My name is Tsippy Monat, I'm a mother of four and grandmother of two. I am a doula – a birth companion, an anthropologist and natal yoga instructor. I have doing this for more than a decade now.
I worked for 15 years in preschool education, developing educational programs for local education authorities. I trained teams of teachers as well as parents.
I always say the older I get, the ages I work with get younger.
I became a doula by accident. After leaving the educational field I spent three years "soul searching". I've had plenty of different jobs (including cleaning high-rise windows, from the outside…). One weekend, four completely different people mentioned the word "doula" in connection to me and I knew I found what I was looking for. I also revitalized my old dream of teaching natal yoga at the same time.
Through my field work and experiences I'm conducting a worldwide anthropologic research themed "Traditional Birthing". For this research I travel all over the world to meet Traditional midwifes, share in their ancient secrets of pregnancy, birthing and life. I participate in births and live a while with every community I reach.
I have an intimate studio where my students and I grow together through the pregnancy. It is a deep and gradual process. Exercising natal yoga allows them a for quality break once or twice a week.
To me, being a birth companion means accompanying the pregnancy in all its stages of growth. I learn the points of view, the believes and wishes, of the woman and couple and we learn the magical process together – the physical aspect as well as the psychological and spiritual one. To me that is the heart of the process, culminating in the birth.
My attitude to birthing is one of combination, a combination between traditional birthing methods and knowledge to a modern and technological world. A good health care system working together with ancient techniques brings about fascinating personal processes lived by any and all of us. An understanding of the ways in which social conceptions, believes and actions develop, is most important. Through this understanding, each mother, each couple, can choose the way that is most right for them.
In the studio I also hold training days for health care professionals. Working together with my partner, the amazing midwife Aliza Zilbershain, we train doulas and have "Grandmother in the birth room" courses.
