There are only a few Prenatal and Postnatal massage certifications available in the United States. What makes MotherTouch™ unique amongst them?
MotherTouch™ offers not only a 32-hour Prenatal program focused on advanced techniques to support the growing mother ,but also a 65-hour Maternity Massage certification that includes prenatal bodywork, as well as bodywork trainings for birth and postnatal care. This program is one of the most advanced and comprehensive available in pre and perinatal bodywork.
An important difference with MotherTouch™ is Leslie Stager’s educational and work background. She’s been immersed in the birth-world since 1984, initially as a labor and delivery nurse, doula, childbirth educator, and midwifery clinic nurse, and later as a perinatal massage therapist and educator. She has attended over 500 hospital and home births. Being a birth professional, as well as a touch-professional, she offers courses for doulas, midwives, childbirth educators, and pregnant couples in addition to my courses for massage therapists.
Leslie has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, with a focus on women’s health and menstrual rites of passage. She has worked in and explored traditional birthing practices in Uganda, Asia, and with Alaskan Yup’ik women, and integrates traditional
birth awareness and wisdom into all courses, including what she calls the Postpartum Rites of Renewal. Since the 1980’s Leslie has guided women on wilderness rites of passage, exploring the pathways of being human through ceremonial processes and counsel. She has sat in many “council of elders” listening to the stories of those who have made the strong and potent journey of self-transformation. Pregnancy and birth is one of the most powerful rites of passage that occur naturally; the MotherTouch™ programs initiate from the awareness and consideration of birth as a rite of passage, and we, as perinatal bodyworkers an integral participant on that journey.
All of this is woven into the fabric of the MotherTouch™ courses. In sacred time we develop a caring circle to learn about fostering safe womb space with bodywork to support women and families. Classes are intimate and considerate, and personal experiences of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood may become sensitive learning opportunities that help us deepen in our relationship to this work. MotherTouch™ is focused on basic principles of encouraging unity, length and space in the gravitationally stressed pregnant body. MotherTouch™ is about connecting with ancestral wisdom, and with baby’s energy. MotherTouch™ supports a family unit during pregnancy, not just the mother.
MotherTouch™ courses emphasize safety, protocols, precautions, while debunking common fear-based myths. We practice bodymechanics that utilize the table and mother’s body in ways that may go against the grain of what’s typically taught.
As an integrative pelvic bodywork and Holistic Pelvic Care™ practitioner, Leslie address topics of pelvic rebalancing, pelvic floor release, and pelvic mobility. We practice bodywork for labor preparation, offering sessions to women ready to begin labor. At times we have had women come to the class and begin early labor contractions while we supported them with our touch.
MotherTouch™ classes are fun, unique, and built around the experience and wisdom of our class participants. In the end of this inspirational series of classes, students tend to feel exuberant and confident to meet the needs of this vital clientele base, and leave with a basket of new techniques that they can apply to All their clients, not just pregnant women~!
