Whole Mama Yoga is yoga, community, and commiseration for all phases of motherhood and parenthood – from preconception to parenting.

Through Whole Mama Yoga, we offer prenatal and postnatal yoga classes, motherhood retreats, a yoga teacher training and more! We are based in Carrboro, NC and we offer classes both online and in the Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill). Our retreats typically take us to the beautiful coast or the relaxing mountains of North Carolina, but we’re open to exploring beyond our great state someday…

Our Whole Mama Yoga Collective of teachers and perinatal professionals offer a wide variety of services that support mothers, parents and families.

On our blog, you’ll find yoga sequences, tips, and humor, whether you’re looking for fertility support, prenatal help, postnatal support, or community.

We hope to foster community both online (through online classes, comments, blog posts, social media and email) and offline (in our in-person classes, workshops and retreats, through our yoga teacher training offerings, and in private sessions).

Our mission is to provide yoga resources, education, and community during all parts of motherhood. We believe in supporting motherhood and parenthood in an authentic way, and we strive to recognize the beauty, challenge, and absurdity in the experience of being a mama or parent.

All Mamas are Whole Mamas and we want you to know that you belong here. The path of parenthood can be lonely and relentless. The tools of yoga are powerful in supporting your changing body and the range of emotions that come with being a mother, and the community fostered here is meant to help you feel seen and supported.

If you have any questions or your just want to chat, please feel free to reach out to us at lauren@wholemamayoga.com or erin@wholemamayoga.com.

With Love,

Lauren & Erin

The Whole Mama Yoga Philosophy

Where We Stand On:

Inclusivity & Anti-Oppression Measures, Identity, Language, Accessibility, Birth Experience, and Feeding Choices

Whole Mama Yoga is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Any pregnant or postpartum person of any race, ethnicity, national orientation, religion, relationship status, sexual orientation, or gender identity is welcome in Whole Mama Yoga prenatal and postnatal classes, workshops, and trainings. We do our best to speak that invitation and let that invitation be reflected in the promotional materials we use and the language we use.

As Whole Mama Yoga, we use language that is both gender-neutral and gender-acknowledging, since historically LGBTQIA+ experiences, women’s experiences, and motherhood have all been erased or minimized. We believe that inclusivity has to be both gender-acknowledging and gender-neutral, rather than exclusively gender-neutral, and our language reflects both realities, taking an additive approach, so that parents who identify as non-binary and LGBTQIA+ feel invited and welcome and parents who identify as women and mothers do not feel erased. Those in healing and health professions need to use more inclusive language and communicate with LGBTQIA+ families with greater sensitivity and competence, and we are making strides to do so. We know and recognize that not everyone who gives birth is a woman, and we consciously use alternatives some of the time, just as we consciously use women and mother some of the time. As we work to use gender-neutral language along with gendered language embraced by the majority, we hope that you recognize as we do that we are all growing, loving, learning beings. We want what we offer to be of service to anyone who needs it, with no judgement or withholding. 

As white women, we are aware of structuralized racism that is built into the fabric of our society, and the fact that it causes inequality of resources and care when it comes to Black and other non-white women and mothers. We are always self-educating, reading, and striving for more self-awareness as mothers, teachers, yoga professionals, and humans in the area of anti-racism and equality. As part of our mission and as part of our Prenatal and Postnatal Yoga Teacher Training, we believe it is our responsibility to address issues of structuralized racist oppression in birth, pregnancy, and parenthood. We acknowledge that this country was built on slave labor, followed by years of segregation, leading to systemic racism and structuralized oppression of Black people. Unequal resource distribution due to a history of oppression, plus continuing bias and discrimination, lead to inequality of care during pregnancy and birth. This is reflected in higher death rates in Black mothers across the nation, sometimes double the rate of white women. As part of our effort to address structural racism, we educate our students on these mortality rates of Black mothers, we bring in speakers who discuss racialized maternal health inequality, we list care resources for BIPOC and BINW mothers on our website, and more efforts. We know that large-scale, top-town changes are necessary, but we believe the (small) part that we can play is advocacy and education.

We recognize that multiple factors including race, orientation, national origin, religion, and family values, personal experiences and preferences lead to a diversity of views, preferences, and opinions about birth and parenting. We strive to support all experiences of motherhood/parenthood by fostering autonomy and personal agency of mothers and parents, rather than being prescriptive or presumptive about anyone’s experience of motherhood or parenthood.

We are prochoice. We recognize that families need the opportunity to plan, and the choice to have a child can only be made by the pregnant person. We believe in access to birth control and fair and equal access to abortion services.

In our classes, we do not privilege any particular type of birth. We believe all birth experiences are valid, and we make every effort to use the terms “intervention-free” or “unmedicated birth” and “Caesarean birth,” which are more accurate and inclusive than phrases like “natural birth” or “Caesarean section.” All birth is natural and all birth is birth!

We do not privilege any one way of infant feeding. We believe the person in the best position to make choices about how to feed a baby is a mother or parent, and we recognize that all ways of caring for and feeding a baby must consider both baby and mother/parent. 

Our classes and workshops are accessible and available to folks of all levels of income. If you would like to attend our offerings but do not have the financial ability to do so, scholarship, free, and sliding scale options are available. Please contact us and let us know your needs, and we will work with you to determine the best way for you to attend.  

Our goal is to help prenatal and postpartum students, facilitate community, and invite healing into the space of mothering and parenting. If we make a mistake with language, inclusivity, phrasing, or anything else, please let us know. We do our work from a place of love.  

About Lauren, Erin and Alexandra

Lauren Sacks (she/her/hers)

Co-Founder & Lead Teacher

Prenatal Yoga, Yoga for Motherhood, PYTT Co-Facilitator, Retreat leader

Yoga has served as my means of reflection and stability since I began practicing upon my graduation from college in 2000.   It is my constant, and has served as such during my transition to adulthood, various jobs, numerous moves, relationships, and life changes.  Although I had always assumed that I would become a mom, until my son Simon arrived in 2011, I didn’t fully understand the impact that motherhood would have on my life, both on and off the mat.  Now, as a parent of two, thank goodness for yoga – for the strength it provides, the community it creates, the inner awareness it cultivates, and the sanity it offers.

Though, intellectually, I’ve always known that change is the only constant, pregnancy and the transition to motherhood were both very strong reminders.  Yoga helped me surrender to the joyous (and, often, highly uncomfortable) ride of pregnancy, and provides me with (some) presence of mind in the midst of the maelstrom of raising two young children.

As parents and mothers, the pressures, contradictions and challenges can be overwhelming. Yoga, a strong community, and a good sense of humor are paramount to self-compassion and sanity.  And self-compassion and sanity are key (!) to maintaining some semblance of wholeness in the constant quest for balance that is life (parenthood) as we now know it.  That’s the thing, for me, behind Whole Mama Yoga.  “Having it all” may or may not be possible, but the practice of yoga and the emphasis on occasional adult time-outs has been key in my brain having it all together (or, more together than it would be otherwise).  I believe that yoga can help in providing that sense of wholeness, regardless of whether you are just starting to contemplate pregnancy, are awaiting the birth of your first child, or are actively parenting toddlers or teenagers.

I love my work as a yoga teacher.  In addition, reading, sewing, thinking about DIY projects, cooking, and spending time with friends (often while eating food I haven’t cooked) are big interests of mine. I live in Carrboro, NC with my partner, Roy, and our two children, Simon and Laine.

For more about me, please visit my website laurensacksyoga.com.

Erin Hanehan (she/her/hers)

Lead Teacher & Media Manager

Baby & Me Yoga, Toddler Yoga, embodied Mothering Yoga, PYTT Co-Facilitator, Retreat leader

I began practicing yoga in 2006. It wasn’t momentous or particularly interesting. I started by taking a weekly class in a giant multipurpose room through my college’s student recreation center. I found the class relaxing, but also empowering. I’ve never been particularly connected to physical activity, and until I really began to understand the vocabulary of a regular yoga practice I did not realize that our bodies themselves are full of a unique and very special wisdom. 

Yoga has helped me to find a strength and a connection to my body (inside and out) that I did not know was possible. A strength and a connection that I was particularly grateful to have already cultivated when I was approaching the birth of my son. The physical transformation of the entire perinatal period is immense. The introspection, the reverence, the respect, the power, the community of yoga was so important to me while pregnant, in labor, during those early postpartum days and as a new mom. 

After the birth of my son, I found myself shifting and changing in many ways (this is the understatement of motherhood; words don’t do this transformation justice). While adjusting to the many ways life changes after becoming a mother, I received my certification to teach children’s yoga and mindfulness as well as pre and postnatal yoga. I also made lasting and important relationships with organizations supporting parents including Little Dipper Wellness, Tiny Earth Toys and, of course, Whole Mama Yoga. 

I am passionate about enabling children to stand tall, feel confident in their body and find their own unique voice. I care deeply about creating spaces where caregivers can bond with the children in their lives, and I am eager to share how mindfulness can impact parenting. I want all parents, but especially birthing people, to feel at home in their bodies - strong, aligned, joyful and calm.

Learn more about my journey in motherhood and my current class offerings by following me on Instagram at @ehanehan. Read my writing, which focuses on motherhood, mindfulness & play at https://linktr.ee/ehanehan

Alexandra DeSiato (she/her/hers)

Co-Founder

Postpartum Yoga, PYTT Guest Teacher

I became a mama at age 35, after years of having a dedicated yoga practice. Approaching pregnancy, being pregnant, and arriving on the shores of postnatal island all seriously changed that yoga practice—both on the mat and off.

The gifts of yoga and motherhood are similar. Both make us more present. Both make us more patient. Both ask us to dig into the deepest parts of ourselves. (Yet only one requires the changing of so. many. diapers.) Because of these similarities, we can use yoga as preparation for and support for all that parenthood and motherhood require. It’s a tool for the challenges of getting pregnant, being pregnant, and being a mom or parent to little beings who require us to show up as our authentic selves (for better or worse!)

Yoga gives us the breathing space, the thinking space, the moving space, and the being space to be a Whole Mama. Yoga has been a source of renewal and strength for me, and it’s been my rock during the often-unpredictable experience of mothering.

Yoga offers mental and spiritual dimensions, and it also connects us to a community of like-minded mamas. The poses and sequences support our physical, birthing bodies. Prenatal women will find yoga a helpful preparation for labor and postnatal women can use yoga to reset their bodies for long-term health. (My real passion is offering information on how yoga can be a tool for postpartum healing and strength-and-stamina building for parenting and motherhood!)

In addition to being a yoga instructor, I’m a runner, avid hiker and backpacker, college English professor, Pilates teacher, and writer. With Sage Rountree, I’ve co-authored two books on yoga, Lifelong Yoga, about yoga and healthy aging and Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses, a practical handbook for crafting themes for a yoga class or practice. I live in Carrboro, NC with my partner Alex, our cat Cleo, and our daughter Seraphina Rose.

Contact me or read more at alexandradesiato.com.