the birth story school
BIRTH STORY MEDICINE® BIRTH STORY SCHOOL is the first and only training program that specializes in one thing: Training birth story mentors in leading a process designed to help storytellers resolve emotional birth trauma in private or small group meetings.
The Birth Story Medicine philosophy and process has been in development and refinement for 30 years. Pam England began teaching others her birth story healing philosophy and process about 2006, then began offering the online course in 2009. Each part provides students written modules, videos, valuable feedback on practice-homework, and weekly live consultation calls with a certified Tutor and your peers.
Over the past decade, thousands of people have felt the life-changing impact of BIRTH STORY MEDICINE® through private sessions, small groups, learning the Birth Story Medicine “map” in a workshop, or becoming a skilled Birth Story Listener or Mentor.
Every storyteller needs a story-mentor who knows how to listen deeply, what to listen for, and who has personally experienced healing with the Medicine that opens the heart to self-acceptance, forgiveness, and peace of mind. Birth storytellers are pregnant and postpartum mothers, fathers, partners, birth-related professionals, and anyone who witnesses birth. As our culture acknowledges the prevalence of emotional birth trauma, interest in Birth Story Medicine is gaining momentum.
Many people listen to birth stories but don't know what to say, what to listen for, or how to help.
You can choose one of two possible routes:
1. Our 14-week course taught by BSM tutors: Danit Tsur Almog, Nicole Tricarico and Nora Niculescu. Read more under Part I, Part II & Part III below.
2. PAM ENGLAND'S unique OPEN YOUR EAR, TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED, a 22-week course including an apprenticeship leading to becoming a Birth Story Specialist. For more information and registration go to PamEnglandBirth.com or contact Pam at pam@birthstorymedicine.com
PAM is also Offering FOUR SPECIAL CLASSES & CIRCLES on
- The WEAVING of BIRTH STORIES
- INITIATION SEMINARS (The Childbearing Year as Initiation)
- ALCHEMY & TRANSFORMATION IN BIRTH STORY WORK
- STORYTELLING & SOUP (Learn myths and fairytales, Good Medicine for birth story transformation)
Is the Birth Story Medicine course for me?
You can enroll if you are or have:
- A birth-related professional or group leader, lactation consultant, therapist, social worker, life coach, or a parent who wants to lead birth story sessions that bring birth storytellers to self-acceptance and greater understanding.
- A background knowledge of the childbirth process and birth in our culture
- Introspective, actively engaged in personal growth, willing to journal mindfully
- Self-motivated learner and enjoy reading
- Able to devote a minimum of six hours a week in study, practicing the method and leading the sessions
- Able to receive constructive feedback
- Willing to develop critical-thinking skills and try new approaches to embody this philosophy and master the process
- Personally experienced emotional birth shock, inner conflict, or trauma and have resolved -- or are actively resolving it
- This course teaches a precise way to look at beliefs and birth stories. This course and approach is not about venting about birth stories or vilifying the medical model.
- Are free of ambition to share/impose personal ideology at The Birth Story School or when leading the process.
- Strive to be a relativist, “an empty envelope” in search of truth; dedicated to exploring all possibilities of mind and solutions.
Anyone and everyone can listen to a birth story. However, knowing how to offer insights and restore peace of mind in a storyteller is more accessible by taking BIRTH STORY MEDICINE’s three-part, 14-week introductory course that shows you what to listen for and how to guide a storyteller to find the hidden healing within their story. Upon successfully completing the introductory course, you can promote yourself as a BIRTH STORY MEDICINE / Birth Story Listener.
But there’s more to learn!
Continuing to refine your skills puts you on the path to becoming a Birth Story Mentor.
It takes time and practice to mature from being an empathic listener to mentoring a birth storyteller. Being recognized and certified as a BIRTH STORY MEDICINE Mentor is an esteemed and trusted acknowledgment of your personal growth and professional skills achievement. Certified BIRTH STORY MEDICINE Mentors are awarded our Registered BIRTH STORY MEDICINE mark and logo for promotion and a listing on our website Mentor directory.
BIRTH STORY MEDICINE doesn’t subscribe to a speedy certification that follows checking off a short, standardized list of requirements. Instead, we are following the traditional model that espouses a genuine mentor emerges from three spheres: First, an aspiring mentor chooses and is chosen by a seasoned mentor; they enter the path mutually committed to the work of personal and professional evolution and maturation.
Second, all notions of checklists, deadlines, and achieving are abandoned; we do not aspire to certify “cookie-cutter” mentors; we want to preserve and cultivate each mentor’s unique aesthetic gifts. The irresistible call to become an authentic mentor is only realized by embodying wisdom through direct experience and contemplation. Guided to explore hidden healings off the beaten path by her mentor, the aspiring mentor follows an inner labyrinthine path to her Self. Becoming, being and knowing simmer together slowly in a covered cauldron, slow-cooking many ingredients and flavors of intellectual, philosophical, psychic, creative, ancient and modern ways of knowing—until both seasoned and aspiring mentor realize the time has come; the new Birth Story Mentor is cooked and ready to serve those who cross her or his path.
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