2016 Speakers & Topics

Dr. Hazelbaker has been a therapist for over 30 years. She specializes in cross-disciplinary treatment and to that end has taken training in several modalities to best assist her clients. She is a certified Craniosacral Therapist, a Lymph Drainage Therapy practitioner, a Tummy Time™ Trainer, a Rhythmic Movement practitioner and an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. She earned her Master’s Degree from Pacific Oaks College (Human Development specializing in Human Lactation) and her doctorate from The Union Institute and University (Developmental Psychology, specializing in Energetic and Transformational healing.) Dr. Hazelbaker specializes in the treatment of infant sucking problems, especially those involving infant trauma. She utilizes the principles of pre and perinatal psychology in the treatment of infant trauma. To date, she has performed over 8000 treatments on infants who have severe sucking and trauma issues.

Annie Brook, Ph.D., LPC, author, Registered Movement Educator (ISMETA), public speaker, and master therapist, has worked for over three decades helping people learn to enjoy life. She has worked as a therapist in public schools, clinics, and hospitals, and been in private practice, treating infants through adults. Annie taught meditation at the Heartsong School, was guest artist in residence for the Naropa University BFA, taught group process skills and then became Director of Body Psychotherapy track for Naropa University, MA in Somatic Psychology, in Boulder Co. Annie left Naropa to open Colorado Therapies in 2006, and founded the Brook Institute in 2014, which trains and supervises MA Therapy interns. Annie integrates movement, psychology, social skills, and the expressive arts. She draws on a vast and broad background of studies that include: leadership training, communications and conflict resolution with the LIOS Institute; emotional integration, transactional analysis, and Neo-Reichian work with Healing Ourselves; in-depth movement, perceptions, and movement training via BodyMind Centering, Continuum, and the work of Suprato Suryadamo; continued advanced touch skills in Cranio-Sacral and Visceral Manipulation, and meditative holistic studies with Native American elders, Buddhist Lama's, and Sufi masters; improvisational Action Theater skills with Ruth Zapora, Playback Theater with Jonathan Fox, Motivity with Terry Sendgraff, and contact dance and improvisation; and outdoor education and guide work with Adventure Associates and Outback Kayak. Annie is certified in the Jin Gui school of Chi Gung.

Carolyn Hastie is a mother and grandmother. She is senior lecturer of midwifery at Southern Cross University and has been at the leading edge of midwifery practice and education for four decades. Her passion is improving care for childbearing women, partners and babies; her focus is on the neurophysiological intersection of growth, development and relationships for everyone involved. Among Carolyn’s achievements are, with her colleague, Professor Maralyn Foureur: gaining visiting rights to public hospitals in 1984, a first for Australia and starting the first Australian midwives’ clinic in 1987. Carolyn commissioned and managed a quality award winning stand-alone midwifery service which included the option to birth at home. She has researched and written extensively on midwifery related subjects, including horizontal violence and bullying in midwifery after a young new graduate midwife she met at a workshop committed suicide in response to workplace bullying in 1996. Jodie’s suicide led Carolyn to seek ways to teach midwifery students and new graduate midwives the necessary skills to manage themselves and their relationships with colleagues in the workplace. 

Gail Tully, is a certified professional midwife (CPM) who began her midwifery studies preparing for a breech baby's homebirth in 1983. Expecting to photograph, Gail found herself already receiving the baby as the midwife entered and declined to take over. Gail is the founder of www.SpinningBabies.com which is a top resource for pregnant women with breech positioned babies and world renown approach to physiological birthing. Retired from primary care, she enjoys being called out to an occasional breech birth. Gail Tully is the author of The Belly Mapping Workbook (2005), Resolving Shoulder Dystocia video (2011), Daily Essentials video, Spinning Babies Parent Class video (both 2014), Spinning Babies Quick Reference (2015), and Breech Birth; Quick Guide (2016).

Inbal Sigler is the founder of Isis HypnoBirthing & Yoga. She is also a certified HypnoBirthing trainer, Yoga teacher specialized in pre- and postnatal, and a licensed doula. Isis Hypnobirthing & Yoga is a comprehensive pregnancy and childbirth preparation program combining techniques of Hypnobirthing, Theta Healing, Chinese Medicine and Yoga. Inbal supports women on the amazing journey to motherhood in fertility, pregnancy support and birth support.

Karen Strange teaches Integrative Resuscitation of the Newborn, an online neonatal resuscitation course which includes the physiology of newborn transition, evidence-based studies, and the “When, Why and How” to provide neonatal resuscitation in the least traumatic way. Her information is confidence-based, not fear-based. 
A Certified Professional Midwife (1996), and AAP/NRP Instructor (1991), Karen specializes in debriefing, having conducted over 1,000 hours of debrief/case reviews with all types of birth professionals. She has taught neonatal resuscitation skills to over 14,000 people worldwide.

Karen beautifully weaves her famous explanation of the Baby’s Experience of Birth through her presentations and shares her “Simple Tools” that can be used for all babies but especially for babies that have had interruptions or intervention during birth or the time afterwards. Karen’s lectures are dynamic and engaging. Come, listen, enjoy, learn, you will be happy you chose this lecture.

Mark Harris is registered as a midwife and nurse. He loves being around people, and has for as long as he can remember.  Having five sisters and three brothers has afforded Mark with plenty of practice and now with six children of his own and 6 grandchildren, he has lots of opportunity to indulge his people passion.
The choices he has made in his professional life have been shaped by this gregarious inclination. Mark has  trained and worked as a Nurse, Midwife, Teacher in Further Education, hypnotherapist, NLP trainer, and outreach youth worker. He still works as a Midwife offering  birth education through a program called, Birthing For Blokes. He states that for him, work and play often merge. Mark is the author of the newly released book "Men, Love and Birth", and together with doula Karen Hall, he produces Sprogcast, which is a podcast about pregnancy, birth and early parenthood.

Maryn Leister Green is a Certified Professional Midwife that lives in Sedona, Arizona. Maryn is well known for her international association, the Indie Birth Association (indiebirth.com), which serves and educates women and midwives all over the world. She has written numerous blog posts and recorded over 65 podcasts on iTunes (“Taking Back Birth”) that encourage women and midwives to rethink what they have been taught, and re-connect with ancient wisdom in combination with current research and knowledge. Maryn created and hosted her first international midwifery conference this year. She is a graduate of the Ancient Art of Midwifery School. Most passionate about physiological birth and the fate of future generations, Maryn has been inspired and taught by the birth of her own 7 children. When not learning or teaching, Maryn enjoys spending time in the Red Rocks, hiking with her kids and dogs.

Ratih Ayu Wulandari, MD, IBCLC, is a bikram yoga practitioner since 2008. She continued her practices on her first and second pregnancy, and got many benefits from the exercises. She certified as prenatal yoga teacher from sun yoga in 2015 so that she can embrace its  benefit to every mother to be . She is also a lactation consultant and work in the lactation clinic which practicing frenotomy for tongue-tie and lip-tie. She believes attachment parenting is the best way to nurture a child and shares her thoughts on her blog http://www.menjadiibu.com.

Monroe became a Direct-Entry Midwife in the 70’s, to empower the women in her community. In 1991, she founded the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (ICTC), the first US-based Black Midwives and Doulas Professional Organization. In 2002, she developed the ICTC Full Circle Doula program and trains thousands of persons, with one-third becoming midwives. In 2012, she received her Master of Public Health from Walden University. She is featured in numerous articles for her work, including the Bill HB3311 (2011)  Doula Report, “Into These Hands, Wisdom of Midwives,” and recently completed the foreword for “Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth.” In 2014, she opened Shafia Monroe Consulting, a cultural competency training service. Shafia receives numerous awards for her work, including the Life Time Achievement Award, and the Midwife Hero Award. Shafia is a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. She enjoys gardening, writing, riding horses and cooking for family and friends.”

Silke has practiced as a midwife in a range of birth environments for many years. She is also a midwifery educator, working with undergraduate and postgraduate midwives. She originally hails from Yorkshire, UK, but has lived and worked for many years in Marlborough, New Zealand, and more recently has 'crossed the ditch' to Tasmania, Australia.

This presentation is developed from the findings of a structured review of evidence, entitled 'How effective is the presence of meconium-stained amniotic fluid as a predictor of neonatal morbidity and mortality?' undertaken as a Master of Midwifery dissertation at the University of Leeds, UK, back in 2005. A discussion of her findings – 'Holy Meconium' - was published in Essentially MIDIRS in 2013 and she has since presented at conferences. She continues to keep abreast of theories, research findings and practice implications relating to meconium.

Stephanie Pearson has a unique distinction in her field for integrating traditional practices in nutrition and herbalism with principles of evidence-based research and constitutional medicine.She is a certified clinical herbalist, functional nutritionist, clinical aromatherapist master (in process), and a professional educator and presenter at universities, and for wellness conferences and webinars. Stephanie’s 25 years of botanical medicine study expands outside the classroom and crossculturally, enriched by field studies in Native American, Western Eclectic, and Latin American herbalism.