Hi! Thanks for joining me here. I'm a midwife and a movement practitioner and I've been exploring links between pregnancy, creativity, and movement since my midwifery journey began 10 years ago. 

My interest is in bridging knowledge and experiences of our ever changing bodies by offering gentle movement exploration, vocalisation, rhythm and sound making, with a grounding in the physiology and anatomy of pregnancy, labour and birth.

After studying French and Arabic at Cambridge, a course which exposed me to texts and films about language and the body and pain, I started training as a midwife at King's College London. At the same time, I began training in contemporary dance and contact improvisation, and started a research project looking into bodies of healthcare workers in the NHS. I presented some of this research at the Talking Bodies Conference in Chester in 2013. I also began to develop a core interest of thinking about the ways in which we use language to call upon the body, and how this occurred in both my midwifery and dance practices. This also lead me to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Practices at Trinity Laban (with a Leverhulme scholarship) to explore sound and movement as it relates to my real life NHS midwifery practice, culminating in my dissertation question: What is and is not possible to do as a midwife in the NHS?

I am excited to explore and expand my practice of midwifery through offering spaces for pregnant people to move, make sounds, and create and share.

I've worked in all areas of midwifery care in the NHS including a homebirth team in South East London, and am currently training to become a certified lactation consultant (IBCLC).

What

I am offering Creative Movement for Birth sessions for pregnant people at any stage of their pregnancy, depending on what is comfortable for them.

Creative movement means movement that feels good for you and presents an opportunity to find your own rhythms. There will be guided movement and stretches that you may be familiar with from yoga and other movement practices, and we will often be moving with an awareness of the pelvis, the feet, and the spine, while also thinking of the whole body in space. Some sessions will bring more attention to breathing and vocalisation - both wonderful ways to deepen and drop into an inner awareness and to let go of day-to-day concerns. While other sessions may invite more freedom to choose movements within a context and framework, with the hope of loosening inhibitions, and to practice movements that may eventually come to feel more intuitive at the time of labour and birth. 

All sessions last an hour and 45 minutes and involve gentle movement with an underpinning in the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy, labour and birth. There will be time for guided relaxation, tea and a snack, and some writing, drawing, doodling (with a creative prompt) as well as a sharing circle. 

Guided movement and prompts draw from yoga, embodied anatomy, contact improvisation, Topf technique, yoga, Butoh and Deep Listening.