Cat Gieser transitioned from a high-pressure marketing career to becoming a perinatal movement specialist and certified birth doula. Through her Mama Flow Studio, she offers cutting-edge pre- and post-natal yoga programs, empowering women with a means of rehabilitation that goes far beyond simply helping them to “bounce back” after childbirth
“What we do at Mama Flow,” Geiser said, “is really specialized movement for pregnancy, postpartum, and beyond. It’s not just getting moms who are pregnant or moms who are postpartum in a room and just doing movement together.”
Long before her interest in yoga, Geiser was a corporate professional living in San Francisco, working for a company she felt passionate about. Nearing burnout, she began searching for a hobby to balance the intensity of her job.
“I looked up the kinds of things that were around me,” she said, “I found a yoga studio. I started going there a couple of times a week, and then it became every day. And that’s how my passion began.”
Warming up exercises at Mama Flow Studio in San Jose. Photo by Robert Eliason.
Geiser initially viewed yoga as strictly separate from her professional life, but then became a certified instructor and began teaching it on the side, even up to her 40th week of pregnancy with her second child.
However, a traumatic birth experience left her physically and emotionally “out of sorts” and unable to find what she needed through conventional healthcare.
“I had a really long labor,” Geiser said. “I went from teaching yoga to a room of people when I was pregnant to barely being able to lift my chest. My core being was weak from the demand on my body. And my obstetrician, unfortunately, had nothing to offer me.”
Refusing to accept that time alone would heal her, Geiser began studying the mechanics of the postpartum body, specializing in perinatal movement and corrective exercise. Combined with her experience in the labor room, this formed the basis of the Mama Flow method: a blend of movement designed to support women through pregnancy, birt, and the postpartum period, the “fourth trimester.”
Fusion, Flow, Sculpt
Geiser offers three programs that can be taken separately to work the body in different ways during pregnancy. The first, Prenatal Fusion, combines yoga and Pilates with mobility and strength work.
“A lot of women experience back pains and other discomfort,” Gieser said, “The beauty of this combo of both mobility and strength is that it can give you immediate relief from some acute pain. You get the best of both worlds and also build strength and muscle in your body.”
The second program, Prenatal Flow, is, according to Gieser, the closest to what someone would expect from more conventional prenatal yoga, but with a “true Mama Flow spin.”
“This works to prepare your body and mind for birth,” she said. “We actively practice labor positions and pushing positions. It’s really about body and pelvic awareness and the downregulation of the nervous system to manage the intensity of contractions during birth.”
The third program is a fusion of strength training, Pilates, and bar-inspired movement called “Sculpt,” which, Gieser said, focuses on building muscle but through the lens of a pregnant body.
“We give lots of options for moms,” she said, “to really make it feel like it works for their body. All of our trainers are experts in prenatal movement and offer great modifications for anyone experiencing many of the less normal pains during pregnancy.”
Amanda Cullen, with daughter Kani, still attends classes. She is drawn to the “vibe” and said the programs give her a better birth experience. Photo by Robert Eliason.
Amanda Cullen still attends classes, but now, with her 4-month-old daughter, Kani. She said she was drawn to the studio by Gieser’s “vibe” and the style of her classes, and feels the programs gave her a better birth experience.
“With the classes,” she said, “I knew what I was going into and what to expect. I felt more prepared and I definitely think my confidence was boosted. Coming here and feeling seen, heard and understood was a big thing for me.”
Body after birth
The postpartum classes, Gieser said, help women with the major shifts their bodies have just gone through, in terms of hormonal changes, for example, or the differences in recovery from vaginal versus cesarean birth.
There are also issues like the separation of the abdominal muscles, she said, which can be correlated to issues like ongoing back, pelvic or neck pain, or just a general feeling of core weakness and inability to make certain movements.
“We kind of brush it off as normal,” Gieser said, “but those are red flags that our body is not functioning in an optimal way.”
Mama Flow has just launched, according to Gieser, an “innovative” program called the Fourth Trimester Reset —a six-week program for moms in the early stages—0 to 12 weeks—of postpartum recovery.
“The old way of thinking,” she said, “is no movement whatsoever except for walking until you get your six or eight week clearance from your obstetrician. But the reality is that moms are in daily movement with newborns.”
Without reconnecting to some form of physical activity, Geiger said, women may be building patterns in the way they breathe or move that are likely to lead to symptoms as they start to layer on exercise.
“We want to get ahead of it,” she said. “We teach moms how to pick up our babies more effectively. How to retrain our breath to connect with our diaphragm.”
To support those who cannot attend in person, Mama Flow offers remote attendance and maintains an on-demand library of lessons on its website.
Gieser said what she is trying to teach is based on her own experience of not being able to get back into movement and feeling symptomatic, and not having any tools or the support she needed.
“I built this studio,” she said, “to have a positive impact on moms’ lives and then see how confident, empowered, grounded moms ripple that to their babies, to their partners and then to the larger community. But it all really starts with the health and wellness of these mothers.”
Contact Robert Eliason at [email protected].
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