Fiona Ruddle

Profile

I live in Bournemouth and work in and around the Bournemouth and Poole area, travelling further afield if requested.

Having initially trained as a nurse, I then trained as a Midwife at St Mary's Maternity Unit, Poole. During my 12 years as a Midwife I became interested in complementary therapies, Shiatsu massage in particular and trained as a shiatsu practitioner; undertaking specialist training to work with women during pregnancy and birth, then integrating my shiatsu skills into my midwifery practice.

My interest in mind body techniques developed, and in 2001, having practised yoga for a number of years, I began yoga teacher training with the British Wheel of yoga(BWY), qualifying as a teacher in 2004. Subsequently, undertaking the pregnancy module, to enable me to teach pregnancy yoga, I have been teaching pregnancy yoga since 2005 and run regular weekly classes in Poole and Bournemouth.

Pregnancy yoga led to post-natal yoga, so that Mum's could continue practising yoga with their newborn babies, so in 2007 I undertook the Bwy post natal module and now run regular Mother and Baby yoga classes.

The benefits of breathing and relaxation skills for pregnant women, and their ability to apply these skills during childbirth, to achieve more comfortable birth motivated me to learn more about the relaxation process and to train as a hypnotherapist. Also around this time one of the mums-to-be attending my yoga class introduced me to the Marie Mongan HypnoBirthing programme, I was so impressed by the account of this lady's birthing experience that I needed no more convincing!

I trained as a hypnotherapist/NLP & Hypnobirthing practitioner in 2007 and now teach women and their partners how to use relaxation, self hypnosis and acupressure to achieve natural, comfortable childbirth.

I am a member of the British wheel of yoga, the general hypnotherapy register and the HypnoBirthing Institute and fully qualified and insured.