Inner Peace Hatha Yoga with Leigh McLellan

Booking essential. Please contact me for further details. Please register your interest early as there may be a waiting list. COST: classes work out at £7.50 per class for block booking. You may casually drop-in (space permitting) if your due date falls within the next block. The drop-in rate is £10 per 90 minute class. Please contact me for a current list of class dates/rates and an enrolment form.

ABOUT BIRTHLIGHT

Birthlight is a friendly, informal charity, founded by Françoise Barbira Freedman, focusing on an holistic approach to pregnancy, birth and babyhood using Yoga and breathing methods to enhance your and your babies well-being.

The Birthlight Trust is an educational charity, set up in Cambridge, that over the last 15 years has developed simple practices inspired by Yoga and the parenting style of Amazonian forest people to reach an increasing number of parents, midwives, teachers and carers. The application of adapted exercises and relaxation also in the water, has proved most beneficial to pregnancy, birth and the first crucial years of child development.

Our charter is contained in the word Birthlight, birthing lightly using the breath and the awareness of breathing without due strain, and also to the light, the spiritual dimension of birth, which is often forgotten.

Developing Birthlight with parents and carers of many countries and backgrounds has meant encouraging creative parenting. Our aim is to build a sound, positive foundation for life in ways that suit and nourish your family, however it is defined.

The range of classes available are designed to take you from conception to your child’s third year; Birthlight continually strives to use the latest research findings in the development of additional classes that build on your expertise.

All Birthlight certified teachers have undergone rigorous training, which is continually updated. All of them adhere to a stringent code of practice. Birthlight courses are either accredited or professionally recognised.

Pregnancy Yoga (Prenatal Yoga 14 weeks to birth)

Birthlight has been one of the pioneers of pregnancy yoga classes in the UK, Carefully adapted classic yoga postures and breathing exercises promote fitness during pregnancy, both physically and emotionally. Simple yoga for pregnancy, providing exercises that you can practice at home during your pregnancy.

Yoga for pregnancy is really about nurturing the mother. It is taking the time to connect with your baby and to help ease some of those pregnancy symptoms to allow you to enjoy your pregnancy as much as possible.

It is suitable from about 14 weeks to birth. You will have or have had your first scan around 12 weeks. Most women find that sometime around weeks 14-16 they start to get their old energy back again. Listen to your body and see when you feel ready. So anytime from then onwards is the ideal time to start pregnancy yoga. Pregnancy yoga can be done from this point right up until the birth.

You do not need any previous knowledge or experience of yoga to participate in Birthlight yoga.

These classes are specifically designed to be fun, safe and effective yoga for the whole of the 2nd and 3rd trimesters of pregnancy. We do adapted classic yoga poses - specifcally ones which create space in the pelvis and which strengthen the muscles supporting baby and you (especially your abdominal muscles, your back and pelvic floor), and which often help baby into the ideal position for birth. We learn breathing techniques which many women have found useful for labour, birth and the early days as a new mother. The breathing techniques, especially if practised throughout the 2nd trimester, help to increase your capacity to 'breathe for two'. We also use sounds (Nada Yoga) because creating our own sounds (chanting, mantras, vowel sounds, nursery rhymes etc.) is the quickest way to open up abdominal breathing; also because women make sounds when they give birth and because baby hears and feels sound. We practice various relaxation and visualisation techniques. Women find that with all of these practices, they are most beneficial preparation for labour and birth if they've had the time during the pregnancy to practice them regularly, so that they become second nature. The women I have been working with recently have told me that pregnancy yoga helped them to feel calm and empowered during their labours and births, with plenty of tools in their 'yogic toolbelt' to help them through this amazing transition to motherhood.

I currently teach pregnancy yoga on Tuesday evenings and Friday mornings. Blocks are usually of 6-8 weeks duration. I teach mainly during the school year, as I am a single mum of 4 and 6 year old daughters myself. In September this will change to 3 classes - all on a Friday. I am presently taking bookings for classes starting in September as current classes are full. Please contact me for further details or with any queries.

Sessions with partners:
Birthlight Labour & Childbirth workshops

These are one-off sessions for you and your birth partner. Sessions are held monthly, on Saturday afternoons at Overslade and last approximately three and half hours. Cost for both of you is £40. An opportunity to review what you have learned in pregnancy yoga classes, or to learn it afresh. It is helpful, but not essential, for you to have attended pregnancy yoga classes. Your birth partner is not expected to have any knowledge of yoga. These workshops include: recocognising that labour has started, the normal physiology of labour and birth, breathing, movement and positions for the three stages of labour, yoga to help you find your rhythm with, and welcome contractions. Positive ways to visualise the exerperience, tools for the birth partner to support the labouring woman, sacral decongestion massage, positive intervention methods, practical ways to help you both create the conducive environment you want for your birth to help you both feel confident in the approach to your labour.

PHOTOS

These photos were taken at Birthlight Teacher Training courses during 2010-2011 in London. Special thanks to our teachers: Francoise Barbira Freedman, mother, grandmother, world renowned yoga teacher, author, anthropologist and founder of Birthlight, and also to Ingrid Lewis and Kirsteen Ruffell for their inspirational teaching. I share my gratitude with my fellow Birthlight teachers. Francoise is a poineer in this field - the first in the UK to start training yoga teachers for pre, postnatal, pregnancy, aqua yoga and mother and baby yoga. Since 1995 she has trained about 1500 teachers around the world.

Hopefully these photos will give you an insight into what goes on at Birthlight classes - how much fun we have and how they contrast from general yoga classes.