Online Doula Certification Training

Module 2: The Postpartum Period and Lactation

 

Congratulations on embarking on your journey as an

Original Instructions Postpartum Doula!

 

   Our online postpartum Doula certification program consists of twelve online lessons (including this one) which include printed text, images, videos, photos, relevant links and other multimedia learning materials. Each time you complete your lesson you will receive feedback for that lesson along with your next lesson. This online program also includes:

     - 12 instructional lessons (18 hours) of videos, text, activities, and assignments

     -  4  hour-long live lessons with Original Instructions teachers and guest speakers

     - 2  thirty minute-long personalized coaching sessions via phone call

     - Lessons and live webinar classes with our Original Instructions teachers, as well as with guest speakers and practitioners from across the globe.

     - Traditional storytelling, medicine songs, and other ceremonies relevant to birth and reproductive health

 Once you have satisfactorily completed all of your online/ live lessons as well as our required reading list for Module 2 you will receive our Scope of Practice and Standards of Care Agreement to review and sign before being issued your Original Instructions Postpartum Doula Certificate.

 

Lesson 1: The importance of working from the stability of your personal daily practice and checking your personal baggage at the 'door'.

  

   We have designed our Doula certification training is designed to assist us in remembering how to integrate teachings we receive from storytelling and our own personal empirical knowledge. Original Instructions Doulas must learn to use their hands, voices and inner eye as tools for their practices. In order for that to occur one must be operating from a neutral state in which they will not unduly interject their own personal experiences and/or traumas into their client's birth and postpartum experience.

   As Original Instructions Doulas, we cultivate strong, authentic Doula practice by having a strongly rooted daily self-care practice or ritual(s) which allow us to commune with what we feel is divine guidance, and empty our minds of chatter before entering into sacred and intimate space with mothers and their families.

   What assists you in centering yourself may not be what works for others and vice versa, just in the same way that your spiritual or cosmological beliefs are personal. This lesson is meant to help you identify new ways in which to help anchor yourself during very emotionally charged situation, as well as to fortify the healthy daily practices that you already have

 Please read and answer the following questions in a google doc, pdf or handwritten format and return to Brittany@OriginalInstructionsSchool.com

   *You will need: A journal for personal use

 1.)  Do you currently have a spiritual practice or ritual through which you can effectively connect to divine guidance? If so, please describe. If not please create or learn one and then describe.

 

 

 

Homework: Take 2 minutes to perform your spiritual practice or ritual before cooking your meals this week. In a journal or in a separate Google doc record your observations regarding this practice each day in two sentences or less. 

 

 

   During our first live lesson together we will explore the effects of imbalanced power dynamics between women and their care providers throughout the extremely vulnerable process of childbirth. In order to ensure that you are not vulnerable to participating and contributing to these power dynamics, one must work from a place of internal neutrality. 

2.) Do you currently have techniques that you use in your life to help you feel centered and powerful in your ability to choose your own internal state regardless of your outside environment? If so, please list at least four of these techniques. If not, please create at least four centering/grounding techniques for you to use with yourself before entering into Doula work with families. 

Homework: Practice each of these techniques at least one time a day for the next week, especially when you may be feeling stress, anxiety and other hard to shake emotions. Record your observations about the effect these practices have had on your ability to "check your baggage at the door" in a journal entry at the end of the week.

 

3.) Please click on the following links below in order to explore various traditional techniques for centering one's self. After exploring these techniques please pick at least two to practice throughout the week during times when you are feeling under stress. During a small portion of our upcoming live lesson, we will discuss which (if any) of the techniques resonated with you.

Health Benefits of Singing 

 Traditional Hindu Kapalabhati Cleansing Breathing Technique

The Westernized 'Earthing' or 'Grounding' Movement

Gardening for Happiness

Dance for Mental Health