YOUR AH HAA MOMENT: THE ART & SOUL OF PREGNANCY

05 Feb YOUR AH HAA MOMENT: THE ART & SOUL OF PREGNANCY

Regan & Brittany Raven, pregnant

If you’ve ever had a baby, you can relate.

Being pregnant, especially for the first time, is a whirlwind of strange bodily changes, solicited and unsolicited advice, and pure expectation and joy. For nine months, it’s all about you – and then it’s over. Because once that baby comes into this world, it’s becomes all about him or her. Pregnant you become postpartum you, and what felt special about being pregnant turns into a distant memory.

Not that being a mom is a bad thing, but there’s something ineffable about those nine months. It’s a sacred time that deserves your full awareness and appreciation. If there was a way to capture those feelings and bottle them up, you might just go back for a visit when nostalgia strikes – say, on your child’s first birthday.

It is in this spirit that instructor Regan Tuttle brings a new class, The Art & Soul of Pregnancy, to the Ah Haa School. The intensive is Saturday, March 2, from 10 a.m.– 4 p.m.

The Art & Soul of Pregnancy is for pregnant women of all trimesters and offers a sacred space for women to tune into, celebrate and honor their shared experience of nurturing a new life. Through body work and art, Tuttle will give both new and existing mothers a day to embrace themselves and the beings they’re carrying.

The class includes a one-hour prenatal yoga practice that will integrate music with breath work, mantra, asana, meditation, and more. Tuttle will also teach the foundations of spiritual-centered bodywork, a way for mothers to practice the art of listening to their bodies and conscious touch for the purpose of encouraging the nervous system to relax. The work is particularly useful resource for pregnancy, labor, and mothering in general.

Belly cast

Part of the day will be devoted to making belly casts out of plaster, which will be decorated in class to be taken home as keepsakes. Students will learn how to do the process on their own at home in order to be able to make more three-dimensional replicas of their pregnant bellies as they get larger.

Finally, there will be a guided birth art session that involves creating with soft pastels and doing introspective work. In the end, art, movement, and awareness will come together in the workshop as a way for pregnant women to cherish their experience – and have something to look back on once their babies are born.

With an MA degree in Communication Arts, Tuttle has taught both academic and spiritual subjects for the last 12 years. Tuttle has a 700-hour diploma in Somatic Polarity Therapy from New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts and has trained with Pam England of Birthing From Within. She is a certified Pranakriya Prenatal Yoga Teacher and is currently training with the founder of Atma Yoga, Saul David Raye. During her own pregnancy and birth experience, Tuttle (whose daughter is now four) realized the power and transformation of this sacred rite of passage.

The Art & Soul of Pregnancy workshop is $125, including materials. Students are asked to bring snacks, a pillow and a yoga mat to class, as well as decorative embellishments for their belly casts.

To register or for more information, contact the Ah Haa School at 728-3886.