I am a Director of the BRC and run a weekly Yoga for Pregnancy group and monthly Birth Preparation Workshops. Over the years my yoga practice has been highly influenced by Mary Stewart and Andrea St Clair. In recent years it has been greatly enhanced by my inspired and inspirational teacher, John Stirk. Increasingly I aim to bring a simplicity, depth and focus to my yoga practice and teaching that might contribute positively to women’s physical, emotional and spiritual experience of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. Its emphasis on gravity, breath and awakening prepare women for birth and parenthood by awakening and strengthening their instinctive, deep connections with their minds, bodies, spirits and babies. Whether birth is straightforward or not, women draw on the power of birth by being focused, and by responding to their intuitions and bodily sensations. This focus through yoga emphasises the importance of listening to ourselves and working within our limits, so that we feel safe enough to gradually expand them and develop the confidence and joy that comes from letting our minds, bodies and spirits grow together rather than apart.
I became involved in childbirth issues while I was pregnant with my first child in 1976. After the births of my next two children, I joined the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services in 1980. I have worked for the organisation in a variety of capacities but am currently the Vice Chair. I completed the Birth Teacher’s Course through the West London Birth Centre in 1982, and have run groups for pregnant women and their partners since 1985. These turned into the Birth Resource Centre, initially through my work with Andrea St Clair and then through the work of the many people who have been involved with it over the last years. I co-founded the Scottish Birth Teachers Association in 1990 with one of our BRC Directors, Lyssa Clayton and have since run three two year part-time courses for birth teachers in Scotland. I completed a PhD on women’s experiences of home births in 2002 and this has been published as a book by Routledge and is called Birthing Autonomy: Women’s Experiences of Planning Home Births. I currently lecture here and abroad, write chapters for edited book collections, write for lay and midwifery journals and am researching women’s experiences of being on Maternity Services Liaison Committees.