Hi everyone, I’m Clare Maddalena. I set up LushTums way back in 2007, about 16 years ago when my first child was about 6 months old and I was going back to work.
How LushTums Yoga started
I’d been teaching yoga for 3 or 4 years already and really felt the benefit of it in my own pregnancy. The breathing & mindfulness practices really helped me in my own labour and giving birth experience and I felt that I needed to share what I had learnt with others.
I opened the doors, had no website, just a few flyers and remarkably the pregnant people arrived! I honed my craft and developed techniques and modified traditional yoga practices to best suit the changing pregnant body. I worked out which poses and tips would help with all kinds of pregnancy ailments and also realised, just creating a space where expectant women and birthing people could come together and share how they were feeling and do something to help, was a really needed thing.
FEDANT accredited classes
Fast-forward to today, I’m still teaching pregnancy yoga, mum & baby postnatal recovery yoga and a mums/women’s yoga class each week, plus antenatal education courses to expectant parents. All the content I have created and curated is FEDANT accredited, so its got the best mark of excellency in maternity services.
Where can you find the classes?
You can find our classes in the real world with wonderful teachers that I have personally trained or you can join us on our app or video platform, LushTums Yoga and practice from home whenever you need that gentle hug that yoga can provide.
Key benefits
Other key benefits from LushTums Pregnancy Yoga include:
You access a lot of hypno-birthing practices including breath work and positive mindset and relaxations.
Yoga helps you find your inner calm and inner wisdom, which can help you as pregnancy progresses to make your own best decisions for you and your baby and of course this also helps with birth too.
We include lots of birth education in our classes so week by week you are learning something new that can help you on the day and also with recovery postnatally.
We also include special movements to help your baby get into the Optimum Fetal Position and movements to use to help labour along or give you some rest moments when needed.
All these essential tools for pregnancy, birth and beyond have been developed over many years and have been tried and tested and now are much loved by thousands of mums who have come to our classes.
Unique approach
Plus our unique approach also helps with all the common pregnancy aches and pains, from sciatica, to PGP/SPD, back ache, hip ache, heartburn, consptiation, bloating, carpel tunnel, pelvic floor issues, builds some suitable strength and flexibility where needed for each individual and also helps relieve anxiety, stress, fear and overwhelm.
Community
Coming to classes or joining us online means you get to be part of our community and that’s important. Becoming a mum can be isolating, so finding your new mum friends and building your own support network is easily done by participating in a LushTums class. Always someone going for a coffee or a meet up that you can join in with and there’s always someone to ask your questions to.
Life can get so busy for us all, that it often seems just taking that time out for a class is a big deal in itself. Doing so gives mums-to-be a 75mins window to properly slow down, tune in, remember they are pregnant and connect with their babies. Often, this is the ONLY time all week anyone’s had any time to do this. So you can see it is needed and once done, much loved and appreciated!
We hope this helps give you some info about LushTums Pregnancy Yoga & Birth Preparation Classes and we hope to see you in a real world class around the UK or you can join us online at LushTums Yoga (download the app or find us in a browser and access 7 days now to try it all out for free!)
We’ll see you there!
Much love
Clare
Clare Maddalena has been a yoga teacher for 20 years, a specialist pregnancy and postnatal teacher for 16 years, was a doula for 10 years, is mum to 2 teens and 1 saluki whippet. She is passionate about helping others have more positive empowering experiences by making their own well-informed decisions.
To find out more about LushTums click here.