This week on Yoga|Birth|Babies we’re taking a break from our expert lead interviews and focusing on a birth story from the community.
Eliana Balk reached out to me to share her story and ideas about how to talk about birth trauma from the birthing person’s perspective. Most conversations around birth trauma are from leaders and experts on the topic, but the voice of the new parent who has been through the experience is seldom heard.
Eliana bravely talks about two very different and traumatic births and how she processed and resolved them. She also shares about the importance of education, support and advocating for herself and what she hopes new and expectant parents can learn from her story.
In this episode:
- Learn a bit about Eliana.
- Eliana’s story and the perspective of birth trauma from the new parent.
- Looking back on her birth.
- The importance of education, support, and advocating for yourself.
- Processing and resolving her birth trauma.
- Preparing for a second birth after a challenging first birth.
- In hopes of a VBAC
- Eliana’s second birth and how she feels about it several months later.
- What Eliana hopes other new and expectant parents can learn from her story.
About Eliana:
Eliana Balk Moore, RYT, is a yoga teacher specializing in yoga for cancer, chronic pain, and prenatal and postpartum yoga. She first discovered yoga as a phys ed requirement in college, then as a favorite hobby in NYC, before eventually studying for certification with Allaine Stricklen of Miami, Florida, founder of Gentle Therapeutics Yoga. Following this, she studied with Tari Prinster, founder of the nonprofit y4c, or yoga for cancer, a vinyasa-informed yoga style that is modified for optimum benefit and safety for individuals with cancer, and received her prenatal certification from the Momma Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training in Cooper City, led by senior prenatal teachers Ifat Kent and RoseAnn Rajni. She has served as the yoga teacher for the Integrative Medicine Department at Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida for the past three and a half years, in addition to maintaining a practice of private clients. She has led workshops and corporate yoga sessions for the Society of Integrative Oncology, Mariott International, Marsh and Mclennan, Limmud Miami, and Isabella Freedman Retreat Center.
Eliana is a firm proponent of the “yoga for all” movement, which aims to make yoga accessible to people of every shape, color, size and creed. She lives in Hollywood, Florida with her husband Spencer, and two children, Maya and Roey.
Additional Resources:
ICAN- International Cesarean Awareness Network
Postpartum Support International
YBB podcast, Transformed By Birth with Britta Bushnell
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Youtube: Prenatal Yoga Center
