by Natalie Jones, Certified Ma Yoga® Instructor
When I first connected with Ma Yoga, I had been looking for a way to fulfill my desire to reconnect deeply with yoga. Both my own practice and my role as a teacher had become dropped threads in my life, and I was called to repair the tapestry. However, this time it was different – I was a new mom myself and had a second baby on the way.
My time in the Ma Yoga Prenatal Teacher Training overlapped my 2nd pregnancy. But I want to backtrack a little first. It was really during my eldest daughter’s pregnancy that I first got called back to the mat in a big way. I dabbled in reviving my home practice and found some community at a local studio.
I also got bit by the birth bug then, too, and found a passion to learn and do all I could to enable the magic of physiologic pregnancy and birth to reveal itself. However wonderful all this self-study was, I realized I eventually wanted to dive deeper with some specialized prenatal yoga teacher training to complement the 200hr YTT I had completed some years before. Well, my first baby was born, and life got busier than I could have imagined, and I didn’t get to that specialized training… yet.
When I became pregnant again, I knew I just couldn’t pass by the opportunity to finally learn the skills to teach prenatal yoga from the unique and sacred vantage point of my own pregnancy. But most importantly, the timing of all this allowed me to experience the incredibly important role yoga has to play for mothers to birth and parent in their power. I felt so blessed to connect these dots on my own journey becoming a mom, and this inspired my budding vision for getting back to teaching yoga, too.
Of all the prenatal YTTs out there, why Ma Yoga? I remember when I was shopping around, I think I must have filled out an inquiry form for Ma because I received a call from Jessica, and on that call, her bright energy and openness to connect were palpable. I felt so gently but confidently encouraged to join the upcoming cohort. The level of personal support I felt before I was even officially a student helped to make it an easy choice. I knew I would be nurtured in a big way.
When I decided to take the plunge into Ma Yoga’s Prenatal YTT, an overarching fear I had about pursuing further teacher training was a self-limiting idea that I wouldn’t “do anything with it.” As in, I wouldn’t actually get teaching again. Of course, it was possible to do the training only for my personal interest and growth, but since I was feeling called back to teaching, I was putting some pressure on myself to follow through. And I knew that having a new baby in the mix wouldn’t make it any easier to get teaching again. This internal voice putting pressure to take action hasn’t fully subsided.
However, through my Ma journey – in particular the work around the element of Space – I have gradually learned to be more gentle and patient with myself. This is easier to do when I stay ever-curious about what is emerging, as it emerges on its own timeline, without rushing and forcing things into being. This has been nurtured and modelled for me in the ways the training is structured to be both flexible and yet unwavering in the accountability department.
Speaking of the flexible structure of the training… A big practical obstacle I considered before joining the training was that I was a pregnant working mom with a young toddler; a very flexible schedule is not what I had! Shaping my life around attending live trainings was not going to be easy. That obstacle was dissolved when I learned that the videos of each training session would be made available each week so I could keep up with my cohort but on my own schedule. Throughout my training journey and still to this day, Jessica has consistently been very accessible when any questions come up, which has bolstered the learning and self-confidence immensely.
If I had to pinpoint one struggle along the way, it was to keep up with the generous flow of information and supplemental content. But the program has some really beautiful accountability reminders built in, and Jessica and her team really do stay in touch in the most personalized way. I really needed that sometimes (still do!). When I was trying to choose a prenatal yoga teacher training, this promise really stood out to me since so many trainings were designed in a kind of hands-off and entirely self-paced way. On top of the super personalized support, the teachings are made available through several channels: website, email, and now also in the Mighty Networks app space – which made keeping up on the go very doable.
Once the core courses are done, there is a practical mentorship to do. This seemed pretty scary to me! But if I had to pinpoint a specific experience through the training that really changed me, this was it. You have to teach a student (pregnant, or at least pretending to be) and *gasp* film it and submit it to your mentor for review and feedback.
After the first round of feedback, you do it all over again. Normally I would never watch a video of myself teaching but it was an incredibly illuminating thing to do. And doing such a cringey thing in the safe container of the mentorship really helped to address some self-consciousness that was quietly dominating my mindset.
My mentor was so kind and supportive, but also not fluffy. She gave me some super useful and constructive tips to try, and the confidence and flow that increased from one class to the next was palpable.
And most powerfully of all, as my self-consciousness melted away, the mentorship helped me uncover and trust the inner wisdom that was waiting to come through. Watching myself teach somehow helped me get out of my own way.
All told, my journey with Ma Yoga has been a deep one. It has been such a well-supported path, and that support has shown me the way to hear my own inner wisdom more clearly. My Ma journey is only really beginning, and I am curious to see what unfolds as I continue to move from this place of my most nurturing Ma self ✨
