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About Lotus Fertility & Mary Ceallaigh |
Mission, Values, and Vision Statement
Lotus Fertility's mission is to help women help themselves by nurturing an
awareness of the stages of fertility - Preconception, Prenatal, Birth, Postpartum - as
realms of consciousness.
Lotus Fertility integrates the optimal health values of Yoga and Midwifery, and
empowers women and couples to re-align with the inherent interconnection between
fertility, sexuality, and spirituality. The vision of Lotus Fertility to provide
resources and facilitation to support women's development of attunement to their
own intuitive capacity, the 'inner midwife' that is the true source of wisdom,
fearlessness, and transformation.
Lotus Fertility resources can support ANY woman who has a heartfelt desire to
experience the creative source within herself, and within her intimate partnership
and family life.
Philosophy
The central focus of Lotus Fertility is to facilitate the "inner midwife," the intuition
within woman, as an ally through the milestones of women's development:
menstruation, sexual partnership, mothering, and beyond. The choices we make
towards self-reverance and maturation (regardless of chronological age) create healing
and harmony of a sustainable kind.
Lotus Fertility honors the role of awareness within human health and development.
Most blatantly expressed in how a culture deals with birth and death, it is also most
intimately experienced in how each person experiences their relationship to breath,
and its creative wisdom in the body. Labor & Birth is a dramatically diverse realm that
can range in ecstacies and miseries.
Four principles taken from ancient Yoga philosophy are themes in the work of Lotus
Fertility:
Ahimsa: Non-violence, Harmlessness (in thoughts as well as actions)
Ananda: Joyfulness, Original Goodness, Blissfulness
Moksha: Emotional Freedom (feeling secure in the universe)
Rasayana: Juiciness, Vitality
A blooming bud of a flower is a traditional labor & birth focal point, placed in water
and situated where the laboring woman will frequently see it and remember her
sacredness while opening herself to the birth energy. In ancient India and throughout
Asia, the flower used was often the Lotus, as they are easily found, and considered
sacred. In lieu of fresh blooms, photographs or paintings would be used. Like a Lotus
flower, the truly healthy human being's physiology is self-healing, free of confusion,
and radiantly alive to respond to Life in its every breath. Lotus Fertility contributes to
the larger work of healing the earth through self-healing & conscious co-creation.
The Lotus has been associated with fertility, spiritual renewal, and divine inner beauty
from time immemorial, for good reason. Lotuses, like the potential human being,
bloom amidst the muddy waters of the world. How wonderful it can be to offer our
children the blessings of a conscious pregnancy and an aware birth, one where the
mother-baby-papa connection is facilitated, empowered, and revered - wherever
the birth occurs. One where newborn is fully welcomed as sacred, into the
warm arms of a radiant mother, free from the distractions of unnecessary medical
rituals for at least the first hour of life. One where committed partners are
transformed into parents.
Putting it into Practice
For those to whom this work appeals, there is the potential for a re-framing of just
what fertility is, and sometimes surprising changes of heart. Dialogue mentorship,
self-study, self-care education, creative projects, and community workshops, are core
components along with the encouragement for some kind of daily self-attunement
routine (meditation, prayer, being in nature, yoga, chi gong, etc.).
Life Cycle Themes
As Lotus Fertility work relates to women's self-healing as well as preconception
health, it fosters the heart-womb connection in body, mind, and spirit. Because of
cultural ignorance, conditioning, or trauma, the vast majority of women carry on with
at least partial and even full disabling of this key pathway of the soul in the body.
Restoring heart-womb empowerment is thankfully within reach of any woman. How?
Because our essence and our birthright, is joyful aliveness. If we take full
responsibility to do our part of the work for this, in ourselves and in dating and
marriage, our core energy and cellular intuition are happy to blossom, because we are
born to bloom!
As Lotus Fertility relates to pregnancy, the heart-womb connection enhances
conscious prenatal bonding with the baby, partnership between the woman and her
own radiant light, and a potential deepening of the sacred-erotic aspect between the
woman and her partner-lover. The gestating baby is carried under the mother's heart,
and the womb environment is in rhythm with the maternal heartbeat, circulation, and
the pulse of the umbilical cord.
Lotus Fertility explores home labor, waterbirth, lotus birth, and freebirth options as
well as the importance of making informed decisions about care providers and birthing
environments for various institutional scenarios. The Lotus Fertility work focuses on
facilitating the connection to sustainable, creative source and in the process,
full-blossom personal development and family enrichment are made real.
In new client postpartum scenarios, the Lotus Fertility approach supports healing,
bonding, and blooming of the mother-baby and the family as a whole, assisting the
new mother's recovery in both body & soul. Viewing the first 9 postpartum months as
"extrauterine gestation" (Ashley Montagu Ph.D) where the nursing mother and her
baby are as in-sync and unified as during pregnancy (nursing mothers & their babies
share the same REM sleep patterns even), the Lotus Fertility approach can bring
healing, happiness, and pleasure to the Postpartum journey.
Mary Ceallaigh
Mary's work is the fruit of her own path of experiences, including countless lessons
transmitted through the mentorship of Jeannine Parvati, the founder of the modern
yogini-midwife lineage. This reclaimed tradition cultivates reverence for the feminine
mysteries and self-healing powers. Mary attended her first birth in 1989 and has
apprenticed in midwifery & women's self-healing since that time, both in the U.S.and
Scotland, with a variety of teachers and birthworkers. She integrates her knowledge
of mothering, prenatal & early childhood development sciences, birthworker arts,
yogini philosophy, and natural healing traditions into Lotus Fertility.
Her great-grandmother Minnie Mae was a traditional midwife in rural Arizona,
attending low-risk women often referred to her by the travelling country physician;
and her grandmother, who later became a pediatric nurse, spoke passionately of the
dignity and grace of those days, a touchstone for Mary's own vocational path.
As a Doula and Apprentice Midwife at various junctures throughout her adult life, Mary
has worked with a diversity of client scenarios, births (home, birth center, and
hospital) and prenatal & postnatal scenarios. She has also served as a board member of
AIMS Scotland and the California Assn. of Midwives, attended many midwifery-related
conferences and pursued significant additional studies and research related to
midwifery history and the social linguistics of the Life Cycle. Pacific Oaks College,
where Mary received her BA in Human Development, is an institution reknown for its
contributions to child development scholarship and the originator of anti-bias
concepts for emergent curriculum in private and public schools.
Mary is a daily Yoga & meditation practitioner. She has studied various forms of Yoga
since 1988, both on her own and with Jeannine Parvati, Hari Deva Kaur, Tom
Yamaguchi, and Gurukaram & Mehtab Benton, completing Kundalini Yoga teacher
training in 2003 and ten day Vippasana training in 2008. Previously, she studied Tai Chi
& Chi Gong from 1997-1999 with Chou Li at the Pacific-Asian Museum Garden in
Pasadena, California.
She also credits the innumerable stories women and men have told her, upon learning
of her work, about their life cycle & birth experiences, covering a spectrum of possible
outcomes. These stories shared, many in unlikely, spontaneous scenarios, have
offered profound lessons that have confirmed the impact of personal intention,
values, and vision in the realm of fertility consciousness, and the prenatal, perinatal,
and postpartum passages that shape the destiny of the world family.
... resume highlights
Vipassana Training, Southwest Vipassana Center
Kaufman, Texas September 2008, 2009
Nritya Yoga Weekend Training with Amrita Choudury
Austin, Texas May 2008
Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training, Yoga Yoga Studios,
Austin, Texas completed May 2003
Hollywood Birth Center (California), Mary served as center Office Manager & Public
Relations representative as well as on-call Midwifery Assistant and occasional Doula
from 2001-2002.
Tech Consultant (Midwifery & Homebirth) for the homebirth "Home & Away" (ABC TV)
episode. Culver City, California. November 5th-12th 2001.
Co-Director of the Cal. Assn. of Midwives "Midwifery & Childbirth Awareness Project"
providing community education for California, working with CAM Board of Directors.
1998-2000
Co-Author of NOW's 1999 Resolution "To Expand the Definition of Reproductive
Freedom to Include Homebirth and the Midwifery Model of Care."
Apprentice/Assistant to Midwife Jeannine Parvati
Typist of 2001 edition of Prenatal Yoga & Natural Childbirth
1995-2005
Apprentice to Midwife Lani Rosenberger
California, 1998
Apprentice to Independent Midwives Linda Green and Debs Purdue
Edinburgh, Scotland 1997
Steering Committee Secretary of AIMS Scotland
(Assn. for Improvement of Maternity Services)
1996-1997.
APPPAH (Assn. for Pre & Perinatal Psychology & Health) Int'l Congress
San Francisco, 1995
Hygieia College member from 1995 - Present
B.A. Human Development, Pacific Oaks College 1991
Lotus Fertility's mission is to help women help themselves by nurturing an
awareness of the stages of fertility - Preconception, Prenatal, Birth, Postpartum - as
realms of consciousness.
Lotus Fertility integrates the optimal health values of Yoga and Midwifery, and
empowers women and couples to re-align with the inherent interconnection between
fertility, sexuality, and spirituality. The vision of Lotus Fertility to provide
resources and facilitation to support women's development of attunement to their
own intuitive capacity, the 'inner midwife' that is the true source of wisdom,
fearlessness, and transformation.
Lotus Fertility resources can support ANY woman who has a heartfelt desire to
experience the creative source within herself, and within her intimate partnership
and family life.
Philosophy
The central focus of Lotus Fertility is to facilitate the "inner midwife," the intuition
within woman, as an ally through the milestones of women's development:
menstruation, sexual partnership, mothering, and beyond. The choices we make
towards self-reverance and maturation (regardless of chronological age) create healing
and harmony of a sustainable kind.
Lotus Fertility honors the role of awareness within human health and development.
Most blatantly expressed in how a culture deals with birth and death, it is also most
intimately experienced in how each person experiences their relationship to breath,
and its creative wisdom in the body. Labor & Birth is a dramatically diverse realm that
can range in ecstacies and miseries.
Four principles taken from ancient Yoga philosophy are themes in the work of Lotus
Fertility:
Ahimsa: Non-violence, Harmlessness (in thoughts as well as actions)
Ananda: Joyfulness, Original Goodness, Blissfulness
Moksha: Emotional Freedom (feeling secure in the universe)
Rasayana: Juiciness, Vitality
A blooming bud of a flower is a traditional labor & birth focal point, placed in water
and situated where the laboring woman will frequently see it and remember her
sacredness while opening herself to the birth energy. In ancient India and throughout
Asia, the flower used was often the Lotus, as they are easily found, and considered
sacred. In lieu of fresh blooms, photographs or paintings would be used. Like a Lotus
flower, the truly healthy human being's physiology is self-healing, free of confusion,
and radiantly alive to respond to Life in its every breath. Lotus Fertility contributes to
the larger work of healing the earth through self-healing & conscious co-creation.
The Lotus has been associated with fertility, spiritual renewal, and divine inner beauty
from time immemorial, for good reason. Lotuses, like the potential human being,
bloom amidst the muddy waters of the world. How wonderful it can be to offer our
children the blessings of a conscious pregnancy and an aware birth, one where the
mother-baby-papa connection is facilitated, empowered, and revered - wherever
the birth occurs. One where newborn is fully welcomed as sacred, into the
warm arms of a radiant mother, free from the distractions of unnecessary medical
rituals for at least the first hour of life. One where committed partners are
transformed into parents.
Putting it into Practice
For those to whom this work appeals, there is the potential for a re-framing of just
what fertility is, and sometimes surprising changes of heart. Dialogue mentorship,
self-study, self-care education, creative projects, and community workshops, are core
components along with the encouragement for some kind of daily self-attunement
routine (meditation, prayer, being in nature, yoga, chi gong, etc.).
Life Cycle Themes
As Lotus Fertility work relates to women's self-healing as well as preconception
health, it fosters the heart-womb connection in body, mind, and spirit. Because of
cultural ignorance, conditioning, or trauma, the vast majority of women carry on with
at least partial and even full disabling of this key pathway of the soul in the body.
Restoring heart-womb empowerment is thankfully within reach of any woman. How?
Because our essence and our birthright, is joyful aliveness. If we take full
responsibility to do our part of the work for this, in ourselves and in dating and
marriage, our core energy and cellular intuition are happy to blossom, because we are
born to bloom!
As Lotus Fertility relates to pregnancy, the heart-womb connection enhances
conscious prenatal bonding with the baby, partnership between the woman and her
own radiant light, and a potential deepening of the sacred-erotic aspect between the
woman and her partner-lover. The gestating baby is carried under the mother's heart,
and the womb environment is in rhythm with the maternal heartbeat, circulation, and
the pulse of the umbilical cord.
Lotus Fertility explores home labor, waterbirth, lotus birth, and freebirth options as
well as the importance of making informed decisions about care providers and birthing
environments for various institutional scenarios. The Lotus Fertility work focuses on
facilitating the connection to sustainable, creative source and in the process,
full-blossom personal development and family enrichment are made real.
In new client postpartum scenarios, the Lotus Fertility approach supports healing,
bonding, and blooming of the mother-baby and the family as a whole, assisting the
new mother's recovery in both body & soul. Viewing the first 9 postpartum months as
"extrauterine gestation" (Ashley Montagu Ph.D) where the nursing mother and her
baby are as in-sync and unified as during pregnancy (nursing mothers & their babies
share the same REM sleep patterns even), the Lotus Fertility approach can bring
healing, happiness, and pleasure to the Postpartum journey.
Mary Ceallaigh
Mary's work is the fruit of her own path of experiences, including countless lessons
transmitted through the mentorship of Jeannine Parvati, the founder of the modern
yogini-midwife lineage. This reclaimed tradition cultivates reverence for the feminine
mysteries and self-healing powers. Mary attended her first birth in 1989 and has
apprenticed in midwifery & women's self-healing since that time, both in the U.S.and
Scotland, with a variety of teachers and birthworkers. She integrates her knowledge
of mothering, prenatal & early childhood development sciences, birthworker arts,
yogini philosophy, and natural healing traditions into Lotus Fertility.
Her great-grandmother Minnie Mae was a traditional midwife in rural Arizona,
attending low-risk women often referred to her by the travelling country physician;
and her grandmother, who later became a pediatric nurse, spoke passionately of the
dignity and grace of those days, a touchstone for Mary's own vocational path.
As a Doula and Apprentice Midwife at various junctures throughout her adult life, Mary
has worked with a diversity of client scenarios, births (home, birth center, and
hospital) and prenatal & postnatal scenarios. She has also served as a board member of
AIMS Scotland and the California Assn. of Midwives, attended many midwifery-related
conferences and pursued significant additional studies and research related to
midwifery history and the social linguistics of the Life Cycle. Pacific Oaks College,
where Mary received her BA in Human Development, is an institution reknown for its
contributions to child development scholarship and the originator of anti-bias
concepts for emergent curriculum in private and public schools.
Mary is a daily Yoga & meditation practitioner. She has studied various forms of Yoga
since 1988, both on her own and with Jeannine Parvati, Hari Deva Kaur, Tom
Yamaguchi, and Gurukaram & Mehtab Benton, completing Kundalini Yoga teacher
training in 2003 and ten day Vippasana training in 2008. Previously, she studied Tai Chi
& Chi Gong from 1997-1999 with Chou Li at the Pacific-Asian Museum Garden in
Pasadena, California.
She also credits the innumerable stories women and men have told her, upon learning
of her work, about their life cycle & birth experiences, covering a spectrum of possible
outcomes. These stories shared, many in unlikely, spontaneous scenarios, have
offered profound lessons that have confirmed the impact of personal intention,
values, and vision in the realm of fertility consciousness, and the prenatal, perinatal,
and postpartum passages that shape the destiny of the world family.
... resume highlights
Vipassana Training, Southwest Vipassana Center
Kaufman, Texas September 2008, 2009
Nritya Yoga Weekend Training with Amrita Choudury
Austin, Texas May 2008
Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training, Yoga Yoga Studios,
Austin, Texas completed May 2003
Hollywood Birth Center (California), Mary served as center Office Manager & Public
Relations representative as well as on-call Midwifery Assistant and occasional Doula
from 2001-2002.
Tech Consultant (Midwifery & Homebirth) for the homebirth "Home & Away" (ABC TV)
episode. Culver City, California. November 5th-12th 2001.
Co-Director of the Cal. Assn. of Midwives "Midwifery & Childbirth Awareness Project"
providing community education for California, working with CAM Board of Directors.
1998-2000
Co-Author of NOW's 1999 Resolution "To Expand the Definition of Reproductive
Freedom to Include Homebirth and the Midwifery Model of Care."
Apprentice/Assistant to Midwife Jeannine Parvati
Typist of 2001 edition of Prenatal Yoga & Natural Childbirth
1995-2005
Apprentice to Midwife Lani Rosenberger
California, 1998
Apprentice to Independent Midwives Linda Green and Debs Purdue
Edinburgh, Scotland 1997
Steering Committee Secretary of AIMS Scotland
(Assn. for Improvement of Maternity Services)
1996-1997.
APPPAH (Assn. for Pre & Perinatal Psychology & Health) Int'l Congress
San Francisco, 1995
Hygieia College member from 1995 - Present
B.A. Human Development, Pacific Oaks College 1991
| "All we need are a few more saints. A Jesus. One Buddha will do! ...Take the Dalai Lama, for instance. Look at what the contribution of just one little human can do!" ~ Gurmukh Prenatal Yoga Teacher Trainer |
