Dr Françoise Freedman is the Founder and Director of Birthlight. She is a pioneer, Senior Yoga Teacher, acclaimed writer and lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Françoise interlaces her academic research at Cambridge with Birthlight’s mission. She combines her expertise as a senior yoga teacher, swimmer and birth attendant with new ideas to open up fresh thinking and develop innovative Birthlight yoga practices.
During her post-doctoral fieldwork as an anthropologist in Peruvian Amazonia, Françoise was deeply inspired by her initiation from a shaman midwife. The experience of living with rainforest people for her first two pregnancies was life-changing and led to the formation of Birthlight in 1984.
Dr Françoise Freedman is recognized as the “Grandmother of Water Babies” around the world for her groundbreaking ideas and developments in baby swimming and baby yoga. She is an accomplished writer and has published ten books internationally: Aqua Yoga for Pregnancy (1998), Baby Yoga (2000), Postnatal Yoga: Strengthening Body And Spirit After Birth (2000), Water Babies: Teach Your Baby The Joys of Water – From Newborn Floating to Toddler Swimming (2001), Yoga for Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond (2004), Yoga for New Mothers (2005), Yoga & Pilates for Everyone (2005), How to Teach Your Baby To Swim (2010), Yoga for Mother and Baby (2010) and Step-By-Step Yoga For Conception, Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond (2013).
Françoise’s vision to inspire a holistic approach to pregnancy, birth and parenting that connects the best clinical practice with indigenous wisdom remains her priority. She is a mother of four and a grandmother and considers caring for her family her finest achievement of all.