Birthlight: Yoga for Breast Health
Regulated by the endocrine system, breasts respond to hormonal changes through women’s lives from teens to post-menopause years. Breasts matter about how women feel about themselves .
Breast health is ignored in most yoga teacher training courses. Yoga teachers and therapists interested in promoting women’s health with yoga will gain new insights about how to adapt practices to suit women’s breasts, rather than women having to endure discomfort.
This Birthlight Well Woman Yoga module/CPD offers relevant knowledge from Ayurveda and Yoga, and a wealth of practical resources that women can use at different stages of their lifecycle whether they wish to take care of their breasts in a preventive perspective or to maintain their health and wellbeing after undergoing breast cancer treatment.
Course Overview
Participants will gain awareness of:
- Breast anatomy and the key ‘muscles of yoga’ that can be activated in supporting breasts. What happens when breasts change
- Anatomy and Physiology of breasts in Ayurveda
- Why and how spinal alignment and correct breathing matter
- The relation between breasts, heart, and the lymphatic system. Breasts and shakti are related
- How to accommodate yoga asanas to breasts rather than breasts to asanas
Practices taught will include:
- Two Self massage of breasts sequences (one short, one longer), with instructions about using oils suitable for the breast tissue
- Self-care for lymphatic drainage (with and without axillary nodes)
- Yoga-based practices and Asana variations to promote breast health
- Yoga sequences to ease sore breasts during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and lactation period
- Breast-based self-nurture with yoga for all women, using mudras and visualisation
- Gentle but effective stimulation of marma points to promote breast health
Participants acquire knowledge of:
- How to practically help women celebrate their breasts as they are and find harmony with their breasts through their life trajectories and choices (augmentation, reduction, implants)
- How to use yoga for breast health to develop a more integrated awareness of self care
- Yoga practices to help women reclaim their breasts after breastfeeding
- Yoga practices to help women reclaim breasts or breast space-after surgery, with or without breast reconstruction
Course Structure
12 contact hours live on Zoom:
Friday 1st Dec (6.30pm-8pm UK time),
Saturday 2nd Dec (9.30am- 4.30pm),
Sunday 3rd Dec 2023 (9.30am-1pm)
Breakout rooms and Q&A sessions will facilitate learning and lively interaction. Accompanying the live zoom sessions, our online learning platform illustrates the course with visual materials, online study and includes a pre-course component sent to participants ahead of the course.
Who is this course for?
This short course is open to Yoga teachers, Yoga Therapists and other professionals working with women’s health and well-being. If you have already done Well Woman Yoga courses, you may want to update your skills and learning and use this as a CPD. You may also join the course for your own interest to learn about yoga for breast health.
Certification
On completion of this course you will receive a Yogacampus certificate of attendance as evidence of CPD hours. For Birthlight teaching members the course also provides 12 hours of Birthlight CPD.
If you would like more than a Certificate of Attendance you can complete the coursework to gain a Birthlight Certificate in Yoga for Breast Health.
Coursework consists of a worksheet (10 questions) and two documented case-studies (either one group and one individual, or two individual case studies, face to face or online). Coursework can be completed within six months and will be carefully assessed with personalised feedback. This Short Course also counts as an Elective module of the Birthlight Well Woman Yoga Diploma.
For more information on the Birthlight Well Woman Yoga Diploma please contact Birthlight.
Meet the Teacher: Francoise Freedman
Dr Françoise Freedman is the Founder and Director of Birthlight. She is a pioneer, Senior Yoga Teacher, acclaimed writer and lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Françoise interlaces her academic research at Cambridge with Birthlight’s mission. She combines her expertise as a senior yoga teacher, swimmer and birth attendant with new ideas to open up fresh thinking and develop innovative Birthlight yoga practices.
During her post-doctoral fieldwork as an anthropologist in Peruvian Amazonia, Françoise was deeply inspired by her initiation from a shaman midwife. The experience of living with rainforest people for her first two pregnancies was life-changing and led to the formation of Birthlight in 1984.
Dr Françoise Freedman is recognized as the “Grandmother of Water Babies” around the world for her groundbreaking ideas and developments in baby swimming and baby yoga. She is an accomplished writer and has published ten books internationally: Aqua Yoga for Pregnancy (1998), Baby Yoga (2000), Postnatal Yoga: Strengthening Body And Spirit After Birth (2000), Water Babies: Teach Your Baby The Joys of Water – From Newborn Floating to Toddler Swimming (2001), Yoga for Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond (2004), Yoga for New Mothers (2005), Yoga & Pilates for Everyone (2005), How to Teach Your Baby To Swim (2010), Yoga for Mother and Baby (2010) and Step-By-Step Yoga For Conception, Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond (2013).
Françoise’s vision to inspire a holistic approach to pregnancy, birth and parenting that connects the best clinical practice with indigenous wisdom remains her priority. She is a mother of four and a grandmother and considers caring for her family her finest achievement of all.
Liese Van Dam
Liese originally trained as a hatha yoga teacher in India. Her journey with yoga started at a time when life didn’t give her a lot of satisfaction and she was looking for a way to bring spirituality into her life. Once discovered, she intensely practiced and taught all aspects of yoga – including pranayama, philosophy and chanting – for several years in various countries across the globe before settling back in her home country – The Netherlands.
By this time, she had experienced that yoga & ayurveda are two sides of the same coin and that practicing both alongside each other has a deep and powerful effect. In 2006 she officially commenced studying ayurveda and graduated in 2010 from the Academy of Ayurvedic Studies in Amsterdam, (now Delight Academy). At the same time she had met Françoise and trained as a Birthlight teacher for Perinatal, Postnatal, Baby Yoga and Well Woman Yoga.
With a passion for yoga, nutrition and women’s health; Liese teaches these subjects from an Ayurvedic viewpoint at Birthlight, Delight Academy, The Yoga Therapy Institute and various yoga teacher training courses. At Birthlight Liese co-teaches on several courses by adding the ayurvedic point of view on the course subject with the aim to further deepen the understanding of the Birthlight approach and practices.
Apart from teaching Liese works as an Ayurvedic Practitioner and has a clinic in Ede where she gives consultations and 1-to-1 yoga-sessions.
Liese’s motto is Ancient wisdom made practical for you!
