MA® YOGA TEACHER CERTIFICATION
Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training is just the beginning.
Welcome to the Ma Yoga® Teacher Certification Page!
Hi I’m Jessica. I’m so glad we found each other! When people reach out to me about prenatal teacher training or Ayurveda for women or yoga therapeutics, I always feel a connection, because we share one special thing: we are both drawn to understand how yoga changes – and must change – for women’s bodies and lives.
I started teaching prenatal yoga right after my first regular yoga teacher training in 2001. I knew enough about how babies are created, but it wasn’t until I began using birth as my guru that I understood the key to becoming a powerful
co-creator.
In the only prenatal yoga teacher training available at the time, I learned a lot about what NOT to do and how to teach a gentle, restorative practice. What I felt and still believe strongly is that prenant women need to develop their strength – both inner and outer.
And I also sensed that this time was about so much more than challenges.
Many moms-to-be slow down, listen inward, and begin to take care of themselves in a whole new way.
I began to see pregnancy as a doorway – not just to becoming a mother to our baby, but to becoming a mother to ourselves.
Why is this so important?
The syllable “ma” in every language means “mother.”
In Sanskrit, the ancient language of yoga, it also means “the highest, most powerful, wise and nurturing” – like “Ma Kali”, the Mother of all Goddesses.
By nurturing ourselves, we connect to our deepest power and highest wisdom, and become the “Ma” we want to be.
It starts with learning how to turn nurturing energy inward and and make space for whatever’s gestating within us, whether it’s a baby, a project, or a vision for who we’re becoming.
I started guiding other prenatal teachers through The Yoga of Pregnancy Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training starting in 2004. As a Kinesiologist and Certified Anusara Yoga Instructor, I had learned therapeutic alignment principles and I began refining hem to address the needs and opportunities of pregnant women. I call them the Five Sacred Steps, and each principle continues to guide me as a yoga teacher, a mom and a creative woman to this day. These alignment principles work on all levels: biomechanical, mental/emotional, energetic, and spiritual, and became the foundation of The Yoga of Healing for Women Teacher Training.
When I got pregnant in 2006, I loved having my “Mama Circle.” I felt supported and connected. And I felt well-prepared prepared to be a mom.
Wrong!
I found myself lost without the parts of my identity that had for so long made me feel like me. I couldn’t get anything done, I was exhausted and depleted and having trouble losing the extra weight, and the hardest part: I didn’t have time to do yoga.
The long, focused practices I had come to love were no longer accessible. But I didn’t think it was fair that just because I was a mom, I had to give up yoga.
I honed yoga down to its essential practices and principles, so I – and other moms – could get the breathing, meditation, alignment and strengthening during naps, while 
baby is playing – even while we’re holding baby. I shifted the practices so they were more focused on core strengthening, helping us find our new identity, and grounding us in our feminine wisdom, power, and nurturing energy. I called it Ma Yoga.
As for life off the mat – I wanted to be healthier, but I didn’t want to live in the kitchen. I began studying Ayurveda again when my daughter was one (the 5,000 year old wellness system that was traditionally part of yoga), and found myself able to provide healthy food, good self-care and energizing daily rhythms for me and my family.
I gathered what I experienced as essential basic healthy lifestyle routines for women (Dina Charya,or “Anchor Practices”) – that even the busiest of us can all fit in to our day to give us more energy, help us sleep better, and allow us to find our ideal weight. I put them all together in six ebooks and phone calls for the online teacher training, MAyurveda: Living Ayurveda for Women.
I put these modules together into what I feel is the most comprehensive program that provides the broadest understanding of yoga for women available. Here are the elements of the 85-hour, Yoga Alliance-registered Ma Yoga Certification Program:
- Prenatal 1: The Yoga of Pregnancy and Postpartum prenatal yoga teacher training
- Prenatal 2: The Yoga of Healing for Women teacher training
- Ma Mentorship: One-on-one work with a senior Certified Ma Yoga teacher trainer
- MAyurveda: Living Ayurveda training for women in their childbearing years
- Labor Education: either a doula training you take on your own, or our online teacher training, The Yoga of Birth
- Class writeups: Write up sequences from Ma Yoga prenatal yoga classes live online
I put it ALL into the 85-hour Ma Yoga® Prenatal Yoga Certification Program, so that you can:
Help students, clients, and YOU feel nurtured, empowered, and able to follow your “inner GPS”
Use birth as guru to discover the keys to co-creation, and manifest your desires more easefully
Adjust regular poses and sequences for pregnant students, and confidently create specific sequences for pregnancy
Learn nourishing and nurturing self-care practices for busy women, from age-old Ayurveda, the sister science to yoga
Inspire students with themes for your classes, to motivate and transform students on all levels
Include new avenues for impact and financial reward in your teaching career
Confidently help people out of pain on and off the mat with the Five Sacred Steps of Alignment
Be part of a growing, global teacher tribe who are drawn to guide, support and inspire women in their childbearing years
I’d never taught before this program. It gave me the confidence to be a teacher…As a teacher, I love helping moms get their minds and bodies ready for labor. As a doula, I know which poses are good for fetal positioning and labor – and it makes my job easier because by the big day, the things they need to do are second nature.
I am now empowered in my own practice and life with the tools I received related to how life create itself, on and off the mat. This program helped me shift the way I deal with aches and pains, enhance my daily routine, and interact with my community. I feel so grateful for the knowledge gained from this life-changing program.
I have more confidence with moms that come to me so depleted, because through Dina Charya (daily rhythms) and MAyurveda “Anchor Practices” I know how to help them have more energy and heal more fully. I love that we have this community where I can go for inspiration and support as a yoga teacher, on and off the mat.
Click each button to learn more about each teacher training module:
The Yoga of Pregnancy Prenatal Teacher Training
In The Yoga of Pregnancy teacher training, you’ll explore the challenges and opportunities of the journey to motherhood using alignment-based yoga as your guide. It will help you to:
- Feel confident adjusting regular poses for pregnant students
- Teach poses, themes and sequences specific to prenatal yoga
- Understand labor and how to use yoga to make it an empowering experience for mamas
- Stay up-to-date and inspired with evergreen access to more than 100 + pages of support materials in the “Ma Yoga Living Room”
- Incorporate rewarding new career options, whether you just want to teach yoga, or you dream of adding in a “Mama Circle”
The Yoga of Pregnancy may be taken for Continuing Education or as part of the Ma Yoga Teacher Certification Program (RPYT).
The Yoga of Healing for Women Yoga Teacher Training
Our bodies change so much throughout the childbearing years. Knowing how to help move toward the body’s natural integrity can be the difference between strength and freedom. With the “Five Sacred Steps” of alignment in this yoga therapeutics teacher training, you’ll be able to:
- Relieve students’ pain in common poses like downward dog, cobra and chatturanga
- Use simple alignment actions off the mat to support healing for back, knee, wrist, neck, shoulder, and jaw issues, as well as mental/emotional conditions like anxiety, depression, and disconnection
- Address birth-related conditions including infertility, back labor, pelvic instability and diastisis recti with alignment-based yoga
- Adapt the chakras to support postpartum healing
- Become a powerful co-creator in your own life, using alignment to give birth to whatever is wanting to be born through you
The Yoga of Healing may be taken for Continuing Education or as part of the Ma Yoga Teacher Certification Program (RPYT).
MAyurveda: Living Ayurveda Training
The 5,000-year old wellness principles of Ayurveda (“the science of life”) are more relevant than ever before. MAyurveda is a body of knowledge that’s pared down, essential practices and principles to help women in their childbearing years incorporate powerful routines and rhythms into our busy day. In this 6-session, online training, we will learn how to:
- Use food as medicine for you and your loved ones
- Balance your constitution based on small shifts in your food, sleep, and daily rhythm routines
- Incorporate powerful self-care routines that give you more energy, better sleep and digestion, and a stronger immune system
- Create a daily rhythm that supports your natural physiological clock
- Incorporate Ayurvedic lifestyle principles into your teaching to help students and clients make transformative lifestyle shifts.
MAyurveda may be taken for Continuing Education or as part of the Ma Yoga Teacher Certification Program (RPYT).
Ma Mentorship
Being in a supportive, nurturing environment is one of the pillars of transformation. If you’re doing the full Ma Yoga Teacher Certification Program, you’ll have learned a LOT in The Yoga of Pregnancy and The Yoga of Healing. After these two, you get one-on-one time with a Senior Ma Yoga Teacher Training, who will help you integrate what you’ve learned, and take the next steps in your teaching. The Ma Mentorship will help you:
- develop go-to sequences that you can use and build on
- use alignment instructions in your teaching to make sure each pose is safe, healing, and transformative
- relieve aches and pains in class with simple verbal and physical adjustments
- weave personal themes to uplift and inspire your students
- get support for taking your next steps as a safe, effective, and powerful teacher
The Yoga of Birth Class Online
In this 6-session, live online labor education course you’ll learn about all the choices and challenges around labor and postpartum. Guided by two highly trained, experienced doulas and Certified Ma Yoga teachers, you will travel through the stages of labor learning how to:
- navigate the challenges of birth using breath, meditation, asana, and mudra
- make choices that are right for you based on no-slant pro’s and con’s
- prepare your body and mind for labor so you can feel confident and calm
- access the power withim, far beyond what your mind thinks you have
- recover postpartum and thrive as a mom
The Yoga of Birth Class Online may be taken as birth preparation, for Continuing Education or to fulfill birth education requirements for the Ma Yoga Teacher Certification Program (RPYT).
Where will I be after the Ma Yoga Prenatal Certification Program?
By the end of this 85-hour training, you will be able to:
- submit your certificate to Yoga Alliance for your Registered Yoga Alliance Prenatal Yoga Teacher (RYPT)
- confidently guide and inspire pregnant women, both in regular yoga classes and prenatal yoga classes
- get students and clients out of musculoskeletal pain, both in poses and off the mat
- share simple lifestyle practices that improve energy, sleep, immunity and digestion with loved ones, students and clients
- get support from our growing, global Ma teacher tribe of like-souled women, all drawn to support women as they transition into mothers
The modules are designed to be taken in any order. Each training is foundational and transformational.
To complete the program…
Take these trainings:
- The Yoga of Pregnancy and Postpartum
- The Yoga of Healing for Women
- MAyurveda: Living Ayurveda for Women
- Labor education – either your own doula training, or our online The Yoga of Birth in October
Do this homework for each training:
- The Yoga of Pregnancy (Prenatal 1) – Do write-ups for 3 Ma Yoga Prenatal Yoga classes, and 3 Ma Yoga Mom + Baby classes; if you’re not local, on Zoom
- The Yoga of Healing for Women (Prenatal 2) – Ma Mentorship – work with a Certified Ma Mentor to incorporate Yoga of Healing principles into your teaching, through video and phone sessions – become an even safer, more effective and more inspiring yoga teacher.
Apply for Ma Yoga Certification:
- Once you’ve completed above, apply for Certification
- Have your Certification Call with Jessica to discuss career opportunities now available to you!
- Submit your Certificate to Yoga Alliance
Once You’re Done:
- Apply to start a Mama Circle in your own neighborhood, and receive marketing and business support
- Feel confident teaching pregnant women in your regular yoga class
- Include in your “business funnel” private yoga and healthy living sessions for women in their childbearing years
Thinking about getting your Ma Yoga/Yoga Alliance RPYT Prenatal Certification, but not sure it’s for you? Schedule a free 30-minute Dreams and Visions call with me.
I look forward to helping you find your authentic life path, so you can make the biggest impact with your gifts.
Your Investment for the full Ma Yoga®/ Yoga Alliance Teacher Certification Program
Here’s the breakdown of the value in the program:
- The Yoga of Pregnancy & Postpartum (Prenatal 1) – $497/$450 early bird
- The Yoga of Healing for Women (Prenatal 2) – $497/$450 early bird
- MAyurveda: Living Ayurveda for Women – $350
- Ma Mentorship – $200
- 6 months of Ma Yoga Living membership – $108
- Certification Fee – $30
Total value: $1680
The full Ma Yoga Certification Program price also does not include the cost of required labor education. You might choose to take your own doula training, OR take our online course, The Yoga of Birth ($350).
Your investment: $1297 when you purchase in full.
You save $350, PLUS receive a free private session with Jessica on any topic anytime during the program if you purchase by September 1!
