About Shana

(She/Her)

Yoga and Childbirth educator, trained Naturopathic doctor (ND) and midwife, doula, Restore Your Core™ Pro teacher, Restorative Exercise Specialist

Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin,  Shana liked to write pretend diary entries as if she were a midwife traveling along the Oregon Trail.  Already she was fascinated by birth and moving westward.

After falling in love with the forests and weather (really) in Oregon on a trip with a friend, she had to figure out a way to move there.

It was at the University of Oregon that she began her yoga exploration attending a Kundalini yoga class while getting her BA in Political Science and Women’s Studies.

After college she moved to SF where she discovered herbal medicine, birth as political and a passion for attending births.  She was always a “baby” person, but now she was devouring whatever she could learn.

In 1998 she moved to Portland, Oregon to attend the National University of Natural Medicine to become a Naturopathic doctor and a midwife.  It was during this time of going to school and attending births as a doula and a midwife’s assistant that she fell in love with yoga completely.  The practice was her time to be in the moment, moving her body and following her breath.

In 2001,  Shana attended a Pre-Natal Yoga teacher training with Collette Crawford at her Holistic Prenatal program in Seattle, WA, where she was taught the nuts and bolts of the special gifts of yoga to pregnant and postpartum women, but also about the importance of empowering her students.

Shortly before graduating from NUNM in 2003 she gave birth to her first son.   She soon discovered that the midwife life was not a good fit for her family. Teaching prenatal and postpartum yoga was where she poured her knowledge and compassion.  She knew that so much more than movement and meditation were happening in those classes. A community of parents were educating, supporting and empowering each other.

Since she started teaching yoga in 2001.  She has worked with many hundreds of people in the Portland area as a prenatal and postpartum yoga and movement teacher, doula and childbirth educator.

She has been teaching a Prenatal & Postpartum Yoga & Movement Teacher Training since 2014. She has recently joined forces with Margot Strauhull , LCSW and Megan Peterson, C-IYPT to develop the “Next Wave Birth” Prenatal & Postpartum Yoga & Movement Teacher Training (www.nextwavebirth.com).

Anyone can teach poses, but as it is with any yoga class, it is what happens inside that matters most. Shana is dedicated to creating a space for pregnant people that is safe, supported, educational, empowered and community filled.

Shana has continued her education studies of yoga and movement as it affects fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause. Some of these trainings include studying “Yoga for Fertility” with Lynn Jensen and “Pelvic Floor Yoga” with Leslie Howard and completing the Teacher Training program for Lauren Ohayon’s “Restore your Core™”- a method of retraining your core & pelvic floor muscles to be functional, reflexive, responsive, and supportive. Recently she became a Restorative Exercise Specialist after studying with Katy Bowman at Nutritious Movement.

Shana lives with her husband and 2 teenage sons. The births and parenting of her sons has given her her greatest lessons and have helped her to see the importance of movement, stillness, and empowerment in a person’s life in order to create the life they want to live.