Welcome!
If you’ve landed here, you’re likely expecting a child and curious what ‘accessing your inner compass’ is all about. In a nutshell, it’s a virtual group about accessing your inner guidance system, balancing and supporting what matters to you in your pregnancy.
This is not your typical prenatal course. I will not be providing information about the process of labour, childbirth and parenting, give details of medical procedures or interventions, or tell you what you should be worried about in your journey. I won’t be giving medical or parenting advice, tell you what you what you should be eating or not, or tell you what supplies you may want. I won’t teach you hypnobirthing, breastfeeding, or guide your birth partner. Please consult with your ob/gyn or midwife if you’d like any of these things as there are many wonderful prenatal courses out there (I took my prenatal course over 10 years ago with Sasha Padron, doula and founder of the Centre for Growing Families and loved working with her). There are so many helpful and supportive things we can learn outside ourselves from others with expertise and experience.
And that needs to be balanced with what’s inside ourselves.
What this course is about is the expertise and wisdom within you. Culturally we haven’t generally been taught how to listen to or trust our bodies. We can often feel quite separate from our bodies and not realise that everything we experience – thoughts, feelings, sensations – are all via movements in our bodies. Our lives are collections of patterns of movement in response to what’s happening inside and outside of us. And our wise and capable bodies create many of these patterns automatically.
So how does this relate to your pregnancy?
You are entering a new journey, one with many unknowns, emotions, expectations and decisions. There are so many things happening inside and outside: your incredible body is creating a new life within as you begin making changes in your life and environment. Just as these changes happen in tandem, we are most prepared when we have both inner and outer resources. This course balances the outside support you receive by strengthening your access to your inner strength, capacity and knowing.
Your participation in this group will help you:
Clear blockages to accessing your embodied wisdom and intuition
Become a better listener to what your body is communicating to you
Get a clear sense of what your inner compass feels like
Navigate the advice and expertise you receive from others in ways that feel right for you
Gain tools to keep an inner and outer balance as you move forward in your journey
Our eight-week group will:
be an intimate and confidential group of only 10 pregnant women
be facilitated by me (Dr. Twyla Kowalenko, somatic educator and mother), where I offer my wealth of experience and expertise via my own inner compass, responsive to and honouring your needs and knowing
provide you with time to be and move with your body sensations, experiences and knowing
hold space for what you’re navigating and provide opportunities for reflection and sharing
guide you in practices to care for and nourish your body
support you with grounding and centering practices that will resource to deal with the foreseeable and unforeseeable challenges
take you through a variety of activities to access your inner compass (using your senses, your awareness, your movement, your thoughts and your creativity)
provide you with tools to cultivate your relationship to your inner knowing between sessions
have you cultivate a clear sense of your own personal compass and how to access it
meet live for 2 hours a week of time with opportunities for further sharing in a private facebook group
Each two hour live, virtual session will include:
Taking time to check in and create a container for our session and arrival
Guided embodiment/somatic exercises to foster grounding and centering
Exercises and practices to cultivate a deeper relationship to your self, intuition, inner knowing (each week will provide a different exercise, filling your practice toolbox and supporting you in discovering which practices best support you)
Creating physical touchstones for a tangible ‘toolbox.’ These touchstones will engage all of our senses. These touchstones will offer simple ways that we can continue to access our inner compass in our own journeys
Self-care practices – as you prepare to care for another life, we will ensure you are able to resource yourself now, as you prepare, and have ways of continuing to care for yourself when your baby arrives
Time for taking any notes/journaling and for group and partner sharing
Closing with practices for you to take into your week to nourish yourself and continue to tune into your inner compass (including resources, such as recorded practices)
The group will gather over zoom.
Tuesdays 4-6pm EST
8 weekly sessions (March 8, 15, 22, 29, April 5, 12, 19, 26, 2022)
Only 10 spaces available
Interested but unsure? To get a sense of me and what we’ll cover, check out the video I made below.
If you still have questions or uncertainties, please get in touch with me via email: twyla@somaing.ca
If you would like to cultivate these skills with me but are not interested in a group setting, I also offer one-on-one coaching. You can book a free consultation to see if this is a better fit for you.
And whether we work together or not, I wish you so much connection, balance and beauty in your journey.
Much heartfelt love,
Twyla