Marinella Benelli

I am a mother, yoga teacher, massage therapist and postnatal Ayurdoula specialising in womens health and wellbeing. My approach is based on the intimate connection and relationships that lie between the Earth and Moon elemental energies and cycles, womens bodies and their inner seasons. By (re)connecting and honouring these great cycles of life, we can (re)connect with our innate inner wisdom as women. I personally honour these intimate connections in my daily life, as it helps me to live in a more grounded and harmonious way. My first breakthrough was to consciously reconnect to the wisdom of my menstrual cycle in my late 20s through discovering the amazing work of Alexandra Pope. Since then, menstrual cycle awareness has been a daily self-care practice, bringing me so much healing and enabling me to be more authentic both in my private and work life, simply by recognising, respecting and expressing all the emotional, physical and psychological ebb and flow that comes with being cyclical. A yoga lover since my early 20s, I have been exploring many styles following my very first Iyengar class attended in a small yoga room in Florence, Italy (where I am originally from) and I have found my œyoga home in the nourishing feminine practices of Womb Yoga. It was 2009 when I joined Uma's weekly womb yoga circles in Bristol and these became soon the perfect complement to the menstrual cycle awareness work I had just started, giving me an embodied practice to express my feminine cyclicality. It was another powerful breakthrough. Between 2010 and 2014 I worked more closely with Uma and completed all her Pregnancy, Mother and Baby and Womb Yoga teacher trainings. It was during one of these courses that I had another life-changing  breakthrough: during a profound meditation I received the clear calling that my path was to œmother mothers. Although feeling quite disorientated at the beginning (as I wasn't a mother myself back then, nor thinking about becoming one¦), I embraced fully that calling and have dedicated most of my work since then in support of mothers. From fertility, through pregnancy, birth and to the postnatal time, I work combining yoga therapy with Ayurveda, Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy® and menstrual cycle awareness. Then in 2016 I was blessed with the birth of my son, certainly the biggest breakthrough of all! Becoming a mother has gifted me with new and more profound layers of understanding and healing for my own journey as a woman and for my work with mothers. It has also reinforced my beliefs on how menstrual cycle awareness can be a foundation for an empowered pregnancy and mothering journey and on the vital need our society has for a new mother-centred postnatal culture. And this has finally led me to become an Ayurvedic postpartum caregiver (doula). Other teachers, that have guided me through the past transformative decade as a woman and bodyworker, are: Jane Bennett, Jane Hardwicke Collins, the wonderful team at the Centre of Sacred Window Studies, Rosita Arvigo and the UK Arvigo team, Maya Tiwari, Sofia Araujo of Swara Yoga, with whom I completed my 200hr TTC in 2013. And there are more. Plus the other œless famous teachers in my life: my students and clients, from whom I never stop learning. And at the very top of the list: my gorgeous son, who has taught me already so much since his soul chose me to become his mama. And to all the above, I am forever grateful.