Prenatal Yoga and Doula Training in Guatemala
View from Luna Shala - The Yoga Forest
One of the first questions someone asks me when they hear that I traveled to Guatemala for Prenatal Yoga and Doula training is “how did you decide to do that?”. It’s a long and winding story of internet searches and discovering my passion that started many years ago. However, the most straight forward answer is that I was searching for a personal retreat and happened upon The Yoga Forest which is located near Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The beauty of the location caught my eye. The retreat center is located high up and overlooks Lake Atitlan and a number of volcanoes. One of the retreats that was offered was the training through Awakened Spirit. I thought “wow, I could do 10 days", but at that time the 2022 session was booked, so I bookmarked it and moved on.
Late in 2022, I got the itch again to get back to training and specifically focus on working with pregnancy. Thankfully that bookmark came in handy! Mentally, taking that amount of time off of work and away from my family was a tough hurdle, but the $350 round trip airfare ticket helped me get over that pretty quickly. I mentioned this to my mentor (and Aunt) Kelly who runs You Do You Yoga studio in WI, and she quickly jumped onboard to join me.
The training is 85 hours and combines prenatal yoga and doula training. Awakened Spirit provides Teachable content in advance of the training which is recommended to complete prior to attending. The instructors, Julia Forest and Stefanie Antunes, also host an orientation via Zoom in advance to answer any questions participants may have about travel or what to expect. We were also able to connect with other participants to share travel plans and introduce ourselves.
Travel from Chicago took about 12 hours. We flew into Guatemala City and then took direct transport to San Marcos. The drive was about 4-1/2 hours. If you want to spend more time seeing Guatemala, you could travel to Antigua and spend a night before traveling to San Marcos, but being less experienced travelers, we preferred to go direct to the retreat center.
Training began on Sunday with an orientation and opening session in the afternoon. Each day, we began training at 6:30 am and finished around 5:30 pm. There were plenty of breaks built in for eating, relaxing, and reflecting. Activities were also held in the evening to really experience the culture of Guatemala. Some of these were song circles, temazcals (traditional sauna), flower bath, and a Guatemalan theater production.
One of the aspects of this retreat that I want to highlight is the food! We were provided an amazing quality and variety of meals. From smoothies for breakfast to tamales or pizza for dinner. There was no shortage of meals. The kitchen staff is composed of local Guatemalan women who work very hard hand making all of the meals. From the flour tortillas to the soups and breads, they were hard at work all day. All meals were vegetarian and gluten-free and dairy-free options were also available.
Overall, I highly recommend this training if you’re interested in either Prenatal Yoga or Doula training (through DONA). They complement each other very well. You will also create deep relationships with the other participants and get some networking opportunities as well!
