Julia Mannes will help you feel confident and comfortable during your birth, and help your family get off to a good start.  She is a professional doula certified by DONA International and offers down-to-earth counseling, education, and bodywork for pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood. Julia is also a vinyasa yoga instructor specializing in prenatal and parent-baby yoga. She is skilled in acupressure, massage, photography, babycare, and bringing ritual to lifecycle events.  Julia has supported hundreds of new families through her yoga classes and has attended births at all major birth facilities and homes around NYC.  She also hosts new mother circles, and teaches workshops in babywearing, holistic newborn care, and comfort measures for birth.  A native New Yorker who has traveled and lived in Israel, Morocco, Australia, and Europe, she received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Vassar College and worked in the music business for many years. But it was close to home where she answered the call to serve budding families in NYC. Julia served as Marketing Director for The Birth Survey and Ambassador with Choices In Childbirth, and currently volunteers with Bronx Doulas and Harlem Hospital.  She has completed continuing education in women’s endocrinology and fertility, essential midwifery skills, optimal fetal positioning, hypnobirthing, nonviolent communication, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Thai yoga massage, increasing abdominal strength and pelvic stability, nurturing families through perinatal loss, and risk reduction for medically necessary cesareans.  She is trained as a lactation counselor, soon to be certified, and is currently working toward her childbirth educator certification.  She became a mother herself after working for years in this field and laughingly learned how the actual experience connects to the theoretical.  Julia also offers private prenatal yoga classes through BirthFocus and is very happy to be a part of this doula community.