Offerings at Daughter of Samoa
At Daughter of Samoa, Leonora is also dedicated to collaborating with other birthworkers and teachers, healers and educators, resource providers of all kinds to help the community of pregnant folks or new parents and their support people as well as their children to take care of themselves and their loved ones within a supportive community invested in their own growth and healing.
The community that's created at Daughter of Samoa is something to experience for yourself. Imagine a prenatal yoga class with everyone around you pregnant in varying degrees, first, second and third trimester... and during check in, each describing how they're feeling in their journey, physically, emotionally and mentally. It's a protected and supportive space for pregnant people to both be and learn about themselves while in preparation for the most pivotal experience they will ever have, the rite of passage of childbirth into parenthood. Moreover, during parental leave, after those first few healing weeks with a newborn, people need to move their bodies with somatic practices that help them to return back to their bodies after the major transition and postpartum classes offer an opportunity for that. In these classes, we sing to our babies to welcome them into the space, show them how we move our bodies and take care of ourselves as we take care of them.
These classes are for those who wish to appreciate this special and fleeting time, this present moment with themselves, with their babies and with their support people and consciously work to prepare for labor as well as parenthood.
Yoga practices. and movement in general also helps to provide a counter to the sedentary lives we live, sitting in chairs for hours on end, or in feeding a baby in restrictive and repetitive positions for much of the day and night so that the aches and pains that the body feels going through this major transition can be tended to compassionately.
If you need more convincing to join in on a prenatal yoga class, research also shows that Prenatal Yoga helps to increase the vaginal delivery rate, decrease the premature delivery rate and Yoga even takes a role in shortening the first stage and second stage of labor. Moreover, Yoga can help keep a body, the uterus and the entirety of the pelvis into the ribs as well, in balance, thus creating space for those babies in utero to thrive. Moreover, perinatal Yoga promotes relaxation and helps with stress management, improves stamina and emotional well being. It increases strength, flexibility and agility, all things we need as soon-to-be and current parents.
Whether you're attending a regular weekly or monthly class or even a monthly workshop or a course, dedicating yourself to nurturing yourself and accessing resources you feel would be helpful for you to care for yourself and your family.