hour telling everything from the workshop to my husband. That is always a good sign, to want to share everything!”

- Ruth Barber

"I did enjoy it very much. Many thanks for sharing your experiences and knowledge, and for providing a stimulating forum for discussion.”

- U.B.

Your tutor Tessa

Tessa has been teaching Pregnancy Yoga since 2007 and Postnatal Yoga since 2014. She has been delivering Pregnancy and Postnatal CPD training since 2020.

Unfortunately during those years of teaching pregnancy yoga, clients have experienced baby loss and birth trauma. Tessa started by spending time with bereaved parents and found that being present was so appreciated.

Then she was called to offer Yoga for Birth Trauma, formalising her experiential learning with two trauma-informed courses with Aneta Idzcak and Alex Cat.

Often clients reach out for this service when there is a subsequent pregnancy or there is a compounding of the trauma with other stress, such as illness, work problems, the strain of caring for elderly parents.

Tessa is the author of nine books, including Circle Holding: A Practical Guide to Facilitating Talking Circles, and all of the space holding skills are brought into these client sessions and training workshops.

Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions by email. Tessa is also able to create trauma-informed yoga nidra or hypnobirthing tracks for your clients, tailored to their individual circumstances.

What clients say…

"I had a series of private online sessions with Tessa as part of my healing process after losing my baby. I always left the sessions feeling calm, relaxed and more balanced. Tessa taught me some invaluable techniques to regulate my nervous system which I still include in my daily practice. She made me feel at ease, listening and responding to how each exercise made me feel and I really looked forward to my sessions with her. I would definitely recommend her expertise to my own yoga clients."

- Rachel

"The love and support you provided was phenomenal. I can't thank you enough for it."

- Ritika

Mentoring for birth trauma.

Perhaps you are already offering trauma-informed yoga to individuals or groups who have experienced birth trauma and would like to have a safe space to reflect on your teaching style and the practices you offer, handling beginnings and endings, the support you have in place and a space to use embodied listening for yourself. Or perhaps you have supported an individual or class through a stillbirth or other bereavement and would like to debrief on how you handled it.

Or maybe you have trained in trauma-informed yoga and would now like to specialise in supporting those who have experienced birth trauma.