Fiona Ruddle

Profile

Fiona lives in Bournemouth and works in and around the Bournemouth and Poole area, travelling further afield if requested.

Having initially trained as a nurse, she then trained as a Midwife at St Mary's Maternity Unit, Poole. During her 12 years as a Midwife Fiona 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 her shiatsu skills into her midwifery practice.

Her interest in mind body techniques developed, and in 2001, having practised yoga herself for a number of years, she began yoga teacher training with the British Wheel of yoga(BWY), qualifying as a teacher in 2004. Subsequently, undertaking the pregnancy module, to enable her to teach pregnancy yoga. Fiona has been teaching pregnancy yoga since 2005 and runs 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 Fiona undertook the Bwy post natal module and now runs 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 Fiona to learn more about the relaxation process and to train as a hypnotherapist. Also around this time one of the mums-to-be attending her yoga class introduced her to the Marie Mongan HypnoBirthing programme, Fiona was so impressed by the account of this lady's birthing experience that she needed no more convincing!

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

Fiona is a member of the British wheel of yoga, the general hypnotherapy register and the HypnoBirthing Institute and is fully qualified and insured to undertake her work.