Facilitators

Independent Practitioners

Co-ordinator

Admin Assistants

Directors

Nadine Edwards

Classes:-

• Yoga for Pregnancy
• Birth Preparation Workshop

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 and am currently its Vice Chair. I completed a 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 run some of the weekly Yoga for Pregnancy groups and one or two of the Birth Preparation Workshops. In the yoga groups, increasingly I aim to bring a simplicity, depth and focus that might contribute positively to women’s physical, emotional and spiritual experience of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. Whether birth is straightforward or not, women can draw on a sense of inner calm and stillness, responding to their intuitions and bodily sensations.

I completed a PhD on women’s experiences of home births in 2002 now published as a book – Birthing Autonomy: Women’s Experiences of Planning Home Births.

I currently lecture, 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.
Links:-

• Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services
• Birthing Autonomy: Women’s Experiences of Planning Home Births
• Sheffield Hallam University

Jackie Macdonald

Information coming soon

Tammy McLellan

Classes – Baby Massage

Child Massage

I trained in Therapeutic Massage in 1989 and when I had my first child a couple of years later, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to give her a massage.

Around the same time I was working with a teenage mum who expressed interest in what I was doing and so I taught her the strokes I was using.  Both she & her baby gained much from this experience and in discussion with other Mums, I realised many parents did not have the confidence or knowledge to massage their babies.

After reading all the relevant research and experimenting on my daughter, I set up classes for parents in Edinburgh.  A few years later, I also began teaching midwives , health visitors and nursery nurses how to teach baby massage to parents. I continue to do both of these; teaching parents with their babies in Edinburgh and travelling around Scotland teaching professionals to teach parents.

I have now been teaching baby massage for 17 years and I still marvel at how relatively simple strokes learnt over 5 weeks can produce such wondrous results…  improved sleep, better bowel movements, relief from colic & constipation and most importantly of all, a lovely relaxing time between parent & child – where a parent can simply enjoy being with their child.

Member of the Society of Holistic Practioners

Principal of the Scottish School of Child & Baby Massage

Jenny Newland

I am a mother with 2 children and am also a qualified midwife, with experience of both the NHS and independent practice.

Initially, I studied psychology at university and then became interested in birth issues following the birth of my first child 21 years ago, which lead me to train to be a midwife.

As a midwife it was always of vital importance to me that women’s concerns were heard and taken seriously, that their wishes were respected and carried out wherever possible.  It was within the context of midwifery, that I discovered the ways in which a trusting and a respectful relationship can transform a woman’s experience of pregnancy, labour and birth, forming a powerful contribution towards optimum well being of the birthing mother and new baby.

Following other life experiences and the birth of my second child some years later, I found my interests moving more towards the emotional and psychological aspects of pregnancy, birth and families and in this way, found myself coming around in what felt like a full circle, to train in counselling and psychotherapy.  This seemed to be a way of drawing all of my previous experiences and skills together in a new and exciting way.

I was drawn to Personal Construct Psychotherapy (PCP) as as a theoretical approach, as it seemed to offer clients the same kind of respect for their choices, expertise and knowledge that was already so important to me.

For me, there are no assumptions that the same thing that has helped one person will necessarily help another – it  may and it may not.  With each person, I start from scratch by listening attentively and accepting without judgement or criticism in order to gain a deep understanding of the person,  their experiences and the ways in which they construe and understand their world.  This means that therapy is truly personal.  It is creative, exciting and demanding, keeping the individual who is seeking help at the centre of everything.

I also work at Counselling Conversations (Edinburgh) and Health In Mind and co-run ‘Communicating With Our Children and Ourselves’ workshops for parents with Lyssa Clayton at the Healthy Life Centre.

Lee Seekings-Norman

Classes:-

• Yoga for Pregnancy
• Birth Preparation Workshop

Andrea St.Clair

Classes:-

• Parent and Baby Yoga

I first came to Yoga in my late teens, more than twenty five years ago now! My work with parents with their babies began when I was introduced to childbirth educator Nadine Edwards in 1995. I was already teaching Alexander Technique and had just started my training as a Yoga teacher (with the Scottish Yoga Teachers Association). We started working together and sharing ideas which opened up for me the whole world of pregnancy, birth and parenting from Nadine’s positive, respecting, and nurturing perspective. Our work together developed into what is now the Birth Resource Centre. One of the areas Nadine and I worked on was running postnatal Yoga classes. We came up with a range of Yoga practices which could be adapted for use in a mother’s daily life with her baby. The idea was to help mothers to look after themselves and have fun with their babies at the same time. Later on, after the birth of my son, I took the Birthlight Diploma in Baby Yoga and Massage. Although this was also very much about the parent and baby together, the focus was more on the baby which complemented what I had been doing before. I felt this made my classes more varied and also more balanced in being equally for parents and babies. I now call my classes Parent and Baby Yoga as although it is almost always mothers who come with their babies, I feel it is important that fathers feel welcome and included, especially if they are the main carer for some of the time. And several fathers have come to the class, if only on an occasional basis so far, and seem to have enjoyed it! I have always been comfortable around babies: I was fortunate to grow up with a baby always around, being older than my four siblings and all my cousins. I love seeing the babies and parents having such fun in the classes. I feel that our culture as a whole does not provide an adequate support structure for many families and I enjoy contributing in the way I can to help parents to help themselves through Yoga and/or Alexander Technique and through the Birth Resource Centre as a whole. As well as my Parent & Baby Yoga classes, I also teach Yoga generally to anyone who’s interested, usually one to one or in small groups of three. I taught Yoga on the last Scottish Birth Teachers Association course and I continue to be a part of the SBTA.

Over the years I have developed my own style of Hatha Yoga based on my experience with the Alexander Technique, a style which continues to evolve in a way I find fascinating and refreshing. I continue to teach Alexander Technique and with this too I have a particular interest in working with women during pregnancy, in preparation for birth and in the postnatal period. I live in Edinburgh with my husband Rob, who is also an Alexander Technique teacher, and our son Julien, now almost 4 years old.

Links:-

• Scottish Yoga Teachers Association
• Birthlight Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique
• Alexander Technique International

Daisy Dinwoodie

Daisy Dinwoodie is many things. First and foremost she is a mother of two fantastic little ones, Labhan and Zain, who are teaching her most of what she needs to know in life; about birth, surrender, passion, fun, nutrition, love, play and slowing down. She is passionate about women’s rights of passage into motherhood and believes wholeheartedly in women’s bodies, intuitions and power. She works as a part time support-for-learning teacher in a secondary school and as a doula with women in Edinburgh, West Lothian and Fife. She is one of the facilitators at the PPC’s monthly Homebirth Support Group and has just completed a two-year course with the Scottish Birth Teachers’ Association (at the PPC). She loves and lives by the quote “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage”, by Anais Nin.

Karen Haggis

Information coming soon.