Preparing for an Empowering Birth

$190

Preparing for an Empowering Birth

Course
48 Lessons

This is an interactive 6-week online course with Sasha Padron. Through discussion, practice, knowledge building and storytelling, this course will guide you through the four essential steps to preparing for an empowering birth. Live sessions are on Wednesdays from 7 - 8 pm.

Are you looking for a better understanding of childbirth?

Are you wondering if there are ways to bring more ease into childbirth and how you can prepare in advance?

Do you want to know how to support your partner effectively?

Are you feeling anxious about childbirth and looking for effective ways to address your concerns?

This 6-week course guides you through useful proven ways of coping with labour and cultivating techniques that bring ease and pleasure into your birth. The material, meditations, information, and weekly group calls will give you (and your partner) everything you need to step into childbirth with confidence and power.

Winter/Spring 2026 Sessions

January 21 - February 25

March 25 - April 29

May 20 - June 24

Through discussion, practice, knowledge building and storytelling, this six-week course will dive deep in to the four essential steps to preparing for an empowering birth.

Step One: Gain Awareness

Through the course of our lives, we learn about childbirth through the stories our families tell, the lessons we learn in school, the images we see in the media and the messages from our culture at large. Some of what we have learned can serve to fill us with confidence as we approach the day of our baby’s birth. Some of what we have learned does not serve us well but rather fills us with a sense of doubt, fear or a false sense of knowing or expectation. Gaining awareness of the assumptions and beliefs we have made about childbirth is an invaluable process. Replacing old stories that do not serve you well and replacing them with a story that does is a process that unfolds through a variety of facilitated practices, reflections and exercises. This important step will be woven throughout each module to give your awareness around this theme many opportunities to grow.

Step Two: Expand Your Knowledge

The more you expand your knowledge about the process of birth the more access you have to you and your baby’s full potential to be born gently and safely. Learn about the incredible intelligence of our bodies and how we are blue printed to birth our babies with love and ease. Strengthen your ability to align yourself with this intelligence and experience birth from a place of trust and connection. Learn how to turn the fear of the unknown into a powerful practice of curiosity and creativity.

Step Three: Cultivate Faith and Trust

Integrate practices that cultivate faith and trust in your body’s inherent wisdom. Your body is designed to help you cope with the intense physical challenge of birthing your baby. Cultivate faith and trust in your own inner knowing. Begin to build the practices that will align you mentally and psychologically with your body, your intuition and your baby’s intelligence. We will weave together a a basket of tools and practices from; a variety of wisdom teachings, yoga, Chinese medicine, massage, kinesiology, hypnobirthing and meditation for you to integrate and apply to your unique birth.

Step Four: Gather Information & Support

The amount of information available to us can be slightly overwhelming, confusing and often misleading if it is out of context or out of date. Learn about the research evidence around obstetrical care and practices and all the available options for support during pregnancy, birth and beyond. Build your knowledge to help you make the best informed decisions for you and your child. Understanding how birth can look so many different ways and what huge variations of normal and natural there are takes the theoretical into embodied practice. Understand your options, nurture your intuition and gather a team to support you along the way.

Course Content Themes & Topics

Module One: The Miracle Of Birth

In this Module we will explore the wisdom of the body & the wisdom of the baby:

How our hormones support us to birth our babies
How our environment affects and supports the process of birthing
How our babies move through our bodies
The importance of gaining awareness of our assumptions and beliefs about childbirth, and building a foundation for practices that support an empowering birthing mindset.

Module Two: Moving Through Labour With Ease

In this module we will explore:

How to move through early labour effectively and what is happening during this phase.
Rituals that channel energy in positive ways.
How to nourish yourself for optimal energy and endurance.
Supportive companionship and environments.
Continuing to build an empowering mindset.
Forms of touch that stimulate endorphin release and relaxation.
The power of the breath.

Module Three: Building Our Internal And External Resources

In this module we will explore:

How to move through active labour effectively and powerfully.
How to work with fears and concerns.
Movement, positions and massage.
What we can do with our minds and our bodies to support our baby’s passage.
Ritual, Sound and Visualization.
The Partner’s/Father’s Role; exploring your concerns and role.
Understanding what good labour support looks like.

Module Four: Receiving Your Baby

In this module we will focus in on the end of labour. We will explore and discuss:

moving through transition and the ‘pushing’ phase
understanding how support, space and different positions affect the movement of the baby through your body
practices that facilitate ease during your babies birth such as perineal massage, body/mind awareness, movement and breath
how to create the optimal environment for welcoming your baby

Module Five: Exploring Our Options

This module focuses on understanding medical procedures:

When and why interventions are offered
Exploring natural alternatives to induction and augmentation of labour
Caesarean birth: how to create a sacred birth when caesarean is the best birth option
How to ask questions so you can make the best informed decisions for you

Module Six: Bringing It Together

Some of the biggest learning comes from hearing about how others have navigated their way through birth in powerful ways. In this module we will take the opportunity to hear empowering stories and insights from past class attendants. We will take time for discussion and questions.

What's included in the course:

(6) Weekly group calls with Sasha and the other participants to discuss each module and integrate the weeks practices. This is also an opportunity to ask any questions coming up from the material. Group calls will be recorded and available for those who are unable to make it live or want to review.
Video and audio recordings from Sasha with course material and exercises to watch at your own pace.
Reflection questions to help you really integrate what you’re learning.
Membership of our private online community to receive ongoing support and information from Sasha and other members of our community, as well as the opportunity to meet other new parents.

Winter/Spring 2026

January 21 - February 25

March 25 - April 29

May 20 - June 24

About the Facilitator, Sasha Padron

Sasha has been practicing as a doula since she began attending births in downtown Toronto Canada in 1992. She has been teaching Birth Preparation classes since 1995, and prenatal yoga classes since 1998, and has attended over 785 births. Sasha founded the Centre for Growing Families in 2003 and the Awakening the Village Doula Mentorship Program in 2018. Click here to learn more about Sasha.

My partner and I wanted to take the birth preparation workshop with Sasha, but I actually wondered how much of it was for me and how much of it was for him. I thought I was already tuned into my pregnancy - grounded, fearless and informed, but what we both experienced in that workshop was life enhancing. Sasha led us to see how we were holding onto fear and doubt, and how to truly let that go. She expressed to us the incredible benefits of focusing on the journey of labour rather than just getting through it. She helped to strip away our negative learned beliefs and ideas, forever changing our language around labour and birth. With Sasha's incredible intuition and insight, and with her years of experience shaping her work, she is truly a gift to anyone moving through pregnancy, birth and beyond.

Sarah Thomlinson
Toronto, Ontario

If you're like me and live in a city that does not provide the type of birth preparation course you are looking for in order to prepare yourself for an at home, natural childbirth than I highly recommend the online Birth Preparation course from the Centre for Growing Families. After completing this course I felt prepared and no longer anxious about my home birth. The exercises and conversations with Sasha allowed me to find my inner strength and to really access my own power and I knew I could handle anything that happened during the labour and birth. I can't imagine going into my home birth without this valuable preparation. Sasha, has set [this course] up to be very interactive and she is always there for support. You will be given valuable tools to cope with each stage of labour and a "bag of tricks" to select from as your labour progresses. My suggestion is to practice, practice,practice these coping techniques (breathing, movement, sound, visualization etc) and you will automatically draw upon them as needed during labour in a natural way because you will know them instinctively. I hold this course in very high regard and my experience with Sasha will be something I am forever grateful for.

Jess Palmer
Kingston, Ontario