My name is Amanda, my pronouns are she/her, and I grew up in Kent, Washington. As a child and to this day, my interests have always been very broad between sports, music, dance, and cooking. My first yoga class was in high school while attending Green River Community College for running start credits. I was immediately hooked and asked my parents for a yoga DVD for Christmas.
While studying at Washington State University I started taking nutrition classes and vividly remember one course covering the changes in nutrition and how the body adapts from infancy, through puberty and menstruation, pregnancy and postpartum. Unfortunately, the nutrition program was cut due to the lack of funding from the global financial crisis (2010). I graduated with my BA in Hospitality Business Management in hopes to open my own farm to table restaurant. My yoga practice during and soon after college wavered as I was focused on academics and my jobs.
After my undergraduate school, I had hopes of going back to school for a Masters in Nutrition with Peace Corps. I took a trip to French Polynesia and worked for three months on a WWOOF black pearl farm to better my French speaking skills and see if I could handle the 2 year commitment abroad that Peace Corps requires. On the island of Ahe, I was returned to my yoga practice. Lesley was an artist and would cook the family meals at the farm. One day she brought out her copy of B.K.S. Iyengar’s, Light on Yoga, and I started reading it from the beginning. It was then I learned the philosophical and spiritual approach to yoga. Lesley would invite me to practice with her. I was captivated.
When I returned back to Seattle, I continued working in the restaurant industry. After doing more research and job shadows, I decided that getting a masters degree wasn’t what I wanted at that time. My yoga practice, however, started to bloom and grow beyond the physical, into spiritual realms and pockets of mental clarity. I couldn’t quite tell what it was about yoga, but the days that I went to class, I felt so much better. Days when I didn’t, I felt more stressed, frazzled, and running behind.
I couldn’t quite tell what it was about yoga, but the days that I went to class, I felt so much better.
Eventually I started on as a work study or karma yoga at 8 Limbs and later as a Yoga Advisor. It was really an amazing experience to work for a woman owned (at the time) business and be around such vibrant energy all the time. Seeing first hand how a small wellbeing centered business can positively impact a community, was inspiring for me. They influenced me so positively, I aspired to be a yoga teacher.
I also worked at Sutra restaurant because I wanted to learn more about cooking vegan. There were so many beautiful souls at Sutra and here I was introduced to crystals, saging, and kombucha. Eager to learn more, I attended yoga classes and workshops at the Sutra studio getting my first glimpse of Hindu mythology, plant medicine, and energy work.
My journey continued to ebb and weave, with a finger in every pie. A colleague from Sutra referred me to a Reiki practitioner and I remember leaving my visit in a state of disbelief of the details she knew down to the person I was last with. My interest in Reiki was intertwined with the chakra system of yoga; it seemed that energy work was integral to the yoga practice. September 2019, I received my second attunement from my reiki master, Sharon Maffett, under the Usui system.
Upon returning Seattle, I started applying for yoga teaching jobs and my first two offers were for teaching prenatal yoga. I thought, this can’t be a mistake. The more I continued to teach prenatal yoga, the more I wanted to offer. Because I have never been pregnant, I found it difficult at times to relate to what these people are going through. After reading more books about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborns, I realized how important doula work is for healthy pregnancies and babies. So much is stressed on the baby’s care that often times, the mother or pregnant person is second priority.
I am excited to be enrolled in the DONA certified Birth Doula program at Bastyr. I’m hoping to complete the July course, but it might get delayed until September due to Covid 19. After, I plan to start working as a doula-in-training. Helping families to address things like knowing their rights as a patient, having a birth plan, nutrition, meditation, breathing techniques, prenatal & partner yoga, and most importantly, postpartum care. I hope to prove myself as an asset to the community by helping families to get the health care they deserve.