How does one transition from art and design, to teaching Ashtanga yoga in corporate London to becoming a pre and post natal Yoga teacher and teacher trainer? How did the prenatal and postnatal Yoga training give someone the tools to have a homebirth after 43 weeks, and navigate the challenges of postpartum?

Listen to this week’s conversation with Kirsteen Ruffell, my postnatal yoga teacher and one of Birthlight’s senior teachers and is coming to Spain to lead a Perinatal and Postnatal Yoga Teacher Training this November.

Kirsteen Ruffell is the Co-ordinator for Birthlight’s land-based training courses and an experienced Perinatal and Baby Yoga Tutors. She is a registered Senior Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance Professionals, has been teaching yoga since 1998 and began tutoring in 2008. Kirsteen is passionate about nurturing students’ professional development on every training course and enhancing their ability to use new understanding creatively to best serve the students in their own classes.

Kirsteen is continually inspired by teaching Birthlight’s gentle and enjoyable yoga practices that work profoundly across languages and cultures to support women and babies around the world. She regularly leads Birthlight training courses in London, the Netherlands, China, Russia, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, and for the first time ever, Spain this November 2022.

Kirsteen openly and with humour shares her experiences about:

• The Yoga scene in London in the 90s and some of the challenges of teaching yoga to a multicultural and diverse groups of people.
• How a combination of accident and good luck led her to discover Yoga and then became a yoga teacher.
• Organically moving from a career in art and design to pre and postnatal yoga
• Why the Birthlight approach is unique when it comes to Prenatal yoga
• How the Birthlight training served as therapy and preparation for her own pregnancy and delivery.
• Her challenging first and second trimester, a loss, and the mixed emotions during pregnancy
• The challenges, setbacks and support she had from the national health care system and how she managed to have her ideal water birth at home at over 43 weeks.
• Her daughter’s birth story, the birth positions and breaths that worked for her, and explains how her attention went inwards and had a complete withdrawal of the senses
• Why she ended up going to the postnatal ward in hospital after the delivery. Her personal experiences during her postnatal period, physical and emotional challenges
• Why the postnatal period is key and often overlooked and how prenatal yoga can help with this
• How and why Yoga practices, and the Birthlight approach, supported her throughout the pregnancy and then the postnatal practices.
• What drives her to keep teaching postnatal yoga to women all over the world

Kirsteen is coming to Spain to lead a Perinatal and Postnatal Yoga Teacher Training in November 2022. Check out this wonderful opportunity to study with her in Valencia.  Sign up here to keep up to date on these trainings.