Guardians of Birth Ciclo About

Guardians of Birth

4- Month Virtual Immersion

on the Art of Birth Care 

waitlist for winter-spring 2025 is open

Guardians of Birth  is 

“…beyond a birth training, its a step closer to liberation…”

Blaine @sanasanawellness

“empowered me to self direct my birth & pregnancy & facilitated much needed healing for my partner and I”

Alisa @terrabonitabndita

“…opened the path for me to connect to my origins & return to my practice in greater vitality”

Jillian @sacredwatersflow

a non-clinical immersion for those who recognize that our collective health & power relies on the reclamation of our birthrights and who want to empower women and families through their gestational and birth initiations.

 

a series of didactic, creative & investigative opportunities to connect you to what lies beyond titles, roles, and identities so that you can give birth and/or accompany birth processes in coherence.

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You will receive knowledge, practices, resources, and inspiration to support you in becoming a resource to your community. And, it will require you to face your own programming, activate your investigative sovereignty, and commit to your personal evolution.

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Whether you are taking an initial step into your birth-work journey, have already been serving your community as a midwife or doula, or simply recognize the importance of holding this knowledge and wisdom for your family, this space is for you.

"...guardians of birth has brought spirit and balance back to my life as I move through my clinical midwifery program..."

Anaya Wilson, LMT

Join Wait List for Spring 2025

This formation offers:

~17 classes

~4 Integration Sessions 

~2 Arte-Sana Workshops

~3 Breath, Sound + Movement classes

 

  • An integrative & comprehensive understanding of the anatomy, physiology & energetics of menstruation, conception, gestation and childbirth.
  • Preventing or Inviting pregnancy consciously 
  • Orientation to the hormonal matrix of gestation & birth.
  • Holistic, ancestral approach to prenatal care.
  • Health history + Lineage Mapping.
  • Tending to common discomforts & challenges 
  • Physiology & energetics of the phases of labor.
  • Orientation to the cervix as a living & responsive space + benefits and pitfalls of cervical exams.
  • Benefits & pitfalls of natural inductions.
  • Integration of intuitive technologies (sound, breath & movement) in prenatal care & childbirth.
  • Brain waves & the transformation of consciousness.
  • Ancestral rituals + practices to support your inner work so that you can discern your authentic way of providing birth-care.
  • Reflection, Accountability & Responsibility to support women and families authentically and with integrity.
  • Dispelling the pathologized-medicalized perspectives of gestation & childbirth.
  • Supporting grief processes and holistic pregnancy release.
  • Orientation to the Nervous System & Endocannabinoid System and their role in healthy pregnancy and birth.
  • Honoring Placenta Birth
  • Nature as our mirror & how the elements serve to prevent and resolve imbalance in gestation & childbirth.
  • Activating the power of our hands.
  • Sacred Lactation & Innate Immunizations.
  •  
  • Original Birth Arts for personal and community care.
    & Much more.
"Maria's Guardians of Birth Immersion was the most comprehensive and integrated birth training I have received. Her teachings helped me to bridge the gap between the necessity of practical knowledge, ancestral wisdom and my own embodied experience within them as a birth worker. Guardians of Birth and Maria's guidance have helped me to forge a foundation of deep knowing, relative to how I show up for myself, and the families I serve at the thresholds of birth. Maria's mentorship was so very welcomed at a time of transition in my work, and I am grateful to walk forwards with her teachings. 
 
Alli, Birth + Postpartum Care Provider
Canada
“The Guardians of Birth immersion was pure medicine. As a practicing midwife, I was called to join because I felt like the spiritual component of my work was underdeveloped. I knew that the difference between how I practice now and how I want to practice was a matter of introspection and self-exploration. I knew this but I needed a trusted guide to “midwife me” through the process. Aya Maria’s gentle guidance and programming prompted the self-reflection needed to put me on the path to better develop and understand myself as a midwife. What Aya Maria gave me were the tools to uncover and deepen my spiritual relationship to my work/calling. I felt held and cared for. I now have life-long tools and practices to incorporate in order to have a healthy, balanced and aligned relationships with myself and my clients. ”

— Janell Moore CPM, LM

“I remain amazed at the depth of knowledge and applied wisdom that is woven together in this curriculum and how deeply transformative and illuminating it is. I remain amazed at how I feel so much clarity about my path and what I am here to do, my confidence and inner fire of inspiration remains lit as I walk deeply listening, trusting, and using some tools I learned in this immersion. This is more than a knowledge based learning course.. this is also an immersion into our inner world where there is a living memory of who we are and why we’re here.. and we are able to touch that and actualize it into our lives. Before Guardians of Birth Immersion I had taken many of Aya Maria’s courses online which were also rich with knowledge and wisdom that I feel propelled me deeper into the path of my heart— the work I am here to do. With all my trust, I would (and do) 1110000000% recommend any of her online courses and if you can, any future in-person immersions where you will for sure leave with your basket full. <3 Gracias Aya Maria for deeply listening, trusting, and leading by example!!!”

— Wasi Rivera @wasiflora

 

Guardians of Birth is for aspiring, new or established birth-care practitioners who recognize the importance of:

  • Elevating their birth-care by connecting to Original Birth Arts,
  • Reclaiming pregnancy & childbirth as natural rites of passage,
  • Weaving together evidence based science & ancestral science, to provide integral birth-care,
  • Dispelling the indoctrination that pregnancy & childbirth are inherently medical events,
  • committing to their own personal evolution.
     
     

What to expect:

  • Thirteen (17) approximately 2-3 hour long, class sessions (LIVE & Recorded)
  • Opening & Closing Ceremonies
  • Four (4) LIVE Integration Sessions. These are spaces for metabolizing the potent transformational process that is inherent in GOB, to ask questions, share reflections and clarify content from classes.
  • 6 Rituals:
    • Conception
    • Lineage
    • Nesting
    • Protection
    • Earthside - Placenta
    • Sealing
  • 2 Guided Manual Arts arte-sana workshops; textile & clay (LIVE & Recorded)
    • Clay with AYASHAM
    • Fiber with Senna
  • 3 Sound, Breath & Movement classes with Kia
  • Exercises, and initiatives for integrating information in theory and practice.

my roots, response-ability & origin

I am (Aya) Maria Jose Maldonado Leon, CPM, TAMP.
 
I recognize my path of parteria midwifery as an ongoing apprenticeship to the elements, physiology, and the intangible mysteries.
 
Guardians of Birth is an extension of my practice, and lived experience-- where I interweave ancestral, original birth arts and weild clinical skills + resources when necessary, to provide impeccable, heart-rooted care. It reflects my embodied experience of gestating and birthing my children on my terms & coherence.
 
All the content of Guardians of Birth is rooted in the teachings that sustain me on this life path. These teachings come from ancestral plant medicine work, traditional First Nations doctors, eclectic urban physicians, comadronas and matronas of Central and South America, OBGYNs, animal births, the mothers in my life, and every woman and family that has invited me into their sacred process.
 
It is also informed by the activation of my ancestral and intuitive memory through daily disciplines and commitments.
 
The path of guarding birth is non-linear and infinite and for this reason I say Guardians of Birth is a potent opportunity for those on the path, or answering the call, to the healing arts, bodywork, midwifery, birth-death care, therapy, nursing, allopathic medicine or who simply recognize this knowledge and wisdom belongs embedded in the fabric of the family.  
 
read more about my story & experience here

Sessions

all sessions will be available for replay for 6 months.
Each session will open up with an exercise (sound, breath & or movement) for synchronizing our energies & presence through the internet.
During each session there will be a space for questions, reflections and collective dialogue.
Each session will be approximately 3 hrs long.
First Session: Opening Ceremony
  • Introductions + Orientation.
  • Conscious Conception Ritual-despacho earth offering
Second + Third Session: Origen pt 01 & 2
  • Reclaiming our origin stories.
  • Womb-complex anatomy and physiology.
  • Anatomy & physiology of menstruation, conception and implantation.
  • Anatomy & physiology of the placenta.
  •  
Fourth Session: History & Anthropology of the Evolution of Birth Guardians 
  • Overview of the History & Anthropological Evolution of Parteras, Midwives + OBGYNS.
  • Discerning our authentic way of care-giving and guarding + who we’re meant to serve.
  • The art of interweaving ancestral + allopathic birth-care models.
Fifth + Sixth Session: Sacred Systems pt 01 & 02
  • Nervous System & Endocannabinoid System's role in gestation and birth.
  • Father/Partner Matrix and their Preparation for Childbirth
  • Neurobiology; changes in pregnancy and birth 
Sixth Session: Lineage Mapping + Health History

  • Introduction to the modality of lineage mapping and devotional observation for practitioners, care providers, and family units

Sixth Session: Elemental Gestation 
  • Anatomical, Physiologic & Spiritual Development 1st-3rd Trimester.
  • Understanding the culture and law around birth locally and collectively.
  • Benefits & pitfalls of due dates and inductions.
  • Benefits & pitfalls of Medical Protocols & Diagnostic Testing.
 Seventh Session: Elemental Childbirth pt 01

  • Orgasms & Oxytocin

  • Brain waves + expanded states of consciousness

  • Physiology & Energetics, Stages of Labor
  • Babies as active participants in their Birth.
Eighth Session: Elemental Childbirth pt 02

  • The ceremony of labor

  •  Childbirth as a psycho-spiritual initiation & social transformation.

  • Childbirth as a hologram of family/communal health.

  • True informed consent + response-ability

Ninth Session : Honoring Placenta Birth
  • Physiology & Energetics of Natural Placenta Birth
  • Dispelling collective fear body of 3rd stage.
  • Blood essence and sacred offering

  • Physiology and energetics of fluids/blood

 Tenth Session: Golden Hour + Sacred Grief pt 01
  • Consciousness prevents negligence, discerning projections from emergencies.
  •  Guarding the hormonal matrix during the golden hour.
  • Immediate postpartum infant observation + care
  • Immediate postpartum womb/perineum care
 
 Eleventh Session: Golden Hour + Sacred Grief pt 02

  • Physiology and energetics of miscarriage and pregnancy release.

  • Psycho-social initiation into matrescence and fatherhood.

  •  Addressing common realities, discomforts and needs within the immediate postpartum.

 Twelfth Session: Praxis in coherence

  • Walking/supporting the path of self-directed birth care

  • Birth guarding as an infinite non-linear tending to the umbilical cord of continuity 

  • Group Q+A and integration.

Thirteenth Session: Sealing/Closing

  • Spiritual + Energetic hygiene for practitioners 

  • Closing sealing of the bones
  • Initiative presentations
 

Clay: arte-sana workshop:

  • learn to mold & fire the vessel for your initiative *details upon registration

 

Fiber: arte-sana workshop:

  • learn to weave / work with fiber for your initiative *details upon registration

reflections

Tlamatquiticitl, Huachaychiq, Yatuqa, Partera, Midwife, Doula are some of many names for those who carry the organic technologies of Guarding Birth. Although they express themselves uniquely within their cultural context, they channel a universal ability to tend to the physical, psycho-emotional, and spiritual requirements of pregnancy and childbirth.

We are now in a collective time-space where Pregnancy & Childbirth have been absorbed by the medical industrial complex, and most people have been indoctrinated to believe that Pregnancy & Childbirth are inherently dangerous medical events. We see reflected in the failing health of mothers & children worldwide, and the high rate of maternal and infant mortality in hospitals, that this system is not serving our collective wellbeing.

Additionally, we now see the way that many licensed and certified midwives & doulas are conditioned to be agents of the medical industrial complex and are beholden to regulations and laws that don’t always reflect the best interests of women and families. Unless the individual practitioner is committed to honoring physiologic birth and chooses to answer, above all, to their conscience, they simply perpetuate the same fear-based and pathologizing programming, just at home.

Furthermore, in order to truly reclaim birth, families have to commit to the journey of connecting with their lineage history, health history, and orient themselves to their reality so they can make empowered decisions about their birth and reproductive care.

Guardians of Birth is a non-clinical immersion for those who recognize that our collective health & power relies on the reclamation of our birthrights and who want to empower women and families through their gestational and birth initiations.

This space will provide information, practices, resources, and inspiration to support you in becoming a resource to your community. And, it will require you to face your own programming, activate your investigative sovereignty, and commit to your personal evolution.

Your ability or readiness to accompany a gestational-birth journey is determined by your coherence, your embodied knowing, and an organic recognition of your abilities by your community. This is a lifelong path, and the learning is infinite.

In recognition of the fact that we live in times where many compounding factors affect our fertility and the health of pregnancy and birth, Guardians of Birth will explore the art of interweaving ancestral birth-care with certain elements of allopathic medicine.

FAQ

Join Wait List for Spring 2025