TRAINING PROGRAMS

Apprenticeship Program

Mayan Moon Retreats

“Contra la muerte materna” (“Against maternal mortality”) in Tenejapa, Chiapas

Intercultural Perspectives in Public Health

Doula Training

Apprenticeship Program

At Luna Maya we are committed to our role as teachers within the humanized birth community.  We accept 1-2 apprentices on a rotating basis for a minimum one year committment.  Apprentices work intimately with mentors in a medium-volume birth center setting (6-8 births a month) where they are offered a personalized teaching program according to their needs and interests.  We work with a socially, ethnically and econonically diverse population, including women from two local women´s shelters.  Our clinic attends breeches, twins, post-dates, and vbacks.  We provide birth center and home births, including water births; combine herbal, homeopathic, and traditional Mexican medicine; and provide full-range well woman care throughout the life cycle.  Our birth center community offers interaction with a variety of alternative therapists, including acupuncturists, masseuses, psychotherapists, and doulas and prenatal educators.  In addition to assisting in providing care, apprenctices teach a weekly childbirth education class, manage sterilization and stocking, participate in a MANA statistics project, and learn about birth center management and fundraising.     

Our two-midwife teaching team includes a CPM who can sign off births for the NARM certification process. (Please inquire about the fee for sign-offs).   Please see below for bios of the teaching team.

Spanish fluency is a REQUIREMENT for apprentices given that all care is provided in Spanish. 

We announce apprenticeship openings through our webpage.  Unfortunately we cannot respond to apprenticeship requests or declarations of interests when there are no vacancies so please be patient and check our webpage frequently!!

Luna Maya Midwife Mentors:

Mayan Moon Retreats

Mayan Moon Retreats (in English) are one week intensive workshops for birthworkers to explore traditional Mexican midwifery techniques and philosophy as applied to modern practice.  These weeks are a personalized opportunity to renew your commitment to our shared wisdom and skills for working with birth. Come join us on holy ground in Chiapas and go deeper in your birthworker practice and your own wise woman spirit!

Mayan Woman´s Medicine Retreat (english)

February 1-6, 2010 (Arrive Sunday, January 31 and depart Sunday, February 7)

General information:

Location: San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México.
Maximum: 16 participants. Participants are responsible for finding their own transport to the Hotel. Lodging is available starting the night before workshops begin and the night after workshops end.
Housing: Participants will stay at the Hotel San Marcos for the weeks and will be sharing a room with another participant. Cost of lodging is included in the rate as well as a Buffet Breakfast.
Hotel San Marcos is a newly renovated Four Start Hotel situated in the center of town that combines colonial arquitecture with contemporary design, antiques and local textiles. Please visit the hotel webpage: http://www.hotel-sanmarcos.com.mx
Food: Breakfast will be held in the hotel. Lunch and dinner are on your own. Aside from the Hotel restaurant, there are many restaurants in San Cristobal that range from $6 to $20 a meal.
Cost of the Program: Total program costs is US$900. This includes hotel the entire week, breakfast and all workshop costs.
Please NOTE you are responsible for covering costs of airfare, transport from the airport to the hotel, lunch and dinner and any additional cost you may incur outside of the program.

Mayan Woman´s Medicine Retreat Week

AM: Orientation and Mayan Women’s ceremony with Traditional Priestess

 PM: Working with the uterus and abdomen through traditional massage technique

 Day 2:

AM: Visit OMIECH- Mayan Medicine Museum

This museum was created by the Council of Traditional Healers and Midwives of Chiapas to present their work and wisdom. The museum includes exhibit halls dedicated to each of the four main areas of Mayan medicine; Pulsing, Bone Setting, Mountain Praying and Midwifery. The museum also shows a video of a traditional midwife attending a birth and has an herb garden and apothecary. We will be guided by one of the guardians of the museum.

PM: Energy Class with Traditional Mayan Healer

We will climb the mountain to Don Lauro’s sanctuary. Don Lauro is a traditional Mayan elder and healer who holds energy class on Tuesday afternoon. We will circle with him to increase our frequency, balance ourselves and open to new vision. After the class we will receive individual healings and cleansings from Don Lauro.

Day 3:

All day: Making Space for Babies to Pass

In an area where transport is complex, expensive and may not ensure a positive outcome, we have inherited and developed a series of techniques to make space for the baby and let the baby pass. During the morning we will work with the reboso, massage and movement. In the afternoon we will learn pelvic balancing and other chiropractic and body work techniques. These skills will help you work with women before and during birth to improve fetal positioning, shorten labors, lessen damage to pelvic organs and floor and improve outcomes for both the mother and the baby.

Day 4:

All day: Visit with Traditional Mayan Midwives to Tenejapa

Spend a day visiting traditional midwives in the Highlands of Chiapas. You will learn about their oral histories, traditions and knowledge. 

Day 5:

All day: Integrating Greif and Loss

 Sometimes as midwives we are called to accompany souls to the other side, we witness miscarriage, unexpected outcomes, changes in the birth plan or sometimes the baby or mother dies in labor or after. Sometimes our listening and nurturing skills are necessary for grief and loss among families that we have accompanied in other intensive life moments. As Midwives we are close to loss and will experience grief, yet are often unprepared to deal and integrate these experiences. In this workshop we will explore our feelings around loss and develop skills to accompany families, women and ourselves during these difficult moments and learn to “be with grief”.

Day 6:

Temaskalli (traditional sweat lodge) and closing ceremony

The sweat lodge is known as the uterus of the earth. As birthworkers we will close the circle by entering and rebirthing as stronger, wiser women within a network of sisters from a journey to Mayan Medicine.

For information, reservation and inquiries, please contact Cristina Alonso at cris.alonso@gmail.com. See you in February!!

“Contra la muerte materna” (“Against maternal mortality”) in Tenejapa, Chiapas

In this three year project, Luna Maya has formed the Social Network (the “Red Social”) through which we work collaboratively with three local organizations-- Marie Stopes México, Centro de Investigaciones en Salud de Comitán (CISC—Center for Health Investigation in Comitán) y Asesoria, Capacitación y Asistencia en Salud (ACAS A.C. – Consultancy, Training, and Assistance in Health, A.C). The goal of the project is to reduce maternal mortality in Tenejapa, and offer hands-on and clinical training to, as well as create networks among, health providers and community members, in order to reduce the occurrence and the mortality rate of obstetric emergencies.
Our work is focused primarily on improving the skills of medical staff and health promoters and bettering knowledge among traditional midwives, in addition to favoring cultural sensitivity and knowledge of midwifery among doctors. We seek to improve timely referrals rates in the case of labor complications and obstetric emergencies.

In 2006 the midwives with whom we work formally associated themselves as the Tenejapa Midwives Association in order to create solidarity amongst midwives and stabilize their position as community leaders, thereby being able to work with greater efficiency and social and political power.

Training for Health Promoters
We work with a group of health promoters and nurses from San Cristóbal and surrounding communities to train them as women’s health agents. This is a 3 year training program that began in September 2005.
In the project’s two years the group has participated in extensive theoretical training in the anatomy and physiology of feminine cycles (focused on normal birth), women’s care during pregnancy, obstetric complications and emergencies, referral and transport of women during emergencies, and newborn care; in addition to training on the sociocultural aspects of maternity, including: gender and sexuality, gender violence, discrimination, multicultural education, massage, the fabrication of natural medicines, herbal medicine, alternative therapies and support during pregnancy and birth, and human and women’s rights.
Theoretical training for promoters is based on expanding their creative, analytical, and questioning powers as well as their teaching abilities. We hand-create educational tools for each subject that we cover, including a guide for pregnancy. We believe that midwifery should be learned with the whole body and we enact processes, from the menstrual cycle to hemorrhage management.

Intercultural perspectives in public health

For two years Luna Maya has conducted training and sensibilization programs with persons working as medical staff in the public health institutions that form part of Sanitary Jurisdiction II in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. The purpose of this work is to inform and sensitize doctors, nurses, promoters and health technicians working in hospitals and government clinics around issues related to humanized birth, especially intercultural aspects. In a pluri-cultural environment such as San Cristóbal, it is common that women of indigenous descent do not seek out public health services for prenatal care or for labor, or if they do, that communication problems and lack of a common worldview complicate healthcare both for the beneficiary and for hospital staff.

The hope behind the trainings offered by Luna Maya is that staff will have a broader intercultural perspective and more information, techniques, and confidence in regards to how to facilitate humanized births within the system in which they operate.

In 2005 we conducted trainings with doctors in which we shared techniques for optimal fetal positioning through the use of shawls, massage, exercise, and other techniques. We work with doctors to motivate them to trust in pregnancy, in birth, and in the natural processes that generally do not require medical intervention. We also trained doctors specifically in obstetric emergency management. In 2006 Luna Maya organized two training workshops on Intercultural Perspectives on Health for primary care physicians in Los Altos of Chiapas.
In 2007 other training programs will be conducted including a program to train nurse technicians from the Health Institute, midwives and women´s facilitators, as well as the general public, as ¨doulas¨.

 Doula training 

A “doula” is a woman who accompanies a doctor or midwife and provides emotional, mental and physical support during pregnancy, labor and postpartum, in order to assure the health and wellbeing of women and babies.  The formation and professionalization of trained birth assistants is one of the WHO´s strategies for responding to the Millenium Goal of reducing infant and maternal mortality and improving maternal health.        

Among the abilities specified by the WHO for trained birth assistants are those abilities that form the base of intercultural doulas, including the abilities to:  communicate effectively in a cross-cultural setting; create a birthplan with a woman and her family; educate women and their families around care-taking of women during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum; monitor labor progress and provide holistic support during labor; identify prolonged labor and recommend adequate measures for responding to the same; and assist and support mother and newborn in the immediate postpartum stage.  In this sense the WHO has recommended doula participation as a key element of safe maternity.  The WHO confirms that the "physical and empathetic support¨of a person such as a doula before and during labor reduces the duration of labor, the administration of medicine and epidurals, and the frequency of surgical interventions.    

In 2007 Luna Maya trained a group of 18 women as the first generation of doulas in Chiapas and in southeast México.  Doulas and midwives from throughout Mexico and the United States were facilitators of the course, thereby assuring the transmission of wisdom and practical skills from trained, experienced, and nationally and internationally recognized women to our group.  The Luna Maya doulas continue to meet periodically to share experiences and support around their local work.  If you are interested in contacting a doula, please contact us.