Jessica Jennings, MS, ERYT-500, RYPT, became a Certified Anusara Instructor in 2006. She created the Ma Yoga® Prenatal Certification Program (RPYT) in 2012 as a way to share what she had come to call the “Five Sacred Steps”: the Universal Principles adapted to the particular needs, challenges and opportunities of women in their childbearing years.

Jessica’s passion for teaching yoga to moms and moms-to-be started in 2001, when she was asked after her first teacher training to teach a prenatal class at the first Anusara studio in Los Angeles.

In 2003, Jessica developed and ran a group visit and prenatal yoga program in the Ob/Gyn Department at Kaiser Hospital as a Lifestyle Educator as part of her Masters in Kinesiology. After six years of seeing how life-changing it was for moms-to-be to share yoga, education and laughter on their journey to motherhood and beyond, Jessica left in 2009 to train and help yoga teachers start their own “Mama Circles” in their own neighborhoods.

Ma Yoga soon grew to more than ten locations in the Southern California area with more than 18,000 women coming through classes to feel great, prepare for labor and enjoy their journey to motherhood and beyond.

When Covid quarantine happened, the Ma Yoga teacher tribe moved their Prenatal, Mom, and Ma Yoga for Everyone classes online and began to serve mamas globally.

Similarly, the 85-hour Ma Yoga Certification Program (RPYT) went from half online to all-live online, and has now certified teachers all across the US and as far as Germany and Australia.

The program is a transformational deep dive into yoga practices and principles for women, on and off the mat.

It includes prenatal training, therapeutics for women’s changing bodies, and “Mayurveda” – self-care, daily rhythm and food-as-medicine routines for busy women.

So much more than a prenatal training, “Ma” means mother in just about every language, for instance Italian: “Madre”, Latvian: “Māte”, Norwegian: “Mamma” or “Mor”, Persian: “Madr”…

In Sanskrit, “Ma” also means the highest, most powerful, wise and nurturing, as in “Ma Kali”, the Mother of all Goddesses.

Whether we’re pregnant with an idea, a vision or a new way of being in the world, when we learn to truly nurture ourselves, we begin to embody into our highest, most powerful and wise “Ma” Self.

For more information about trainings for Continuing Education or Prenatal Certification (RPYT), please go to www.prenatalteachertraining.com.

Or, reach out to Jessica for more information at jessica@mayoga.com.