Professional Doula Training Course

"Birth As A Journey"

Compassionate Support for Transformative Birth Experiences

An inner calling

If you feel a deep inner calling to assist women on their transformative journey to motherhood, then I invite you to join me in investing in yourself. This boutique doula course is designed to cultivate new understandings within your body and soul while equipping you with practical knowledge and skills to become an exceptional and compassionate doula.

The philosophy of” Birth as a Journey” compels us to seek out strategies for navigating the unknown. While knowledge and research can provide a measure of reassurance for facing the unknowns of childbirth, they cannot predict the unique path of each mother’s personal birth journey. This leaves us with the question: how can we prepare ourselves and the mothers for the enigmatic and unpredictable nature of childbirth?

Birth as a journey

Birth in our modern culture is often described as a medical event, one that can ideally be managed or controlled. “Birth as a Journey” sees birth as a rite of passage. Pregnancy, birth and becoming parents are all part of a very deep transformation – often the most profound one people have in their lives. This is a time of self-discovery and personal growth; as the physical, mental and spiritual worlds all meet with great intensity and surprise.

In this unique course you will first experience and embody for yourself the tools, ideas and processes that can prepare parents in a very deep, meaningful and practical way. Only then can you become a mentor; one that can offer the kind of support that mothers and fathers really need as they face the unknown and embark on their mysterious journey of birth.

What you will learn:

To see birth not as a medical event, but as a rite of passage, where body, spirit and soul all merge into one transformative experience.

Everything you need to understand as a doula about the physiology and anatomy of birth. We will learn about all the different ways to give birth: natural birth, birth with an epidural, birth with medical interventions, home births, hospital birth and Cesarean births and more.

Understand the connection between touch, movement and support techniques through a variety of body modalities
Learn the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy and birth
Experience through practices like yoga, Qigong, and bellydance support a woman’s body and prepare for birth
Learn exercises to teach and prepare your clients for childbirth
Embody intuitive touch
The art of being fully present

Developing listening and empathy skills
Learn how to address concerns and fears before and during childbirth
Supporting the cooperation between partners and navigating expectations
Helping parents create an effective dialogue with the medical team
Supporting fathers in the delivery room and understand their unique needs and experiences

Archetypes as a map for self-discovery
The Hero’s Journey
Storytelling as a teaching tool
The Labyrinth
Art as a tool for tapping into the subconscious

Mindfulness
Massage
Movement
Relaxation
Breath
Guided Imagination

Workshops of alternative therapies used in the world of birth: Reflexology, Paula method, Spinning Babies, Rebozo
Guest lectures with doctors, midwives, pelvic floor physiotherapist, lactation consultant, working doulas and marketing experts

What are the steps you personally need to take to start on your path to becoming a doula
Create your own childbirth preparation course, so that you can prepare parents for birth as well as be their doula.
Receive guided support as you embark on your journey and start going to births during the last months of the course

Rahel Kima

I am an experienced doula of 25 years. I am a co-creator of “Parparim B’beten” Prenatal Center in Jerusalem where have been mentoring parents with childbirth education and prenatal yoga for over 20 years. I have been teaching this doula training “Birth as a Journey” (Leida k’masa) in Hebrew for the past 6 years. Now for the first time I am offering the training in English. The course will be from November – June, once a week, and will take place in Parparim B’beten in Jerusalem.

If you are curious to take the very first step on this journey of a lifetime, contact me to set up an initial interview to see if this is the doula course for you.

On my own professional journey, agendas were dropped. If birth is free to do what birth must do, then perhaps so is the woman who is experiencing it. We can not control it, but we can learn so much about ourselves. If we can soften the judgment and then add a little self-compassion, acceptance and trust, then like the ripple effect it can influence our mothering, our children, our world. It may start with birth, but it goes on for a lifetime.

As a social worker, I have had the opportunity to support many women, children and families. With 15 years of experience in the field and two degrees behind me, I have many skills and tools. In this doula course, in this one year, I was given such significant tools it was like doing another degree ( if not more). The teaching was from a place of love and deep knowledge, giving a true understanding of what empathy is, and how it can make such an enormous impact on our relationships and experiences. I further developed the art of support, but more than that I feel that I was given a gift for myself as a person, as a woman.

Elona

What is Birth as a Journey for me? It is a deep and precious wisdom of the womb that took me on a journey into myself. To find out who I am and how I show up when accompanying a mother, without all my prejudices and beliefs about birth in particular and life in general. To just be there for the mother. To support the couple in complete humility, and to be for her what she needs. To offer a deep presence full of heart, without any sophistication - just heart. It was a journey that taught me about myself, about connecting heaven and earth within myself. A journey that reminded me that I don't always know and it is possible and even desirable to say “who knows”. A journey that is an embodied experience on all the levels, not just talks and explanations but actually living the processes, understanding them with the feet, feeling them with the hands. A journey that taught me how to help the mother find her own tools that will be right for her during her own journey of birth. All this in a feminine, homey and intimate atmosphere full of tenderness. A journey that I chose to embark on from Tel Aviv while pregnant and after giving birth, to travel an hour and half each way and eagerly suckle this sweet Torah of birth as a journey.

Noam Miriam

I started the year searching. I was looking for an apartment, for a job, for a partner…I had one permanent anchor in my schedule - the Birth as a Journey doula training. I didn’t know what a significant anchor it would be for me throughout the year. From the first meeting the dam of tears opened wide. I felt I had reached a place of love, with many kinds of hearts and eyes, each with a different story and from a different place - and the space created by Rahel and Danit (who are like no others) allowed for every emotion to arise freely. I found a balanced space where you are not afraid to look the truth in the eyes, without inflating or reducing it, giving it the place it deserves with a hand on the back and a loving heart. I learned many tools that helped me be attentive to myself and to my environment. I found myself telling friends, from all different circles, about the archetypes: the judge and the victim. About the interpretation we give to our experiences and about the hope that it can change - with the help of another empathetic heart. Thank you for the privilege of joining this doula community, this special circle of women. I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to go through a journey, for birth and for life in general, with courage and a lot of compassion.

Adi

Ever since Rahel took me on my first journey to the land of birth I dreamt of walking the labyrinth. Preparing us during the pregnancy and being present at both births, Rahel inspired me to learn all that I could about walking the walks of life. She was a witness to my inner journeys during the 5 years that passed between my second birth and the beginning of “Birth as a Journey” doula course. As Pam England, the Big Mama of Birth as a Journey says: it's not only about birth, it's about life. And in a way, that is what this course gave me. A breath of fresh air and a set of new eyes in which I can perceive life in this world. This course taught me not only the skills of a doula - but the skills of a human being. This course gave me the tools to practice presence and staying in the here and now. I thought that walking a real, big sized, physical labyrinth would be the most fulfilling part of the course. But after doing that, I understood that detecting the paths of the labyrinth (Laboryinth) - in the hardship and joy of my day- to- day life, not only as a doula but as a woman, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a partner and mentor, that is the most precious gift of all. Thank you Rahel for being my doula during this life.

Debi