About Kathy

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Kathy Shamoun, Founder

I didn't get here on my own. Extraordinary teachers and friends have supported me over the decades. The 20,000 feet view is I'm interested in truth, the human condition and reproductive freedom (yeh yeh, sounds esoteric AF). Up close it means: a zazen practice, a Classical Chinese Medicine approach to acupuncture – a modality which offers its own lens through which to understand reality, a doula practice that centers a womxn’s wishes, and bunches of meditation retreats where I’ve turned myself inside out. You can read more about my approach here.

I love everything birth. People often think I doula because I love babies. I do but that's not it. For me, it's about supporting a womxn as she's born anew into someone a little wilder, freer, more courageous, more ferocious. With each birth she transforms. To walk with her on that road is like witnessing a bird struggle and take its first flight. It's immense and powerful and beautiful. I've been that bird twice.

In each interaction, I center you. My aim is that you feel heard and seen. In underlining your agency, I set you up to have an effective collaboration with your medical team and a positive experience overall, regardless of the choices you make. What will endure from your births will not be the way you gave birth but the way you felt. Like the way you felt the moment your doula arrived and you knew you were going to be okay.

fertility pregnancy acupuncture zen meditation enneagram doula facial rejuvenation skin care postpartum depression anxiety

fertility pregnancy acupuncture zen meditation enneagram doula facial rejuvenation skin care postpartum depression anxiety

Having been an active birth doula since 2007, I've witnessed hundreds of birds fly and still I stagger at a womxn’s strength. I am humbled each time I am invited into this sacred space.

Whether it's acupuncture or doulaing, I bring these teachers and teachings along with me:

My zazen practice is influenced by three main teachers: Charlotte Joko Beck, Shunryū Suzuki Roshi and Pema Chodron
I studied Classical Chinese Medicine with 88th generation Taoist priest Jeffrey Yuen
In the 1990’s I began studying the Enneagram to understand ego construct first with my friend and mentor, Marika Dentai, and later with Claudio Naranjo in the greater context of his SAT program.
SAT retreats use a mosaic of methods to understand the limiting patterns that cloud the essential self. Among the exceptional teachers Claudio, SAT’s originator, curated I’ve had the honor of working with: clown therapist Alain Vigneau, authentic movement teacher Betina Waissman, somatic therapist Cherif Chalakani to name a few.
Extensive experience with Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing, or felt-sensing.
Inquiry through A.H. Almaas’s Diamond Approach.
Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems Model.