Skip to content

Shiatsu foundation for Midwives & doulas & bodyworkers

learn how to use shiatsu in your work with clients preparing for birth and look after yourself too!

Completion time

10 hours for activities but allow extra time for practice
Usually completed in 10 hours for activities but allow extra time for practice

Introduction to course and tutor

Welcome to the course. I hope you enjoying learning with me, Suzanne Yates, founder of Wellmother and author of your course book “Shiatsu for Midwives”.

Don’t forget you can ask for clarification of anything or discuss with me and other students in the discussion thread. This is accessed in each lesson at the bottom of the page in the comments. Try it now!

I hope this course inspires you to start using shiatsu in your work and in your life. It is an on going study: there is always more to learn. So welcome to the beginning. Please don’t expect to have understood all the theory by the end of the course! Some of it is put in here for background material and for you to refer back to as you start using shiatsu more. I am still learning even after having started studying shiatsu over 30 years ago!

Suzanne Yates teaching birth work with sacrum

First exercise

What do you want to learn from this course?  I invite you to take 10 minutes and note down what you already know about shiatsu and what you would like to learn by the end of this course.  Come back to this at the end of the course and compare!

What you will learn: 

understand birth in a new way, adding in additional touch based skills, and a new approach to breathing, visualisation, movement and exercise

basic theoretical and practical principles of Chinese medicine and shiatsu so that you can immediately start applying this approach to your work

explore how shiatsu-based skills can promote your own well-being

How the course is structured

The course is set up with 6 lessons (full list and links to click through at end of this page) . It is probably best to initially work through them in order from 1 to 6: but you can go back and forward between the topics. In each lesson there a mix of topics:videos, audios and text documents.  The idea is that you can use what works best for you! Some people prefer watching videos, some reading, some a bit of both! It’s up to you.

At the end of each lesson is a quiz to check your learning and an assignment, which is either doing and recording some practical work, or a reflective piece.

You can work through these lessons and the assignments at your own pace. Once you have completed all the topics and assignments you receive a certificate.

I have given an indication of length of video, audio and an average reading time for the text documents.

Total length of time for the course is about 10 hours, not including any personal exercise practice or working with friends or clients.

Supporting material for all lessons

Course text book: Shiatsu for midwives: page references are given in the relevant topic

Further reading: 

Beautiful Birth by Suzanne Yates

There are many books on shiatsu and Chinese medicine and lots of links to google:

Here are a few I like but please research and message me with ones you like so I can add them in.

The following books are about Chinese medicine and Shiatsu

Ted Kaptchuck – The Web that has no Weaver (Century Hutchinson)

Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Kornngold – Between Heaven and Earth – A Guide to Chinese Medicine (Ballantine)

Introductory books on Shiatsu have been written by Paul Lundberg, Chris Jarmey, Nicola Pooley and Elaine Liechti. Choose the one which appeals most to you.

You can sometimes find coloured charts of the channels which you may find useful

2 Comments

  1. carlyhavard on 28/09/2017 at 7:00 pm

    Hi there..are we suppose to purchase the shiatsu for pregnancy book before doing the course?
    Many thanks
    Carly

    • suzanneyates on 02/10/2017 at 4:49 pm

      You might find that it helps! It gives some extra detail. But you can see how you get on without it too..Suzanne

Leave a Comment