Andrea Denali

Welcome! Whatever has brought you to this place now, I am so glad you have arrived. I hope we get to meet soon and perhaps travel together on this path for a while.

I discovered the Birthing From Within book while pregnant with my second child in 2002. It contained so much of what I *wished* for the first time around, but did not know how to find or articulate. That book FED my hungry soul, soothed my aching lonely tired mother-heart, and called forth the strongest, most capable version of me I had yet to meet- I could taste her, smell her, hear her.

I saw in my mind’s eye how she moved… how she KNEW what to do when she did not “know” what to do because she was connected to herself, her baby, her ancestors, and all the other birthing people in the world. That calling grew- I followed it to my first Birthing from Within Training in New York City with Pam England and Virginia Bobro in 2005- it changed everything.

Since crossing that life-giving threshold, I have been leading groups and facilitating for two decades alongside reproductive justice work and continued learning both on the ground and in the classroom- primarily teaching Birthing from Within classes and offering doula care alongside my private bodywork practice. I specialize in perinatal care and love working with elite athletes, high performance people and elders. I practice a wide range of modalities that support health, healing, and connection while honoring the needs, wisdom, communication, and liberation of the body. I am informed by my own experiences as a birthing person, my heritage as a bi-racial bi-cultural person, as well as my personal wounding and ongoing somatic healing and recovery journey. I am excited to be a part of increasing representation for people of color in BFW training spaces and deepening birth workers’ commitments to increasing wellness and preventing harm by at the very least offering skilled, embodied, culturally appropriate, inclusive and affirming, non-judgemental, trauma-informed, capacity-building care especially for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Queer and non-binary folks.

As a person of color committed to accessibility, anti-racism, reproductive justice, and embodied anti-oppression, my professional birth work and volunteer advocacy work keep me in inclusive and generative spaces, drawing a wide spectrum of participants to my work. My training in Birthing from Within processes and philosophy continues to strengthen my ability to navigate this sometimes tricky terrain of a multiplicity of experiences, privileges, and barriers with the skills to compassionately challenge habitual thinking while simultaneously creating a sense of safety, connection, and cohesiveness allowing for more impactful learning- not often found in more linear or strictly evidence-based classes.

There is so much in the Birthing From Within approach I believe you will find enriching and challenging in many ways. It’s not perfect, we are not perfect- there is room for your authentic experience and honesty here. As we learn and unlearn together, we can transform birth in our communities. Hopefully, we too, will be transformed.