Prenatal International Business Overview
Updated October 21, 2022 | 9 minute read
Prenatal International is a global organization committed to improving the lives of pregnant, birthing, and postpartum people everywhere.
Every person should have access to information and techniques that will help them have safe, healthy pregnancies. They should be given the opportunity to thrive emotionally and physically during this transformational time in their lives.
Prenatal International provides training and support globally to yoga instructors, doulas, midwives, and other health professionals in communities where maternal and infant mortality rates are high and birth outcomes are affected by a plethora of negative factors. These include lack of childbirth education, poor availability or proximity to healthcare resources, discrimination, high stress, lack of exercise, or unhealthy lifestyles. This training and support is also designed to provide career opportunities to people in these communities so that pregnant, postpartum, and birthing people receive services provided by people who share similar culture, history, and community.
Huge Racial and Income Gaps in Maternal Mortality and Maternal/Infant Wellness
Many places in the world face extremely high maternal and infant mortality rates, epidemic levels of perinatal depression, and cesarean rates well above the guidelines set by the World Health Organization. Those places include not only the poorest third world countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, but underserved communities in the United States, especially black communities.
According to the World Health Organization the U.S. ranks 55th in the world for maternal mortality, the worst among all developed countries, with a maternal mortality rate of 23.8 (deaths per 100,000 live births). The non-Hispanic white maternal mortality rate is 19.1 compared to a black maternal mortality rate of 55.3.
There are also big discrepancies among states, with California having the lowest maternal mortality rates (4.0) and Louisiana having the highest (58.1). But even in California the maternal mortality rate for black women is up to 6 times higher than for non-Hispanic white women regardless of income.
Some of the main reasons that rates are so high in the US are obesity, high blood pressure, racism, and high cesarean rates. Many of these things can be helped by implementing prenatal yoga and doula services as well as improving health care.
Research Shows Prenatal Yoga Works
Focusing on women’s mental and physical health before, during and after childbirth will have profound effects on the birthing person and on the children they are bringing into the world.
Movement, specifically prenatal yoga, doula support and mindfulness training and practice, all of which are incorporated into various Prenatal International trainings, have proven to be among the most effective ways to achieve emotional and physical health during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. The benefits of these practices, especially in communities where people have high stress and poor healthcare resources, are numerous.
Research shows that when yoga programs are introduced, particularly in developing countries, rates of mortality for both babies and mothers decline. Yoga has been proven to reduce hypertension-related complications, depression, length and pain of labor, and pregnancy-related discomforts like back pain, pelvic pain, headaches, and nausea. Simultaneously, prenatal yoga has been shown to increase comfort, improve sleep, and improve fetal outcomes.
Most articles cited benefits of prenatal yoga for pregnant and postpartum women and/or their babies. Primarily, the authors cited the following benefits, for both prenatal and postnatal stages as most likely to occur in healthy pregnant women:
- Decrease in hypertension
- Decrease in pregnancy related discomforts such as back pain, pelvic pain, headaches, and nausea
- Decrease in stress levels
- Increase in pleasure
- Decrease in complications during the delivery process
- Decrease risk of preterm labor
Many of the authors cited the following benefits as most likely to occur in high-risk pregnant women:
- Marked decrease in rates of mortality for both babies and mothers when yoga programs are introduced, particularly in third world countries
- Decrease in stress levels
- Decrease in anxiety
- Decrease cortisol and other stress hormones and increase immunity
- Decrease in the length of labor
- Decrease in the need for labor induction
- Decrease in leg and back pain
- Decrease in hypertension
- Decrease in the need for cesarean birth
- Decrease in gestational diabetes
- Decrease in intrauterine growth restrictions
There was general agreement among experts that there was “no evidence of adverse events” stemming from yoga classes, leading investigators to conclude that prenatal yoga classes were safe for people during pregnancy.
A summary of many of these studies can be found here as well as summaries of individual case studies, available in the supplemental information found here.
Prenatal International Provides Multidimensional Yoga, Doula, and Mindfulness Training
The training and support from Prenatal International is unique in that it has been developed over the last 25 years by Prenatal International founder, Jennifer More and draws on her experience not only as a yoga instructor but as a certified doula and hypnotherapist. It incorporates many of the methodologies referenced in the research as being valuable.
Through The Dolphin Method, her for-profit company, Jennifer has trained thousands of prenatal yoga teachers, doulas, midwives, and other childbirth professionals. She has conducted more than one hundred prenatal yoga, doula, and women’s wellness trainings in the United States, China, Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America. As the providers who have taken Jennifer’s training have delivered these services into their communities, the impact of these programs has been substantial, often radically improving the birth experiences of their clients. A number of these are detailed in our case studies.
Prenatal International will initially provide certified prenatal yoga training, doula training and women’s yoga workshops. Our goal is to expand these program offerings in the first three years to include childbirth education training and certification, lactation support workshops, postpartum doula training, and many other workshops and materials related to perinatal health and wellbeing.
Our aim is to integrate prenatal yoga, mindfulness techniques and doula services into communities by training local teachers to provide these services. This way the communities will have ongoing support from individuals in their own communities and be able to reach large numbers of birthing people and their families.
By offering training to people who might never be able to afford them, the impact is two-fold: First, we are providing a pathway for people who most need the services to have access to quality education, instruction and services that improve the quality of life, pregnancy and childbirth experiences for themselves and future generations. Second, we are creating career opportunities in communities that very much need these services.
Partnerships Are at The Core of the Service
Prenatal International recognizes that we cannot simply show up in a community and be successful. Our experience has shown that it takes work with local partners to make our programs effective and sustainable. And it will take ongoing follow up work to assure that a program becomes integrated into the community and that its results are tracked.
Hence, we will work with local partners and our own ambassadors to assure that we can deliver the program effectively and that follow-up takes place.
Partners will vary depending on the needs and capacities of the locations but may include community health centers, medical clinics, community organizations, and other nonprofits operating in the area. We are currently negotiating with several in the U.S. and abroad.
Partners will assist in, among other things:
- providing locations for trainings
- recruiting local health professionals for PI training
- recruiting pregnant individuals for follow-up services
- follow-up research to document the efficacy of the training
Ambassadors. It is important to Prenatal International that we have a leader/teacher who is representative of the community we are serving. While we will be training a number of professionals in each community, it is important to leave a presence in the community as a continuing resource and link between the community and Prenatal International.
Ambassadors will serve the following functions:
- Coordinate future training and ongoing programs in the area
- Assist us with outreach to other nearby communities to help determine whether it would be beneficial to conduct training there
- Provide feedback on experiences of the Prenatal International graduates
- Assist in conducting additional research
In addition to remaining in touch with Prenatal International, Ambassadors will meet periodically to share information, and contribute to the group’s continuing education. This way we will continue to learn from each other and provide a truly diverse and global training.
We are committed to learning from people in the birthing world in every region where we provide training, getting to know the existing cultures and practices and learning from each other as we share our material in a trauma-informed environment. In building these bridges we are creating a deeper understanding of one another and helping to decrease cultural separation while increasing appreciation for diversity and acceptance.
We know these programs benefit pregnant people but who else will benefit from prenatal international’s work?
Children & Families
Studies show that babies also benefit from lower cortisol and other stress hormones in the mother’s system leading to emotionally healthier children. The study of epigenetics has provided us with research based evidence that by reducing stress during pregnancy and the postpartum period we can impact the happiness of babies and improve long term health and wellbeing.
Hospitals
Hospitals are constantly focused on reducing high cesarean rates and Maternal Mortality or Infant Mortality rates, so lowering pregnancy and birth complication rates at hospitals will improve their statistics.
With this program more pregnant and birthing people will be healthier mentally and physically which can decrease the stress of nursing staff and doctors or midwives in hospital settings
Communities
The communities themselves will benefit because the teachers we train will add to the economic growth of the area. People in the communities will learn stress reduction and mindfulness techniques and be able to share them with the communities at large, increasing happiness and self efficacy.
Prenatal International’s beginnings
Prenatal International was founded by Jennifer More, who has spent more than two decades focused on prenatal and postnatal wellness.
Jennifer has trained thousands of prenatal yoga teachers, doulas, and childbirth professionals in hundreds of prenatal yoga trainings, women’s workshops and doula trainings all over the world. In her career, Jennifer has been acutely aware of the discrepancies in perinatal health care and has worked towards making a difference in the places she traveled to.
Jennifer along with her longtime business partner and husband, Jake More, wanted to make a larger impact so they started offering scholarships to BIPOC students who want to work in communities most impacted by these issues. Through this offering they trained many students in the U.S. and provided scholarships to people who were facing high maternal mortality rates and negative birth outcomes. Jennifer and Jake wanted to have an even greater impact than they could with a for-profit business, only providing services to those who could afford them as well as a handful of scholarship recipients. They decided to move into the nonprofit world where this work can make a much larger impact, globally. From this, Prenatal International was born.
Prenatal International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Tax ID: 88-3060813
Prenatal International Staff
Jennifer More
Founder, Executive Director
Jennifer More is one of the world’s leading teachers and trainers of prenatal yoga and maternal wellness. She has trained thousands of yoga teachers, midwives and other childbirth professionals all over the world and through them has helped improve maternal outcomes for hundreds of thousands of women.
In her work, Jennifer has seen the powerful effect that doing prenatal yoga can have on a woman’s body, self confidence, childbirth experience, and postpartum recovery. She uses her training and experience to help women feel strong and powerful in their birth experiences and their lives.
She has trained yoga instructors in Peru, China, Colombia, Dubai, Indonesia, Mexico, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Australia, as well as many U.S. locations in her Dolphin Method techniques. Now with her online training she has trained students in 50 countries. Women from all over the world have contacted Jennifer and credited her yoga techniques with improving the quality of their pregnancies and their birth experiences.
Jennifer is registered with the Yoga Alliance as an ERYT-500 Vinyasa and Prenatal Yoga (RPYT) instructor. She is a doula, doula trainer, certified master clinical and medical hypnotherapist, childbirth educator, and a mother.
In 2002, Jennifer opened the Dolphin Yoga and Doula Center, to help laboring women and their partners prepare for positive birth experiences by providing Pre and Postnatal Yoga, Doula and Postpartum Doula Services, Childbirth Education, Doula Training, Advanced Doula Training, and other childbirth preparation classes and events. As a hypnotherapist for the past twenty-five years, Jennifer pioneered the Dolphin Method, which uses hypnosis for gentle birthing and anxiety reduction during labor. She has prepared thousands of pregnant women for childbirth and personally provided doula support in more than 500 births and has spent over 10,000 hours with laboring women. Jennifer’s love for yoga and passion in the field of pregnancy and childbirth has propelled her to reach out to medical practitioners to help build a bridge between the medical community and doulas.
Jennifer created the bestselling prenatal yoga DVD series: “Prenatal Vinyasa Yoga.” Jennifer’s DVDs have received noteworthy mentions in The New YorkTimes, Fit Pregnancy, and Pregnancy Magazine. Jennifer is the author of the book “A Better Birth Experience: 10 Ways to Reduce Your Chance of Having a Cesarean Birth.”
Jake More
Program Director
As Chief Operating Officer for the Dolphin Method, a global and online yoga training organization, Jake oversaw the day-to-day operations to enable prenatal yoga training in the U.S., China, and several European and Latin American countries. This included contract negotiations, sales, budgeting, logistics, transportation, video production, online course creation, web-based marketing and advertising, and social media. Prior to the Dolphin Method, Jake was owner of Creativity Central, which consulted with a variety of businesses looking to bring fresh thinking into their workplaces. His clients included the Environmental Protection Agency, Nationwide Insurance, Motorola, and Fisher Price Toys among others. He has had a long career in graphic, web design, and desktop publishing and also worked as a toy designer at an award-winning Chicago R&D firm.
Richard Rossi
Secretary/ Development
Richard had a 40-year career as a journalist with Reuters and a marketing communications executive at Visa, DHL, several Silicon Valley start-ups, and as head of his own consulting firm before joining the nonprofit sector as Communications Director for Notre Dame de Namur University. At NDNU he was a key member of the Development Division working closely with the Senior Vice Presidents for Development and the President of the University. He also taught public relations and writing classes in the NDNU Business School.
Prenatal International Board
Samuel Johnson Jr.
Board Member
Mr. Johnson earned a BS in mathematics from Southern University in Louisiana and a MA in mathematics from Stanford University. He is Superintendent Emeritus of the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD). His career spans forty-five years in service to Secondary and Higher Education, and he began his career as a mathematics teacher.
His administrative career includes successful service as Director of Human Relations, Assistant Principal, Principal, Director of Personnel, and Associate Superintendent of Human Resources-Administrative Services, all in the San Mateo Union High School District, located in San Mateo, California. Before his retirement from the SMUHSD, he successfully led the passage of a $298 million bond measure to refurbish the district schools. Owing to his service to the District, the Board of Trustees voted to name the Capuchino High School Theater Complex in his honor.
He served, for nine years, as a member of the Board of Directors for the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the last two of which he was the chair. He served as the Director of Administrative Services and Instructor at Notre Dame de Namur University, located in Belmont, CA. He has chaired more than twenty-five Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation committees and served on many educational and community boards, locally and nationally. Mr. Johnson joined Provident’s Board in April 2003 and previously served on the Credit Union’s Supervisory Committee for six years.
Joanne Rossi, Ed.D
Board Member/Research
A leading expert in the teaching of Reading and Language Arts, Dr Rossi served as Dean of the School of Education & Leadership at Notre Dame de Namur University from 2005 to 2014 Sheremains a Professor of Education at NDNU, where she first joined the faculty in 1998, and previously taught at several Bay Area and Washington D.C. area universities. Dr Rossi, who has also taught at the elementary and middle school level, founded and operated the Foster City Reading and Learning Institute for 20 years. She has also been a highly sought-after consultant for numerous Bay Area school districts over the past 30 years. Among her publications is the most popular textbook used to prepare California teachers for a key certification examination.
Jacqueline Yau
Board Member
Jacqueline Yau is a donor relations officer for Stanford Medical Center Development where she provides engagement strategies and stewardship for major donors. She is the founder and principal of ZiZo Consulting, a boutique marketing, communications, and brand management firm.
Yau has worked with consumer, nonprofit and high-tech organizations such as the Center for Asian American Media, Parents’ Choice Foundation, RealNames, Siri, and Nestlé USA. For the National Association of Women Business Owners, she developed and facilitated a peer-to-peer women’s advisory group composed of women who owned businesses with over $2 million annual gross revenue. While at TiVo, pioneer of interactive program guides and digital video recording devices, she launched TiVo Rewards, a loyalty program for its ardent fans. There, she also rolled out TiVo KidZone, which helped parents choose programs for their kids and was endorsed by Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.
Yau hosted a cable access TV program for ACLU of Hawaii, reported for Hawaii Public Radio, and served as hotline counselor for The Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women. She graduated with a degree in human biology at Stanford University, is a 1997 CORO Fellow, and earned her MBA from the Anderson School of Business at UCLA.
Jana Cerny
Board Member
Jana graduated from Sarah Lawrence college having focused on modern dance and anthropology. She has been a lifelong student of movement, athletics and alternative medicine. She has opened and run multiple Pilates based studios throughout her career. During her career she has mentored teachers, worked with a highly varied client population, created a dvd for treating scoliosis, guest taught for certifying teachers on anatomy aspects, created an online movement channel. She practices/studies many styles of yoga and Pilates and finds the ways in which these two movement philosophies inform and cross pollinate each other. All that effort is put forth towards empowering individual students to deepen and engage in their practices. She has worked and served in the non profit sector for youth advocacy, drug and alcohol rehab, women’s health research for UCSF. She is the proud mother of her son, an anatomy geek and believes deeply in Jennifer’s vision of improving childbirth experience for women worldwide. She is excited to serve on this board.
Helen Marlo
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Marlo is a licensed clinical psychologist (PSY 15318), and Jungian Psychoanalyst, certified through the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She joined the faculty of Notre Dame de Namur University in 1999, is a tenured Professor of Clinical Psychology, and has served as the Department Chair since 2013. She is the Reviews Editor for Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche. She began her academic career in 1990 and has taught undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at the University of South Carolina; Palo Alto University (formerly Pacific Graduate School of Psychology), and Sofia University (formerly Institute of Transpersonal Psychology).
Dr. Marlo is the founder and co-facilitator of “Mentoring Mothers,” a complimentary, consultative community service for mothers and infants that addresses reproductive mental health needs and supports perinatal health.
Following an academic background in Psychology and Religious Studies, she earned her doctorate in Clinical-Community Psychology at The University of South Carolina, where she researched psychneuroimmunology, and integrative therapeutic approaches to psychological and physical health. She completed her predoctoral and post-doctoral training at The Palo Alto Veterans Administration Health Care System and Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. She obtained additional education and clinical training by completing a seven-year advanced analytic training program at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.
Dr. Marlo trained at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and gained experience particularly with perinatal issues including: obstetric and gynecological conditions, prepartum and postpartum emotional problems, birth trauma, infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss. As a psychologist at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, she worked with women who suffered from trauma, complex post-traumatic stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. Marlo is a married mother of three children who provide continual inspiration for her work in perinatal health. She is passionate about engaging with individuals during this vulnerable and influential time of life. She enjoys her close relationships with her husband, three children, and friends. A life-long lover of learning, she enjoys learning nearly anything, and appreciates art, culture, travel, reading, film, yoga, meditation, and dance.
Program Services
Prenatal Yoga Training
Prenatal International’s cornerstone Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training will teach yoga instructors, midwives, doulas, obstetricians, pregnant women and other childbirth professionals to utilize prenatal yoga and movement with their pregnant and postnatal students or clients. Trainees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the unique needs of their pregnant and postnatal yoga students. They will learn pregnancy anatomy and how specialized movement has been proven to positively affect the outcomes of pregnancy and childbirth for both the pregnant person and the baby. Every trainee who successfully completes this training will be awarded a certificate documenting that they have completed the strict yoga and childbirth education requirements and are eligible to teach* prenatal yoga or provide comprehensive prenatal movement guidance to their clients. This course is approved by the international yoga certification body, the Yoga Alliance, and eligible** students may apply for the Registered Prenatal Yoga Teacher (RPYT) designation after completion of this course.
* Must already be a registered yoga teacher to teach traditional prenatal yoga classes.
** Must be an active member of the Yoga Alliance with a minimum RYT200 designation.
Ongoing Prenatal International Team training
Prenatal International is dedicated to providing high quality, diverse, and well-rounded trainers and facilitators. To ensure this, we train our team and staff with ongoing monthly sessions held online or, when possible, in person. We will provide extensive training in various Prenatal International programs as well as trauma-informed training, which is required before a trainer can lead any of our programs. Each of our global ambassadors will also be sharing workshops inspired from their own area of specialty, and their specific global/cultural perspective. In this way, we can expand our collective understanding and become more aware about different cultures. Additionally, Prenatal International will contract outside experts to provide skills training to our team. We will also be instructing our team about how to collect data for ongoing Prenatal International research projects.
Online Community Resource Center
Prenatal International will work to bring all of our information, teachings, and workshops online. This material will be translated into multiple languages, and Prenatal International will work each quarter to add to this ever-growing database of knowledge. The goal of this resource center is to allow all of the Prenatal International ambassadors, staff, assistants, trainers, and operational support team, as well as the global community, to have 24/7 access to this information and continue their learning.
Digital Content Creation
Prenatal International will design, produce and implement a wide variety of digital content with the intention of educating and inspiring a larger audience of pregnant and postpartum people. Projects can include fun infographics explaining often misunderstood topics, such as how a C-section works or the importance of pelvic floor health. We will also produce informational video series, blog posts and e-newsletters. Much of this instructional material will be disseminated through our social media channels. In some cases we may choose to advertise or sponsor select posts as well as look for strategic partners to either co-produce material or share our content to reach an even wider audience. The ultimate goal is to reach as many people as possible with easy-to-digest tips and techniques to support their overall health before, during and after the birth of their children. Prenatal International will work with industry professionals to produce high-quality content that meets our stated goals.
Continuing Education Workshops (CEUs)
At Prenatal International we believe we can make a dramatic difference by offering workshops and short trainings to staff members who are pivotal in helping to create positive birth experiences for pregnant people. In this spirit, Prenatal International will hold workshops for labor and delivery nursing staff at hospitals, workers at birthing centers, and other groups or individuals working at institutions that are caring for pregnant and birthing people. These workshops will include a global look at birthing techniques, research-based comfort measures, and mindfulness methods that are easy to implement. These tools will greatly enhance the birth experience and help reduce fear for the birthing person and their family.
Doula Training
Prenatal International will provide comprehensive doula training to individuals and organizations dedicated to working in underserved communities in the U.S. and internationally. A doula provides informational, emotional and physical support before, during and after childbirth. Participants in doula training will learn business skills to successfully promote their work in their communities.
Research strongly supports the need for doulas to help decrease pregnancy and childbirth complications, decrease the need for cesarean births, decrease the need for pain medication, increase the baby’s 5 minute APGAR scores, lower the chance of premature babies, and help reduce the trauma of birth. There is also evidence that doula care is more effective when mothers and doulas are culturally similar to one another. Prenatal International’s doula training is presented in a trauma-informed environment and education is given on delivering trauma-informed doula services.
Women’s Workshop Series
Prenatal International will offer several shorter workshops designed to augment the core learning of a traditional prenatal yoga or doula training. Through much of her career, Jennifer has focused on women’s health. Prenatal International will offer workshops for all major life stages, including: Yoga and the Menstrual Cycle, Preparing for Pregnancy, and Yoga for Menopause and Beyond. By focusing on these various stages, we can have an even greater impact on the overall health and well being of all women. These workshops will be live in-person or online. They are typically half-day or full day.
Specialty Trainings
In-person and commissioned work
Jennifer More and Prenatal International are affiliated with some of the industry’s top thinkers and educators in the areas of breastfeeding support, postpartum mental health, Rebozo techniques, pelvic floor health, and fetal positioning, to name a few. Prenatal International will curate and book these specialty workshops to augment our educational mission. We will bring these workshops to areas of need, internationally as well as in the U.S.
Beyond producing specialty workshops, Prenatal International will commission these educators to create reports, worksheets, manuals, videos, and other content to add to our ever-expanding resources. The collective knowledge and skills of these additional educators will be an invaluable addition to our offerings.
Reach
The charts below map out the potential reach Prenatal International can have with our various programs. Trainees are seperated into professional discipilines, since each trainee will work with their community (clients/patients) differently, and in different numbers. Additionally, the time each trainee spends with a client will also vary, for example, nurses will have a large amount of clients that they interact with in an average year. The overall time they spend with the client will be much shorter, but they can have a big impact nonetheless – contributing greatly to the wellbeing of their client and imparting information that they learned from PI’s programs. Prenatal Yoga teachers will typically spend longer time with their clients and over a longer duration, same for doulas. While the professional relationships will be different, the community will still benefit from this education in many ways, and in many different stages of their pregnancies and beyond.
This graph shows the cumulative reach of the prenatal yoga program as well as several other programs: doula training, women’s workshops, postpartum doula training, and continuing education workshops. When calculating our reach we are conservatively estimating the impact on the pregnant and birthing women and not including the impact we will have on the babies, which would double all of these numbers. When we consider the reach of prenatal doulas we are including one additional family member, as the doula usually trains partners as well as other family members. Lastly, when we are calculating postpartum doula reach we are conservatively estimating 2 people for each client, as the newborn baby greatly benefits from the work of the doula as well. All of the figures are conservative estimations, based on experience offering the same programs. This does not include digital content or online teachings.
A global training organization
Between 2011 and 2022, Dolphin Method, Jennifer and Jake’s for-profit company, provided prenatal yoga and doula trainings, as well as a variety of workshops around the world with a cumulative reach of more than 2.25 million individuals. These countries and cities are indicated below with yellow stars, and we attracted trainees from many more locations, allowing us to learn from these different cultures and share this tremendous wealth of knowledge. Beyond these in-person trainings, Dolphin Method has produced and sold prenatal and postnatal yoga dvds totalling more than 100K units worldwide.
As we look forward, Prenatal International has plans to offer trainings in areas we were previously not able to reach because of financial and logistical reasons – see red, purple, and orange stars. With proper funding, PI can make these trainings available to everyone regardless of their financial circumstances, and thes trainees and their ambassadors will allow us to extend our reach to hundreds of thousands of people and make a positive impact on them and their children and families.
Case Studies
China
In 2011 we were asked to do a teacher training in Beijing at a studio called Fine Yoga whose owners found our DVD on Amazon. It was then the top selling prenatal yoga DVD and they loved the fact that a vinyasa style of prenatal yoga was being taught because it fit into their style of yoga teaching.
In 2011 in China, prenatal yoga existed, but just barely. There was a lot of fear and misinformation around both pregnancy and prenatal yoga. Doctors still did not promote it. For example, people were very afraid to do simple things like lifting their arms up over their head for fear of miscarriage. Yoga studios were afraid to have prenatal yoga because of liability. But there was demand! Yoga had started to really take off in China in the previous 10 years and now those same people who were practicing were getting pregnant and wanted to continue their practice.
The lectures on anatomy and pregnancy physiology were all very well received; people were transfixed. They didn’t learn any of this in regular school or from parents. One student confided that she thought babies were born out of the navel. The women were so hungry for this information, many saying they were terrified to get pregnant before our training but after, felt ready, even excited and felt empowered.
The hundreds of stories we’ve heard about childbirth all over China were beyond heartbreaking. Stories of women taken for cesareans without being told what was happening or why. Stories of women being blamed for the death of a child in labor. Stories of women being put in bed and left alone, and so much more. Cesarean rates were extremely high in some hospitals with many women being told their hips were too narrow to have a natural childbirth without proper assessment.
Each year it seemed there was a little more openness. The students would write to us about helping women understand their bodies and how powerful that was, how they were able to successfully get babies to turn from breech to head down positions and avoid cesareans. (Breech is a fetal position where the baby’s head is up and bottom or feet are down. In China it is rare to find a doctor who will allow a vaginal birth in this situation.) They would report more and more positive birth experiences. They told us how good the women felt being able to move in pregnancy and feel strong in their bodies and minds.
Demand for our courses began to blossom. We would have up to 85 people in each teacher training though the average was 55-65. In that time, we trained thousands of prenatal yoga teachers, doulas, nurses and midwives and they, in turn, trained or used what they learned in our classes to help many thousands more.
Over those 10 years, prenatal yoga started becoming more and more accepted. Doctors, seeing the positive effects, began to recommend it on a regular basis. In addition, by around 2015 more and more studies were being done documenting the benefits of prenatal yoga. More and more yoga studios were offering prenatal yoga and women were flocking to it after witnessing friends and family having such positive experiences prenatally and in their births.
One woman, Michelle, who has taken numerous trainings with us, is a midwife at a maternity hospital in Guangzhou, China. Michelle has integrated the trainings into her work at the hospital, starting prenatal yoga classes, as well as implementing many skills and techniques she learned in the trainings.
Michelle has worked with more than 20,000 women at her hospital and helped many of them have natural births, enjoy their birth experiences, and feel empowered in their births. She says she helps guide them with love, energy and knowledge she has taken from the prenatal yoga training.
She mentions one particular woman who was 38 weeks pregnant who came from very far away to get help to turn her baby from breech to head down so that she didn’t have to have a cesarean. She was able to change the baby position and the woman had a very enjoyable, successful vaginal delivery much different from her first birth experience which had been full of fear and pain.
Peru
When we first went to Lima, Peru, prenatal yoga was not very popular. There were some classes but all of them were gentle and mostly just meditation and stretching. Women still had so many questions about their bodies and how they could prepare their bodies and minds for pregnancy, birth and parenthood. The cesarean rate in many hospitals and clinics was as high as 70% or more and women experienced many complications during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery that were preventable. The maternal mortality rate in Peru is 88 deaths per 100,000 live births. That is more than four times higher than the US.
When we held our first training in Lima Peru in 2011 the maternal mortality rate was even higher, 102 deaths per 100,000 live births. We trained yoga teachers, doulas and midwives how to teach prenatal yoga. We heard stories from woman after woman about what their pregnancies and birth experiences were like. In all, we helped empower and train more than 100 yoga teachers in Lima and held a doula training there as well. As a result, there is a thriving prenatal yoga and doula presence in Lima and hundreds of women have been educated, had less painful and complicated pregnancies, less cesarean births and felt empowered instead of like victims in their bodies.
Gabriela Sologuren owner of Lima Yoga shared the following information:
- Dozens of Jennifer’s graduate teachers now teach prenatal Yoga, through limaYoga and other schools, institutions, and private classes and even in other cities in Peru.
- Several of them have created specific pages where prenatal and postnatal information has been shared.
- Many techniques we have learned have helped many women to have better births, reduce discomfort (including a student of mine who suffered from chronic migraine all her life and stopped after practicing yoga for a month) and I have helped women in a couple of cases to turn babies who were breech with Yoga postures.
Indonesia
We’ve done six trainings in Bali Indonesia. Because these trainings were not affordable for many Indonesian women, we offered scholarships for each training. The first scholarship was for Erna Sofianti. She was so moved and inspired by the training she came back and assisted us three more times. Each time she would bring more scholarship recipients, usually midwives, from Jakarta and other cities in Indonesia. She now has a thriving business; she has taught thousands of pregnant women as well as educated midwives and nurses. She has taken her teaching to talk shows, cities all over Indonesia and now also has prenatal yoga DVD’s.
Erna Sofianti shared the following information about working with Jennifer and what that allowed her to do:
- First is to make a prenatal yoga video for pregnant women, so I could reach the unreachable completely with care.
- Second, I opened the prenatal yoga class exclusively in one of the biggest maternity hospital
- Third is to share the knowledge I have with the Indonesian midwives in many cities. Those are coming after I had my classes with Jennifer.
- Fourth to spread this information to midwives in many cities in Indonesia that I offer the new and sustainable thing to learn during their career time, something that they might not get it during the college. I taught them that prenatal yoga is beneficial for their own careers.
Colombia
We did several Prenatal Yoga teacher trainings and a doula training in Bogota, Columbia. During one of these trips one of our students was an obstetrician at a hospital in Bogota. Her practice was regulated by hospital policy, and she was not permitted to let her clients do many of things we were teaching. Over the course of the training, Jennifer and she formed a very close connection. She began to slowly make changes. Things like allowing skin to skin contact for an hour after baby was born, abstaining from doing routine episiotomies (routine cutting of the perineum), letting women move around more during labor.
She has since left the hospital and opened her own clinic where she offers “a holistic approach to women’s health, treating the whole being: body, mind and spirit. Dr. Susana is deeply sensitive to the possibility of integrating women’s rights in childbirth, current scientific evidence, and medical dignity around hospital delivery care.
After exploring different paths and listening to the testimonies and needs of her own “patients”, whom she considers her teachers, she began the change in herself.”
This has motivated her to take this message, through conferences, to the general public, hospitals and universities in different cities of the country. Her center also offers yoga and movement as well as hypnotherapy.
Since I took my training in Prenatal Yoga, I began to recommend it to my patients as a fundamental tool during pregnancy and preparation for childbirth. Throughout these years I have found great benefits in my patients who practice Prenatal Yoga, both physical and emotional. The first of them is the connection they achieve with their body. They become more aware of the anatomical changes they experience during pregnancy, especially with their pelvis and perineum area, which is of great importance at the time of delivery. In addition, it is a formidable strategy to relieve some symptoms of pregnancy such as muscle spasms and joint and ligament pain. Prenatal Yoga is a wonderful tool to work the breath that is essential for labor. Additionally, I have seen how my patients have managed to reduce stress and anxiety with the practice of prenatal yoga and be calmer during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. Since Prenatal Yoga stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, it can help reduce high blood pressure. During labor, various yoga postures help the baby fit into the pelvis and adopt a suitable position for delivery, as well as being a non-pharmacological tool for pain management.
In summary, the practice of Prenatal Yoga contributes in an integral way to having a positive childbirth experience and is part of the current recommendations of the World Health Organization for this purpose.
~Dr. Susana Bueno Lindo (OB/GYN)
