Faculty

Catherine Allen is the Founder and Director of Poppy Perinatal Yoga. Cat created the Poppy Perinatal Yoga Training after encountering an abundance of fear-based misinformation and limited support for the challenges she faced during her pregnancies, pregnancy loss, childbirth, and postpartum depression. Cat has taught countless pregnant and postpartum students throughout her 24-year teaching career and has learned immensely from birth professionals and experts. She weaves together all the collected wisdom from her personal and professional experiences to bring you the most up-to-date information for teaching your pregnant and postpartum students. Yoga teachers and birth workers throughout the United States and Europe have been trained in the Poppy Perinatal Yoga approach. Cat is an E-RYT 500, RPYT, birth, loss, and postpartum doula, childbirth educator, Spinning Babies® Certified Parent Educator, and Level 5 Certified Forrest Yoga Mentor Guardian.

Charlie is an authorized trainer of the 3-Day and 5-Day Poppy Perinatal Yoga Teacher Training. She is a bodyworker, Forrest Yoga Guardian, and energy healer, having studied and worked as an assistant to shaman Esther Lim. Charlie specialises in helping people get out of pain and realise their potential. Her passion for teaching prenatal and postnatal yoga stems from her own pregnancy loss, subsequent pregnancy, and postpartum recovery. Charlie worked with pelvic-floor re-education specialists as part of her own rehabilitation and studied baby massage. She is an experienced teaching coach who brings compassion, empathy, and truth to her teaching.

Bridget Boland is a shamanic energy healer certified by The Four Winds, an award-winning writer, Forrest Yoga teacher, birth and death coach, and former attorney. Bridget strives to provide a sanctuary for students to explore their emotional, energetic, and physical landscapes through breath, movement, and energetic processes including soul retrieval and destiny retrieval. Bridget teaches the Energetics for Conception, Pregnancy, Labor and Delivery, and Postpartum workshop in the 9-day training.

Ellen Heed has been educating students and clients about how to attain radiant health worldwide since the turn of the millennium. Ellen has pioneered new techniques for scar-tissue remediation for women and is a leading anatomy educator who trains yoga teachers, Sexological Bodyworkers, and other somatic professionals in the US and abroad. She teaches the Radiant Health for Pregnancy and Postpartum workshop in the 9-day training, covering biomechanics, scar-tissue remediation, nutrition, and emotions — and how each impacts pregnancy and postpartum health.

From a young age, Amber always wanted to be with the trees. Herbs and plant magic were her gateway into finding strength within herself. She began studying herbal medicine in earnest in 2016 with Robin Rose Bennett and finished her four-year apprenticeship in 2020. She was initiated as a Green Witch in 2019 and continues to develop her understanding of Western herbal medicine. She is also a Forrest Yoga Guardian in Training and a Yoga Nidra guide, passionate about education, self-care, and connecting to the earth.

Agbo Ikor is a queer Nigerian-American organizer born and raised in metro Atlanta. She works with SPARK Reproductive Justice Now as their Director of Programs, at the intersection of Reproductive Justice and Queer Liberation. From feminist organizing around pay equity and civic engagement to successfully campaigning for gender-neutral bathrooms at her university, Agbo has dedicated her professional and personal life to advocating for the liberation of Black women — and is grateful for the Reproductive Justice framework she teaches within the 9-day training.

Autumn Leonard inherited a love of equality from her parents, who braved laws against interracial marriage and got legally hitched in 1960. Her work combines justice and storytelling: from Creative Action Coordinator at United for a Fair Economy to anti-racism training and facilitation with Body Get Free. A mother of two, Autumn believes avidly in the importance of play in education, applies progressive-education techniques to workshops for parents and kids about race, and teaches yoga in NYC schools through the Urban Yoga Foundation. She currently runs yoga and anti-oppression trainings and firmly believes that liberation begins in our bodies.