Emma, a mother of two originally from Sweden, now resides in Palermo after spending a decade in Berlin. She is a birth keeper, a lactation counsellor, and a guide helping people reconnect with their bodies through life's many transformations. Her primary focus is teaching yoga, breathwork, and meditation in movement—each serving as a path back to the self. Specialising in pelvic floor function and health, she also has a deep passion for the science of movement and well-being, public health, cultural anthropology, tattoos, natural wine, and cooking.
Did you become a doula before you had your babies? If so what was the biggest lesson for that
I became a doula after the birth of my daughter, which was a journey where I tried my most to set myself up with the best kind of support I could find. However during the birth a person advocating for me and truly listening, felt missing. So I wanted to become that person for other birthing beings and fill the gap that exists in the maternity health system. My daughter ended up being born in a waiting room of a Berlin hospital after no one, including my midwife, believed I was actually in labour.
What made you become a doula and your inspirations that crossed your path.
My birth work is rooted in the same beliefs as my work as a yoga teacher - the path towards presence, to our our centre, where our greatest resources, most important answers and biggest truths lie, goes through the body. In birth there is truly no way around it. It is all about allowing a process that surpasses the mind and surrendering to the body’s innate wisdom to manifest itself in the creation of life.
How was your births and postpartum? What stuck out for you.
Both my births were precipitous, so fast and furious, like a force that moved through. They led me to discover great strength, just as the postpartum time led me to discover great softness. My second birth was a free birth during the pandemic, right after moving to Italy, so it felt in many ways like a demonstration of all the teachings I’d gathered during the challenging time around my daughter’s birth, but also the wisdom from accompanying births over the years and witnessing some serious magic. It wasn’t hard to trust the process after seeing what I’ve seen in my work.
What was the drive that made you become a CLC breastfeeding councillor ?
As a postpartum doula I experienced lactation like the most charged and intense part of the tender and raw postpartum time. It felt natural to deepen my knowledge there since much support was often needed. I also am deeply convinced of the benefits of breastfeeding and aware of the strange paradoxical connotations that are held around it in our culture and beyond. So for me it was also about making the power of breastfeeding available to parents, beyond the beliefs framed by patriarchal-capitalist forces in our society.
You recently moved to Palermo Italy where your partner is from how has the transition been ?
I’ve been in Palermo for five years now and can’t see a more ideal place to raise our little ones. We have the elements at our door step, we travel all year around the island, in fact, in five years I’ve only left Sicily a handful times. I love it here, even if the transition was hard, much due to the pandemic, but also culturally coming from Northern Europe I’d say.
What’s the biggest difference between Berlin and Italy work wise and culturally with the women ?
The role of the doula doesn’t really exist in this part of Italy, nor do birth centres. Birth is extensively medicalised, so there’s a huge need for the presence of doulas, but right now the system is not allowing their entrance in maternal and baby care, something I also believe comes down to culture and tradition. Things took a step backwards during the pandemic and sadly hasn’t reversed - still no other person than the father can attend hospital births and often he can only be there for the last moments of the birth, so mothers are labouring alone and unsupported until the birthing stage.
The way I’ve dealt with this is through shifting my role into a more educative presence in my community. If I can’t be there with my birth supporting tools, I need to make sure that the parents have these tools in their own hands ahead of the birth. This means more and deeper birth preparing sessions, kind of the opposite of big group weekend birth prep courses, into a more natural path of meeting the parents where they are at all throughout the pregnancy and provide them with support and knowledge where it is needed. Deep, deep preparation on the soul level where we give birth from. A plus with this method for me is that it allows me to work virtually/online with families all over the world.
How do you incorporate yoga and birth preparation with your clients and how important is it ?
Birth happens through the stream of body-mind (+baby) connection. Yoga firstly supports healthy pregnancy, secondly provides us with freedom of movement and capacity for breath which are two of the most important birth tools, and finally yoga supports the postpartum recovery. I incorporate it in every single session with my clients, even as they have just given birth - in this case, the yoga we are speaking of is taking a few minutes of gentle diaphragmatic breathing in bed with eyes closed to reconnect to the centre and to our base. It’s about restoring and reintegration - it’s simple, done with no force and it’s incredibly potent on every level of our being.
What would be your tips for clients if someone didn’t trust their intuition what are some ways they can connect to their bodies and trust again?
Start by making space where you can tap in to your inner landscape and just listen. Yoga is good place for this or it can be seated stillness, or a walk. It could even be abstract creative work. What matters isn’t what you do, but your capacity of presence because that presence is like a channel. The more you tune in, the more you will begin to notice and the more you notice, the more you will learn about your inner world. Little by little we become aware of the difference between our fears and our intuition and the space between those two, we fill with trust. Think of it like a stream of consciousness and clarity that already exists inside of you at all times and it’s there for you to discover. No one can take you there but yourself, which is also the case while giving birth, so nurturing these connections is the most important work you can do to prepare.
You have multiple lingual children speaking 3 languages ? How do you find this ? What’s the hardest thing
Being multilingual fluently speaking four languages, I find it surprisingly challenging to maintain a balance between the languages spoken at home.
Find Emma here: https://www.birth-of-light.com
