Yoga Teacher Training Journeys

Yoga, Japan and Women’s Health

It’s  amazing how circular one’s life can be.  I find myself,  after some 14 years have elapsed since I shelved my ‘previous life’ as an academic, specializing in Japanese feminism, inadvertently exploring elements of this same subject area, in my current ‘incarnation’ as a yoga teacher.

On a recent trip to Japan conducting my prenatal and postnatal yoga teacher trainings the realization hit me that the pieces of my life were all coming together to create this moment. 

I have always been passionate about socio-cultural studies and women’s issues, and having completed an honours degree in Japanese, it seemed a natural step for me at the time to embark on my PhD focusing on the area of Japanese feminist literature.   However, life got in the way, and I soon stepped out of the academic ivory tower into the maelstrom of the working world, which then of course, as happens, took several meandering paths to bring me to where I am now:  a yoga teacher, specializing in women’s health.

So, here I am, almost 15 years later,  sharing with eager Japanese women my philosophies on yoga and a natural birth.  The women in Japan that I met are hungry to know more about the Western view of an active, natural birth.  And I was flabbergasted to discover that women there are still generally expected to birth in the very disempowering position of flat their back, their feet in stirrups, following every instruction of the medical establishment without question.

For me this was indeed an ‘aha’ moment.  I could see that I was fulfilling some unwritten plan for my life. My dharma was cleverly intertwining the different strands of my life to bring me this point where I could share my passion and experience of both yoga and women’s health, within the very culture that I had studied for so many of my younger years.

Ain’t life sweet!

Written by Ana Davis, Bliss Baby Yoga

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