The Compassionate Doula:
Exploring client care through empathy and education.
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
North Seattle Community College
8a.m.-4p.m.
$60 members/$85 non-members
To Register, please visit NAPS website www.napsdoulas.com
The time has come once again for our annual doula conference presented by NAPS and PALS Doulas.
We are excited to offer an affordable conference for both birth and postpartum doulas and those wishing to learn more about enriching the role of doula. We will be offering specially tailored sessions to birth and postpartum doulas, as well as a few joint sessions pertaining to both.
Conference speakers include:
Northwest’s own Penny Simkin presenting Eco-Friendly Birth:
Drawing from the language and methods of ecology, Penny will explore the effects of today’s birth practices on the baby’s first habitat – the uterus – and his or her next habitat – the mother’s body and breasts. Looking downstream from birth, Penny hopes to focus our attention on the recent findings of long-term implications of such common practices as induction of labor, cesarean section, epidural analgesia, immediate separation of mother from baby, and lack of breastfeeding. How resilient do mothers and babies have to be to withstand the disturbances to their habitat?
Barbara Larson with Northwest Compassionate Communication will present the cornerstones of Compassionate Communication and how it can transform relationships with your clients and peers.
Barbara will offer powerful, life enriching communication skills that will help you stay calm and compassionate even in the most trying circumstances. The benefits of these skills will help you to: improve cooperation by listening so others are really heard and speak so others can really hear you; transform conflict into jointly arrived at solutions rather than compromise; receive someone’s anger without taking it personally and care for your own needs with compassion.
Heidi Koss-Nobel, MA will discuss boundary issues.
Recommendations for maintaining healthy boundaries will be explored as well as examining how and why doulas can fall prey to unhealthy boundary practices. Particular boundary breaches explored will include: how doulas might inadvertently project their own personal issues onto a client’s family system; when doulas fall into a family system trap of enabling unhealthy parenting/attachment issues such as when clients become ‘codependent’ with their doula or when parents abdicate aspects of parenting due to some systemic issues of their own. Heidi will address these issues including: how to recognize them, prevent them, and gracefully extract yourself from them when they occur.