About the birthing wisdom teachers
Olivia Seck
Olivia is a mother, holistic childbirth educator, birth companion, trainer, hypnotherapist and HypnoBirthing teacher. She has been teaching and supporting birthing women and couples for over 2 decades now. She has 4 children including a wonderful 19-year-old who, like his siblings, is her mischievous teacher on the path of Motherhood.
On her quest for a holistic lifestyle and profession at the beginning of the 80’s, Olivia studied various aspects of holistic health: humanistic psychology and education (dipHe), counselling, voice dialogue, movement and dance, healing and infant massage. After training with the Holistic Birth Foundation, she founded the Kin & Kin Pregnancy practice in Devon and created The Birthing Wisdom (Demestia) Birth companion/doula training, a distillation of her two decades of studies, her professional experience supporting women through life transitions and her 32 years as a mother and partner.
After training with Marie Mongan, the founder of HypnoBirthing in the USA, Olivia added another dimension to her holistic approach and she created BirthCreation, a holistic childbirth education programme, which includes valuable hypnobirthing techniques. This hypnosis approach to birth has been integrated into the Birthing Wisdom curriculum.
Olivia is also the founder of Radiant Mama (formerly the Totnes Holistic Birth Hub) a Devon project that offers info, emotional and practical support, classes, holistic therapies and a nourishing lunch within a community of like-minded parents – all on a donation basis.
Olivia lives with her family in Devon where she has a pregnancy practice. She will be stepping down from being the main teacher on the Devon course at the end of 2020.
Olivia will remain closely involved with the Birthing Wisdom School and will still share her expertise on the training, but she will spend more of her time writing, teaching advanced courses and slowing down to enjoy more of each moment.
Uma Yogini Radford
Uma has been practising and studying Holistic therapies and Yoga for fifteen years, completing her initial 2 year training in Reflexology, Massage, Aromatherapy, Baby massage, and other holistic modalities in Bath in 1988. She continued her study in Yoga, completing her Integral Yoga Beginners Teacher Training in Asana and Pranayama in Bath in 2001, with ongoing training since.
Uma has delighted in specialising in family based training, studying Childrens Yoga Teacher Training with Jo Manuel at the Life Centre in London, completed in Dec 2005. She has studied Yoga for Mums & Babies, the Early years, and Families, completed in 2007 and has trained & assisted in the Pregnancy teacher training and Womb yoga with Uma Dinsmore-tuli at the Special yoga Centre in London in 2010.
Uma has been a self employed Holistic therapist and Yoga teacher in Somerset since 2000 offering therapies and classes in many different settings including sports centers, schools, festivals and retreats.
For the last six years Uma has run a studio in Bruton, as well as teaching for Somerset County Council and offering classes, workshops and private sessions to all ages and abilities within the community. Over the last 3 years she has travelled annually to India to study Yoga philosophy, volunteer at Saha Astitva an Organic Farm, School and Tribal support project and attend an International Yoga & Ayurvedic conference in Rishikesh.
Jolie Compton
After the birth of her first son in 2007, Jolie was inspired to get involved in supporting families during their birthing time. After hearing about the positive impact that a doula had made for one of her closest friends’ births, she decided to explore doula-ing for herself, and discovered the Birthing Wisdom Training. She quickly recognised that this training would not only provide a foundation for learning helpful birth attendant skills, but it would also be a unique self development journey, with opportunities to explore, learn and practice a variety of communication, healing and creative skills too!
Since Jolie started training with Birthing Wisdom she has provided antenatal preparation sessions, practical, emotional and advocacy support as a birth doula, and worked as a volunteer doula in her local maternity unit in Salisbury, Wiltshire. She has also been actively developing skills in using energy psychologies, birth story debriefing techniques and trauma support work, as well as taking time out during 2012 and 2013 to have another beautiful baby boy!
Within the Birthing Wisdom community Jolie has remained actively linked with the training, helping with organisation, marketing and events, taking part in training sessions, and generally being a helpful point of contact for others during their Birthing Wisdom doula journeys.
Jolie is delighted to be offering her time as a mentor on the Birthing Wisdom training this year… which in other words says, I’m the one you can come to when you want to chat, laugh, cry or growl about life stuff, doula stuff, being able to find stuff, or when you get frustrated with computer type stuff!
Jolie hopes that she can be a helpful channel of support for you, mixed with a good helping of humour, passion, and heart presence.