Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training & Pregnancy Yoga Studies
With Keishana Coursey, Amy Massey, Haidee Stairmand and Karla Brodie New dates coming soonPregnancy Yoga Teacher Training & Pregnancy Yoga Studies
With Keishana Coursey, Amy Massey, Haidee Stairmand and Karla Brodie New dates coming soonContemporary Yoga Teacher Training and Opti-mum present Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training and Pregnancy Yoga Studies with Keishana Coursey, Amy Massey, Haidee Stairmand and Karla Brodie.
For Yoga teachers, health professionals and therapists passionate about women’s health, this programme provides information and tools to help you create yoga classes for pre- and post-natal women and to integrate movement, breath and stress reduction into your classes and clinical practice.
This is the third offering of the hugely successful pregnancy yoga teacher training which first ran in 2019.
The two pathways are:
Contemporary Yoga and Opti-mum Certification
Pregnancy Yoga Studies
1. Contemporary Yoga and Opti-mum Certification:
Upon successful completion of all modules you will be eligible for a certificate of completion from Contemporary Yoga and Opti-mum.
If you opt for this pathway you will register for all modules:
- Module 1: Pregnancy Yoga Essentials (you have two study options – see further below)
- Module 2a: Ayurveda For Women’s Health (Flexible delivery mode): and
- Module 2b: Optimal Baby Positioning (Flexible delivery mode)
- Module 3: Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training
2. Pregnancy Yoga Studies:
If you opt for this pathway you may register for one or more modules. Certificates of completion are not available in this pathway. However, if requested, we are happy to provide email confirmation of module attendance.
Have a question? Email us at: info@yogateachertraining.nz
This Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training is a collaboration with Opti-Mum, a pregnancy and parenting educational programme in New Zealand: opti-mum.co.nz




Course Investment
Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training Pathway
(All modules/Certification option)
Early Bird: $1915
Pregnancy Yoga Studies
(Price per module)
Module 1: Essentials: $430
Module 2a: Ayurvedic Women’s Health: $180
Module 2b: Optimal Baby Positioning: $105
Module 3: Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training: $1270
Module Overviews
Module 1: Pregnancy Yoga Essentials
(Please note: This module is a pre-requisite for Module 3: Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training).
If you’re a Yoga teacher who feels anxious when someone says they’re pregnant and you wonder what you should be saying, how to adjust your class, or how to create a class suitable for pregnancy - then this extended weekend workshop is for you.
Total Module Hours: 18
Module 2: Pregnancy Yoga Flexible Learning
There are two parts to this module:
1. Ayurvedic Women’s Health
Ayurvedic principles add another layer of awareness and alchemy between modern science and time-honoured wisdom. Deepen your understanding of preconception, pregnancy and postpartum with insights from Ayurveda’s nourishing traditions of care.
Further information on the Ayurveda module here >>
The Ayurvedic part of the training is taught by Amy Massey, PGDipHSc. BHSc. Dip Ayurveda. Dip Yoga.
Recorded sessions
Total Hours: 10
2. Optimal Baby Positioning
This online workshop will provide you with an understanding of the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy and birth, and what gets in the way. You’ll learn how to support pregnant women in your classes - to suggest adjustments and to modify existing practice.
If you are embarking on the Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training Certification, this component is critical to your learning.
Total Hours: 8 (includes 5 ½ hours personal study, reading, reflection and review)
Module 3: Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training
(Please note: Students enrolled in this module must have completed Pregnancy Yoga Essentials (Module 1).
For Yoga teachers passionate about women’s health this training provides the necessary components to create your fertility, pregnancy and postnatal yoga classes. For women’s health professionals and therapists, this training provides the information and tools you need to integrate movement and breath, therefore stress reduction, into your clinical practice.
You will receive a comprehensive awareness of the physical, mental and emotional considerations attributed to the continuum of a pre-and-post pregnant Self. Explore Yoga’s potentiality to address primary health outcomes of fetal and maternal wellness and go beyond anatomy and asana into the transition from maiden to mother.
Total Hours: 75
Julie Edlin, previous participant ...
The Pregnancy Teacher Training provided me with all the tools necessary to safely and effectively guide women through a Yoga practice during their childbirth journey.
The incredible wisdom and knowledge shared by the facilitators, allowed me to step competently into teaching Pregnancy Yoga with confidence soon after completion of the training.
As an extra bonus I have also been able to weave the learning I absorbed during the teacher training into my role as a midwife.
Julie Edlin, previous participant ...
The Pregnancy Teacher Training provided me with all the tools necessary to safely and effectively guide women through a Yoga practice during their childbirth journey.
The incredible wisdom and knowledge shared by the facilitators, allowed me to step competently into teaching Pregnancy Yoga with confidence soon after completion of the training.
As an extra bonus I have also been able to weave the learning I absorbed during the teacher training into my role as a midwife.
This Pregnancy Yoga Programme includes …
Hormones:
Understanding the physiological effect of hormones that challenge infertility, and changes that occur during pregnancy, labour, birth and breastfeeding.Anatomy:
The pregnancy continuum affects every single anatomical body system. An appreciation of this extraordinary adaptation will enhance your ability to facilitate.We will specifically explore pelvic floor, psoas, uterus, breast, centre of gravity effects on skeletal changes, and journey through the body systems.
Body diaphragms:
Practices that focus on increasing awareness of these diaphragms and their relationship to the body, therefore breath.Complications and Contraindications:
Safety, accountability and appropriate referral.Ethics:
Class design and private sessions.Asana:
Sequencing and modifications throughout the trimesters and beyond birth.Class Structure:
Exploring themes (teaching threads and loops).Sankalpa:
Inner resource, intention and connection.Sensory Mapping:
Cultivating a positive birth mind-set by utilising multi-sensory mapping.- How we do Life is how we do Birth:
Addressing thought, belief and behaviour in application to yoga. - Infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth and birth trauma:
Loss, acceptance and trauma-informed yoga.
- The Culture of Birth Fear:
Understanding and supporting (from anxiety to confidence). - Optimal Fetal Positioning:
What hinders and helps the most common birth complication. - Restorative Yoga:
Creating the container for rest, repair and reset (props and support for pregnancy). - Pranayama:
Breathing practices to avoid and how to support this continuum. - Shakti:
Embodiment of the Feminine Divine (East meets West and how you find your space within). - Savasana:
Preparation, integration and the power of your language. - Ayurveda:
Ayurvedic principles infused throughout this training add another layer of awareness and alchemy between modern science and time-honoured wisdom. Deepen your understanding of conception, pregnancy and postpartum with insights from Ayurvedic philosophy and an exploration of Ayurveda’s nourishing traditions of care. - Circle of Change:
Personal Birth Processing - decompressing current expectations and unconscious demands of how pregnancy/birth, others and life should be. Birthing yourSELF into the art and science of Yoga. - Assessments:
Assessments will be both internal and external. A chance to practice and demonstrate whilst in your training, totally supported by the highly skilled team of trainers so you graduate feeling confident and prepared. External assessments will surround the training and ensure your knowledge and understanding of practices and principles for the Pregnancy Continuum.
Ayurveda For Women’s Health Module
Preconception, Pregnancy and Postpartum
Ayurvedic principles add another layer of awareness and alchemy between modern science and time-honoured wisdom. Deepen your understanding of women’s health with insights from Ayurveda’s nourishing traditions of care.
The Ayurvedic part of the training is taught by Amy Massey, PGDipHSc. BHSc. Dip Ayurveda (see bio).
What is Ayurveda?
Introduction to Ayurveda
Understanding the five elements
Doshas and Gunas; Dhatus and Srotamsi
Women’s Wellness
Embracing our seasons and cycles
Hormonal balance and reproductive health
Dinacharya and Rtucharya: Living life in rhythm and balance
Preconception
Traditions of preconception care for conscious conception
Cultivating a state of receptivity with meditation, mantra and mudra
Nourishing our reproductive system and bodily tissues.
Pregnancy
Ayurvedic perspective on fetal development and prenatal care
Interplay of doshas, koshas and vayus during pregnancy
Pillars of pregnancy care, sensory nourishment and self-care practices
Postpartum
Nurturing new mothers with traditions of postpartum care
Understanding postpartum as kaya kalpa
Baby’s constitution, connection and care
Ayurvedic Nutrition
An introduction to Ayurvedic nutrition principles
Nourishing foods for preconception, pregnancy and postpartum
Delicious recipes and special focus on healing spices
The course also offers further resources:
- Recommended reading, titles for more on Ayurveda
- Further education programmes and practitioners of Ayurveda
- Sanskrit, a glossary
The Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training Faculty
KeiShana Coursey
KeiShana is a women’s’ health professional who has lived in the world of childbirth since her own pregnancy, near seventeen years ago. Until recently she practiced as a midwife in the community, focusing on homebirth and primary unit birth, until crossing the bridge into Christchurch Women’s Hospital, catching babies on the Birthing Suite and in theatre.
Having specialised in PTSD, trauma release (alongside generalised motivational sessions), as a coach her private work drew her out of the public health sector - where she continues to pour her passion into mind and body-based therapies.
“KeiShana never seems to utter a word that doesn’t have a powerful impact on the listener.”
Sonya Simpson, at the Hauora Yoga Conference
Amy Massey
PGDipHSc. BHSc. Dip Ayurveda. Dip Yoga. Cert Kinesiology. Registered Natural Therapies Practitioner.
Ayurveda has been guiding my day to day for more than a decade now, bringing greater balance, nurture and delight – especially with kitchen healing! As a way of healing, Ayurveda has inspired Somama Yoga & Ayurveda’s offerings of care. My work with women becoming mothers began shortly after the birth of my son, based on the traditions of Ayurvedic postpartum care and therapeutics of Yoga.
I’d come to yoga some years earlier when, brimming with exuberance, I signed up to a series of (hot) yoga classes. I thought I was just signing up for an exercise class. On the floor in a sea of nausea and a sweat puddle one day, I met an unfamiliar experience of boundless sensation within and all around me. Entirely accidental, that little happening set me on a path of personal practice that led eventually to teaching. Imbued with qualities of joyfulness and compassion, my classes focus on supporting women’s wellness, fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum rejuvenation for Mums, bubs and tots.
In both Yoga and Ayurveda, I’ve found there exists an embodied invitation to deepen our connection with the world within us and the world around us - and I look forward to sharing more with you on the mat.
Karla Brodie
Karla is an experienced and qualified yoga teacher. She is inspired to share the practice and philosophy of yoga in a simple, joyful, self-renewing way. Her practical and intuitive approach leads students toward a deeper experiential understanding of breath, balanced posture and integrated movement.
Karla specializes in restorative yoga, a deeply nourishing and balancing practice for the whole body and in particular the nervous system. She effectively works with students unwinding from high stress, fatigue and hyperventilation.
The foundation of Karla’s teaching is within the human developmental movement patterns. Embodying these self-renewing patterns restores effortless breathing, ease, fluidity and cohesion in movement. Karla’s teachings, interwoven with the traditional and eternally relevant eight limbs of yoga, offer a holistic approach to the practice of yoga.
Haidee Stairmand
Haidee brings a pragmatic approach to her teaching and offers students a clear, approachable and understandable way to develop their Yoga through self-sensing, and awareness.
She is passionate about making yoga accessible for all, enabling an individualistic approach.
She has a unique ability to connect to others in a simple but profound way and sees Yoga as a holistic therapeutic modality that encompasses traditional and contemporary approaches to the Practice.
A day in the life of a Yoga student
This is an 80+ hour Training where a small portion may be self-led study time in preparation for assessment.
Below is a sample of your day…
7:30-9.00am Asana class - from Self to All
9:00-9:30am Breakfast
9:30-11:
11:30-1:30pm Teaching methodologies
1:30-2:30pm Lunch
2:30-4:
4:30-5:30pm Practical applications & assignments
5:30-6:00pm Restoration and integration
Plus regular opportunities for tea and discussion with your teachers and fellow students.
A day in the life of a Yoga student
This is a 75 hour Training where a small portion may be self led study time in preparation for assessment.
Below is a sample of your day…
7:30-9.00am Asana class - from Self to All
9:00-9:30am Breakfast
9:30-11:
11:30-1:30pm Teaching methodologies
1:30-2:30pm Lunch
2:30-4:
4:30-5:30pm Practical applications & assignments
5:30-6:30pm Restoration and integration
Plus regular opportunities for tea and discussion with your teachers and fellow students.
Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training
Supporting the Mind-Body through the Continuum of Fertility, Ante-Natal, Birth and and Post Natal Yoga
26th-29th October
31st October - 3rd November
A day in the life of a Yoga student
This is a 75 hour Training where a small portion may be self led study time in preparation for assessment.
Below is a sample of your day…
7:30-9.00am Asana class - from Self to All
9:00-9:30am Breakfast
9:30-11:
11:30-1:30pm Teaching methodologies
1:30-2:30pm Lunch
2:30-4:30pm Anatomy & physiology – East meets West
4:30-5:30pm Practical applications & assignments
5:30-6:30pm Restoration and integration
Plus regular opportunities for tea and discussion with your teachers and fellow students.
Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training
Supporting the Mind-Body through the Continuum of Fertility, Ante-Natal, Birth and and Post Natal Yoga
26th-29th October
31st October - 3rd November

Be inspired where you learn
This comprehensive pregnancy yoga teacher training takes place at the same awesome venue as our 200-hour teacher training venue - in beautiful St Heliers, one of Auckland’s most picturesque seaside suburbs.
With upmarket shops and cafes, a perfect swimming beach and an easy walk to the training venue, it’s a haven that’s the perfect place to immerse yourself into a Yoga training.
What Our Graduates Say (read more here)
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