We never taught headstands in our classes

Marion 0’Connor’s teaching experience with integrating Baby Massage, Baby Yoga and Postnatal Yoga goes back a long way with a string of achievements.

Marion graduated from the first Yoga Therapy training offered to yoga teachers in the UK, the two-year prestigious Diploma course at the Yoga Biomedical Trust in London, in 1997. Shortly after, pregnant with her first baby, she took a special interest in Perinatal Yoga.

After her daughter Aimee’s birth, Marion joined me to teach very experimental classes integrating Baby Massage, Baby Yoga and Postnatal Yoga at the Yoga Therapy Centre. Our classes were for everyone. We had many referrals from midwives, health visitors and also from Great Ormond Street since we taught from the loft of the former Royal Homeopathic hospital in the same building.

Here is Marion and Aimee illustrating the first Baby Yoga book in the UK (2000)

Following a wave of media interest for a practice that involved parents and babies together in mutually enjoyable and beneficial interaction, I published the first baby yoga book.  We never taught headstands in our classes. This was just to show how mothers can do advanced yoga with toddlers taking an interest.

Marion taught Baby Massage alongside Suzanne Adamson, who later became the leading UK trainer for the International Association of Infant Massage (IAIM). We started a project at the Coram Foundation in London with popular classes. Marion also joined me in co-piloting Baby Massage and Yoga adapted for nursery teachers at Kids Unlimited Nurseries in Oxford and London. This involved designing and evaluating a research protocol.

“Whatever Marion did was always professionally done”

One of Marion’s hidden talents is that she is fluent in Japanese. After she presented Baby Yoga to Japanese publishers there were not just one but two successive editions of the book.

After settling in Liverpool as a mother of three including twins, Marion has continued to nurture new mothers and babies in Sure Start centres and to train many health professionals. She has been a successful trainer for Birthlight in Moscow since 2014 and joined the Birthlight team in China in 2013. It is her commitment to make a positive difference in new parents’ lives with easy to teach small practices that motivates her to continue developing her teaching.

Marion O’Connor has lived and taught the integration of Baby Massage and Baby Yoga to high standard for twenty years. This new Live Stream course brings together her tutoring skills and her long personal experience of yoga teaching and yoga therapy. Those seeking the ultimate integration of professionalism and heart will not be disappointed.

Dr Francoise Freedman