Sophie Girard-Sequeira

Sophie is a fully qualified Active Birth Yoga teacher and Associate of the Active Birth Centre based in London. She has a long experience of prenatal yoga acquired through her own pregnancies, and years of teaching to mothers-to-be in London and now in Brussels.

Sophie has also trained in teaching restorative postnatal yoga and prenatal sophrology.

Working with Janet Balaskas and Alice Charlwood at the Active Birth Centre, and Annabel Hargrave from YogaBirth, taught her a lot about the virtues of a gentle and respectful approach to yoga when teaching pregnant women.

In her continuing interest in supporting women to experience pregnancy, birth and motherhood as unique paths, she has also qualified in teaching restorative postnatal yoga and trained with renowned teachers such as Uma Dinsmore-Tuli.

Sophie's personnal yoga practice is inspired by the legacy of the late Vanda Scaravelli. Scaravelli's yoga is particularly relevant during pregnancy: using gravity and the breath, women feel more grounded, the spine is freed and space can be made in the body for lightness. In recent years, she has found profound inspiration in Sandra Sabatini's yoga classes and has developped an interest for sanskrit studies while working with yoga teachers following the ancient traditions of the masters of the Himalayas.

"I was first introduced to Active Birth Yoga in South West London, when I was expecting my first child.

I was then amazed to discover how this gentle, yet powerful yoga practice could awaken the inner intelligence of a woman's body to give birth to her baby. Our modern societies often forget that women's bodies are incredibly well designed for childbirth and don't give women a chance to reconnect to this instinctive ability.

My second child was born in Brussels, where I realised that despite the highly medical environment surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, women can still trust and surrender to the inner intelligence of their body to make childbirth a unique and empowering experience."