RISING MOTHER · SCHOOL OF BIRTHWORK
full spectrum
doula training
A Different Standard of Education For Women Who Want To Do this Work Exceptionally Well
Six months of professional education spanning fertility, conception, loss, pregnancy, birth, postpartum and early family life. Anatomy, physiology, the medical side of birth, neuroscience and psychology alongside HERstory, ancestral wisdom, bodywork, ceremony, nutrition and plant medicine, in one deliberately comprehensive curriculum.
Created and personally guided by Vanessa Lachmann, drawing on 15 years of clinical and ceremonial practice, teaching, and her work with women, babies and families.
Applications are open · Training begins January 11, 2027 · 18 places
When a birth stops going to plan, will you know what to do?
A heartbeat that stops at 19 weeks. A mother whose own mother is the hardest person in the room. A baby who won't latch and a partner who won't speak. A birth that ends in a cesarean, and a woman who breaks down in front of you.
This is the work, yet most doula trainings prepare you for a birth that goes to plan. Some give you a certificate and a checklist of comfort measures. Others give you beautiful words about surrender. Then a birth becomes an emergency or a goodbye and you realize nobody taught you what to do next.
There is a difference between knowing what a doula does and understanding what the woman in front of you needs.
What use is a collection of beautiful practices if you don't know when, why, and whether to use them at all?
The Full Spectrum Doula Training prepares you to walk into all sorts of rooms. You learn the physiology of mother and baby well enough to recognize when to refer. You learn the psychology well enough to stay with what hurts, and the ceremony well enough to know when it serves her and when it would only serve you. Just as importantly, you learn what you bring into the room yourself: your history, your fears, your beliefs, and your own birth.
Become Part of The Rising Mother Tribe
Join us for 6 months of rigorous and immersive training to become a Rising Mother Certified Full-Spectrum Doula.
Every Application is personally read and responded to. Only 18 Places available.
Full spectrum describes both the lives you'll meet and the depth of understanding you'll bring to them.
A woman becomes a mother in her body, her mind, her family and her spirit at once. You learn to meet her in all four.
THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Fertility, conception, pregnancy, loss, birth, postpartum, and the partner and family around her. You understand what each stage asks of her and the people around her, so you can meet her where she is.
THE KNOWLEDGE
Anatomy, physiology, neuroscience, psychology, the medical side of birth, and the history of how birth became what it is today. You understand what is happening, why, and why the system around her works the way it does, so you can help her understand her options.
THE PRACTICE
Touch and bodywork, birthing positions, baby handling, guided journeys and visualizations, ceremony, nutrition and plant medicine. You learn to build your own journeys and ceremonies, and to choose what she needs in each moment: your hands, your voice, a ritual, or nothing at all.
THE PRACTITIONER
Your own birth, your lineage, your ethics, your scope and your business. You learn to recognize when your own story is shaping how you respond to hers, where your role ends and someone else's begins, and how to build a practice that pays your bills without draining you.
NADINE
Holistic Coach & Doula
"I’m a completely different person than I was a few months ago. At the beginning, I didn’t know where to go with myself. Today I see my path clearly, and Vanessa, you are the most incredible mentor on this path!"
JULIA
Photographer & Doula
"I knew deep down that Vanessa does it differently. In this field there are so many opinions, so much judgment, and often one prescribed ‘right’ way. In this training I found something completely different: no judgment, real depth and an incredible amount of knowledge, professional and shamanic, and the way she embodies it."
MELISSA
Holistic Doula & Founder of The Tiny Tribe
"The training changed so much in me, and not just on the surface. I’ve restructured myself, and I notice that people perceive me differently. Even my hands have become more sensitive, although this is an online training, which still amazes me."
MEET YOUR TEACHER
Vanessa Lachmann
Founder of Rising Mother · Osteopath (BSc) · Pediatric Osteopath (DPO) · Shamanic Practitioner · Doula · Mentor · Mother
She built the training she couldn't find.
Vanessa's path into birthwork began at the other end of life.
When she was still in high school, she trained as an emergency medic. She went on to work in surgical, palliative and hospice care, where she learned a great deal about what happens when life doesn't go to plan. Eventually, after spending so much time with people at the end of their lives, she wanted to understand the beginning.
She moved to the birth room and found where she belonged: with babies. Then came six years of osteopathic education, a BSc researching pregnancy related themes, postgraduate specialization in pediatric osteopathy (DPO), and advanced training in obstetric and gynecological osteopathy.
She built her own practice in Hamburg, worked alongside midwives, and treated newborns in neonatal intensive care, as well as the mothers alongside them. Over the years, she's worked with women and families through fertility struggles, pregnancy, birth, loss, recovery, and the messy reality of becoming parents.
But that's only half the story.
Vanessa grew up with a shamanic mother, surrounded by naturopaths, therapists, shamans and healers. Anatomy books and ancestral rituals were never competing interests in her world.
After years of working with women through medical emergencies, complicated births, grief and family dynamics, she went through a doula certification and was surprised by how little the training asked of its students. A birth plan, a breathing technique and a beautiful ceremony were all useful things to have, but what happens when none of them are what the woman in front of you needs?
So she built the education she wished existed.
Today, Vanessa works with private clients, holds ceremonies at life's many thresholds, and writes, speaks and teaches about the places where science, birth, psychology and ancestral knowledge meet. She has taught and mentored practitioners since 2014.
She's difficult to impress with ideology, whichever side it comes from. She's seen medical interventions save lives and watched them become routine without good reason. She's seen ceremonies profoundly change someone's experience and watched spirituality become a convenient way to avoid reality.
Expect complicated physiology explained in a way that finally makes sense. Questions that challenge assumptions you didn't know you had. Conversations about where your own history enters the room, where your responsibilities end, and where a woman's choices begin.
You can expect to laugh a lot, because Vanessa can spend an hour explaining physiology and biomechanics, then move straight into generational trauma, while somehow have everyone laughing before the call ends.
What is life if we can’t be both: seriously deep and deeply unserious.
This work is hard to explain
and easy to feel.
We'll send you a shamanic journey to help you feel into this work, together with the full curriculum and a video in which Vanessa walks you through the training.
You don't need any experience with journeying. You need headphones and somewhere quiet to lie down. Listen, notice what moves in you, and you'll know whether this work is your thing.
Five modules that change how
you see this work.
The Full Spectrum Doula Training develops your understanding in layers. We begin with the science and history of birth, move into psychology and relationships, bring that understanding into practical care and ceremony, while also exploring nourishment and our relationship with the natural world.
Then we turn everything you've learned into a professional practice of your own.
Each module builds on the last, with Vanessa beside you throughout the training to question, practice and put it all together.
MODULE 1
ROOTS
Understand the world you're walking into.
Birth has a history, a physiology and a culture and all three shape what happens to a woman on her journey into motherhood. In ROOTS, you'll study the reproductive journey from conception through early childhood, alongside the medical knowledge and historical context that influence women's experiences today. You learn to tell evidence from ideology, and recognize when a family needs more than a doula can give.
- HERstory and the Wounds we Carry: How women's relationship with birth, authority and their own bodies has changed through history, and what remains of that today.
- Fertility, Conception and Prenatal Bonding: the biology, the emotional reality of trying to conceive, and the first relationship with the baby
- Pregnancy, Embryology and Physiology: How a baby develops, how the maternal body adapts, and what hormones, organs and tissues are doing throughout pregnancy.
- Pregnancy through the Partner's eyes: Understanding the experience of the person beside her and bringing them meaningfully into the process.
- Pregnancy loss and Grief: Miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy and abortion, whether after a diagnosis or by choice. The physical realities, the emotional needs, and how to stay with a woman and her family through it.
- Labor and Birth: The stages, fetal positioning, birth settings, pain, interventions and cesarean birth. Understanding what happens, why decisions are made and how informed choice works in practice.
- The Wellness Delusion: Examining the risks of unnecessary medical intervention, ideological birth culture and misinformation, from over-medicalized care to the freebirth industry, and how to question both.
- Postpartum and the newborn: Physical recovery, wound care, breastfeeding, newborn physiology, developmental milestones and the foundations of early family life.
- Your own birth story: Healing your own experience of giving birth, and recognizing the beliefs and responses you carry into your work.
DEEP DIVE: The Blueprint
How you arrived in this life, and how your own landing became the blueprint for the way you meet the world.
MODULE 2
Intuition
Learn to recognize what isn't being said.
A woman can know everything about birth and still be terrified of it. A partner can want to help and become the person making everything harder. A mother can love her baby and still struggle with becoming a parent.
INTUITION gives you the psychology, coaching and communication skills to respond to all three. You also learn to examine your own reactions, so your intuition becomes something you can test and refine.
- The Anatomy of Fear: What happens in the brain and body when we feel threatened, how fear slows labor, and how beliefs shape our responses.
Inherited Beliefs and Familiar Patterns: Recognizing the fears and expectations you grew up with and understanding how they influence your work.
Matrescence: The psychological journey into motherhood, its different phases, and how to recognize signs of maternal distress.
Nervous system regulation: Understanding stress responses and practicing breathwork, grounding, body scans and anchoring techniques.
Co-regulation: How nervous systems influence one another, and why your presence can regulate a woman better than your words.
The Emotional Landscape: Exploring 29 emotions, what they communicate, and how to support someone in moving through them.
Family Dynamics: How relationships, roles and expectations shift when a child enters a family.
The Drama Triangle: How to stay out of rescuing, blaming and helplessness when a family pulls you in
Projection and transference: Understanding how past experiences influence present relationships and learning to recognize bias in yourself. - The Art of Listening: Asking better questions, hearing what matters and guiding conversations that help people find their own answers.
- The Anatomy of Fear: What happens in the brain and body when we feel threatened, how fear slows labor, and how beliefs shape our responses.
- DEEP DIVES
The Power of Forgiveness
Heart coherence and forgiveness as practices: releasing the weight you carry so it stays out of the rooms you walk into.
Spaces of Love
Intuition, vulnerability, language and humor as the places where love grows, experiencing the essence of love.
MODULE 3
TOUCH
Read the room before you touch anyone.
Touch begins before your hands even reach skin. It begins with how you enter a room, what you say and what you leave unsaid, and whether you can read what she needs. In TOUCH, you learn when to keep your hands off, how to communicate and how to hold your presence. From that place, you learn how to touch: working with the body, supporting mothers and newborns, and creating meaningful experiences, building ceremonies that give shape to what a familiy is living through. You also learn the purpose, limits and boundaries of every practice.
The Rules of Touch: Consent, sensitivity, intention and the physiological and emotional experience of being touched.
Creating Sacred Space: Preparing yourself and your surroundings for intimate, vulnerable and transformative experiences.
Self-Love and Personal Resources: Your own needs and the boundaries and practices that let you do this work for years.
Mothering the Mother: Supporting physical recovery, emotional wellbeing and everyday life during the postpartum period.
Osteopathy-informed Touch: Exploring supportive techniques for pregnancy and understanding the principles behind them.
Birth Positions and Physical Support: Working with movement, positioning and comfort during labour.
Baby Handling: Holding, moving and responding to newborns with confidence and the signs that a baby needs a qualified practitioner
Energy Healing: How to use it in pregnancy, postpartum and loss, and where it does harm
The Art of Ceremony: Designing Mother Blessings, postpartum closings and rituals shaped around her story
DEEP DIVES
Womb Massage
A sensory experience of a guided osteopathic-energetic womb massage on yourself.Find Your Own Medicine
A ceremony I hold for you from my own lineage, to meet the lineage and medicine you carry and the integrity it asks of you.
MODULE 4
MOTHER EARTH
Learn to nourish, and to work with plants safely.
Nourishment is one of the oldest forms of care. MOTHER EARTH brings together nutritional science, herbal knowledge and ancestral perspectives on our relationships with nature. You learn what the maternal body needs at each stage, how to prepare and use medicinal plants safely, and how to work respectfully with traditions that carry histories of their own.
- Nutrition throughout the Reproductive Journey: The vitamins, minerals and nutrients involved in fertility, pregnancy, recovery and breastfeeding, including relevant precautions.
- Cravings and Nutritional Needs: Exploring the relationship between appetite, physiology, emotional experience and nourishment.
- Intuitive Eating: Supporting women in reconnecting with hunger, satisfaction and their changing bodies.
- Medicinal Plants and Phytotherapy: Traditional uses, preparation methods, safety considerations and contraindications during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- Plant Medicine and the Wellness Delusion: Cultural appropriation, commercialized spirituality, questionable health claims and responsible relationships with traditional medicine.
- Medicine of the Mother: Reciprocity, natural rhythms, the elements and the experience of relationship with the living world.
- Plant Spirits across Cultures: Exploring spiritual relationships with plants, their cultural contexts and the traditions that carry them.
- Placenta Medicine: Placental biology, cultural practices, and ways to work with the placenta.
- The Song of Life: Relationship, reciprocity and the ongoing practice of living consciously within the cycles of life.
- DEEP DIVE
Meeting a Plant
Sitting with a living plant, connecting to its properties, and learning what reciprocity feels like in practice.
MODULE 5
BUSINESS
Turn your education into a practice you can live from.
Many doulas undercharge because charging for care work they love feels wrong. BUSINESS gives you the structure to work professionally and sustainably: your role, your legal and ethical foundations, your offer, your pricing, your clients, and the boundaries that keep you doing this work for years.
- Your role, defined: what a doula does, what she never does, and how to explain your work to mothers, partners, midwives and doctors in a few clear sentences
Legal and ethical foundations: scope of practice, data protection, insurance and conflicts of interest
Contracts: what to put in writing, from on-call periods to refunds and cancellations, with a sample contract to adapt to your country
Accounting and taxes: invoicing, bookkeeping and expense tracking, with a checklist to set up your business correctly in your own country
Your vision and identity: guidance on your purpose, your strengths and what sets you apart, describing your offer and positioning
Pricing: how to calculate your costs, research your market, set value-based prices, and say your price out loud with confidence
Finding your clients: building a network with midwives and other practitioners, your website and email funnel, social media and reviews, with a step-by-step checklist
Your business plan: ideal clients, competition, daily operations, break-even point and a monthly budget
Branding and client conversations: a consistent visual identity, speaking your clients' language, and answering their concerns with confidence
Sustainable self-employment: decisions that use intuition and data, time management, boundaries, and how to avoid burning outDEEP DIVE - Rite of PassageA live ceremony to close the training: a journey to meet the birth worker you're becoming, then a walk across your own threshold, from what you're leaving to what you're stepping into.
What you take into the world.
Six months of learning, questioning, practicing, and discovering just how much there is to know about supporting women and families.
Your training concludes with a written reflection and a live partner exercise, where you show how you've integrated what you've learned. Completing both earns your Rising Mother Full Spectrum Doula certification.
Then comes the part only experience can teach. Get out there, meet real women and families, and let them keep teaching you.
THE EXPERIENCE
A serious education deserves a teacher who knows you.
For six months, you study at your own pace and work directly with Vanessa every week. Five extensive modules. Twenty-six weeks of live mentoring. Seven ceremonial Deep Dives. Eighteen women bringing their questions, experiences and perspectives into the same circle.
The curriculum gives you the knowledge. Our time together is where we question it, practice it, challenge it and discover what it means for the way you work.
BUILT FOR TIDES
Your life has seasons. Your education moves with them.
All five modules are open from the start: the 300-page training book, newly recorded lessons, practical demonstrations, journeys and meditations. Plan around eight hours a week. Some weeks you'll devour a module, and others you'll do nothing but digest. You set your rhythm, and the weekly meetings keep the thread.
Whether you're pregnant, raising small children, working full-time or simply living a very full life, the training makes room for where you are. The book, the business workbook and every audio are yours to keep.
WEEKLY LIVE MENTORING
Every week, the space is yours to fill.
Every week, the group meets with Vanessa to explore whatever the learning and life are bringing up. A detailed question about hormones or fetal positioning. A practical one about your business, a birth plan or a woman you're supporting. Something personal that came up in a journey. We work with what the group brings through discussion, coaching, case exploration and the occasional uncomfortable question that changes everything.
Everyone has the opportunity to ask questions and contribute. Vanessa guides each discussion, drawing on her clinical experience, teaching, and understanding of the wider human picture. She'll connect the dots, challenge assumptions, bring in perspectives you might have missed, and help you work out what actually matters.
Rather than a lecture with fifteen minutes left for questions, this is where we turn education into a conversation. The other women in the room can bring their own experience, observations, and questions. You'll often find you learn as much from a conversation you didn't start as from the one you came to have. Can't make it live? Send your question through the private community. Vanessa can address it during the session or respond briefly, and the recording will be there for you afterward.
SEVEN LIVE DEEP DIVES
Some things make sense in your head, others need to be experienced.
Seven times during the training, we gather for an extended live session with Vanessa: teaching, reflection, sharing, and a shamanic drum journey rooted in her ceremonial practice.
01 · THE BLUEPRINT
Return to the story of your own arrival, and the patterns you've carried from it.
02 · THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS
Loosen your grip on the old wounds that still shape your relationships.
03 · SPACES OF LOVE
Feel the quality of presence this whole training talks about.
04 · WOMB MASSAGE
A guided encounter with your own body and your womb.
05 · FIND YOUR OWN MEDICINE
Meet your own lineage and the gifts you bring into this work.
06 · MEETING A PLANT
Move from learning about plants to being in relationship with one.
07 · RITE OF PASSAGE
Cross from student to practitioner, and choose the responsibility you carry forward.
Experiences like these usually belong to retreats. Here, they're woven into your education, with weeks in between to let them work.
SOPHIE
Holistic Doula
“Vanessa has such a unique way of building bridges between disciplines. Her clarity, compassion, and humor make it easy to learn with joy, move at your own pace, and still feel supported every step of the way. I honestly don't know where else I could have found this combination of birth science, HERstory, nervous system education, osteopathy, plant knowledge, and shamanic work.”
JESSICA
Holistic Doula
“The word ‘training’ almost feels too small for what Vanessa has created with Rising Mother. I've gained such an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge. This journey opened my eyes in ways I had never experienced before. And now, being one of the women who carries this knowledge and gets to bring it into the world feels even more special."
PAMELA
Holistic Doula
"I became my own first practice client, using everything I learned during the training to support myself through my pregnancy. I'm 100% convinced that this education prepared me for my own birth and the time afterward. Becoming a mother has changed me in ways I never expected. And I can honestly say that this training gave me so much, both personally and in preparing for birth, that it was worth every cent.”
an intimate cohort
Eighteen women only.
Over six months, Vanessa gets to know the women behind the questions: their experiences, their assumptions, their strengths and the places where their understanding is still growing. That only happens in a small circle, which is why this one stays at eighteen.
It gives room to the deeper work. When personal themes surface, there's time for reflection, thoughtful facilitation, and recognizing when someone needs support beyond the group.
It keeps the mentoring yours. Your questions and your story get real time every week.
It makes the room richer. A midwife's question can change how a new doula understands birth. A mother's lived experience can challenge what a nurse learned in training. Every woman here applied and was chosen, and each one brings something the others need.
BEyond the training
What you do with it matters.
Not every woman goes through this training to become a professional doula. Some come for their own understanding, their families, or to deepen work they're already doing. But if you decide to take what you've learned into the world and support other women, we want you to walk out with more than just a beautiful certificate and a head full of knowledge.
That's why BUSINESS is part of the education. You'll learn how to define your services, find clients, set your prices, write contracts, understand your professional responsibilities, and build a practice that can actually sustain you. Your certification marks what you've learned and demonstrated. What you do with it is yours to decide.
why 6 months?
A course you can finish whenever is easy to finish never.
Life gets busy. There's always something more urgent, another responsibility, another tomorrow. And before you know it, the education you were so excited about has become another tab you keep open.
Six months is a commitment to yourself: Long enough to study deeply, practice, ask questions, change your mind and grow. Defined enough to give this education the time and attention it deserves.
This training involves personal work. Your own birth story, your relationships, your beliefs, the things you've inherited and the things you're ready to question. While we believe in personal development and growth, we don’t believe in taking yourself apart endlessly in the name of healing.
The goal isn't to keep you in training but to prepare you to take what you've learned into your life and into the world.
what you receive
Your Investment
€4,900
Payment Plans Available
lET'S TALK ABOUT YOU FOR A SECOND...
Maybe you're the friend everyone calls when they're pregnant, the same one they call when they’re hurting.
Maybe your own birth left you with questions nobody could answer.
Maybe you're already a midwife, a therapist, a practitioner, a nurse or a doula and you've seen enough to know how much more there is to understand.
Or maybe you've never worked with a pregnant woman in your life. You just keep finding yourself reading about placentas, birth, herbs, ancient rituals and women’s health, wanting to connect all of it.
Maybe you've spent much of your life being told you're too sensitive. Too intense. That you think too much, ask too many questions, or notice things that everyone else seems perfectly happy to ignore.
Picture sitting with a woman who has just given birth. Everyone is celebrating, passing the baby around, taking pictures. She's smiling too, but something about her seems off.
It might be exhaustion, or shock. It might be a birth that didn't go the way she hoped, or the first sign of something that needs more care. In this training, you learn to tell the difference: what to ask, when and how to act, when to wait, and when to bring in someone with different expertise.
You want the body and the person living inside it. The science and the ceremony. You want nuance in a field that loves absolutes.
You've already invested years in books, workshops and courses and you're still figuring out how the pieces fit. Or you've finally found an education that doesn't make you choose between your rational mind and your spiritual curiosity.
Either way, you're done collecting pieces and you're ready for the whole picture.
so, who is this training going to drive absolutely nuts?
Anyone looking for a weekend certificate, a handful of pretty rituals and a new title for their Instagram bio.
Anyone convinced that an unmedicated home birth is the gold standard of womanhood.
Anyone who thinks a medical degree makes every clinical decision automatically right.
Most of all, anyone who wants to tell women the right way to give birth.
Birthwork has enough people telling women what they should want, what they should fear and what a good birth is supposed to look like.
The only side we pick is the mother's.
If you’re ready to learn what it takes to stand beside her, we'd love to meet you.
*No previous doula training, medical background or birth experience required.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS BEFORE THE TRAINING DOES
Your first step is an application. From there, here's what the months leading up to January look like.
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN
Vanessa reads and responds to every application herself, within 2–5 days. If it feels right on both sides, you'll meet for a free conversation before you enroll. Once all eighteen places are confirmed, enrollment closes. Applying doesn't commit you to anything.
NOVEMBER 30 · YOUR EARLY ENROLLMENT GIFT
Enroll by November 30 and receive a private session of up to two hours with Vanessa, to use whenever you need it during the training.
Bring the question you don't want to ask in a group. The experience that keeps coming up in your own work. The situation with a client that deserves a closer look. Or something personal you want to explore more deeply.
DECEMBER 21 · SOLSTICE CEREMONY
We gather live to explore the thresholds of our lives: the ones we chose, the ones we never saw coming, and the strange territory between who we've been and who we're becoming. An evening of reflection, ritual and a guided shamanic journey with Vanessa.
Free · Live on Zoom · December 21
Every enrolled student also receives the Twelve Holy Nights (Rauhnächte) e-book as a gift.
JANUARY 11, 2027 · OPENING CEREMONY
The training begins. All modules are open from the get go. We gather for the first time in ceremony, then in weekly mentorship calls, and the next six months are yours to explore.
If this is the standard of education you've been looking for, we’d love to read your application.
Investment
€4,900
Payment plans available · Only 18 places
good questions deserve
clear answers
No. Empathy, curiosity and knowledge don't require having children. Some of the most attentive doulas haven't given birth themselves.
None. Medical, spiritual or otherwise. We start at the beginning and build from there. Women with twenty years in the field join too, and they don't get bored.
It depends. How comfortable are you with questioning what you think you know? The ceremonial and ancestral work goes deep. So does the science. Vanessa is equally at home in medicine and spirituality, and she expects you to bring your curiosity and critical thinking to both. You'll learn to distinguish research from tradition, personal experience from established evidence, and a meaningful ritual from a practice that has no business being imposed on someone else. Skepticism and wonder are both welcome.
Absolutely. Women join this training while working full-time, on maternity leave, raising four children or none, caring for aging parents, going through a divorce, buying a house or building a business. Some arrive in a season of stability, others in the middle of everything changing. Life doesn't pause for six months, and this training doesn't ask it to.
As a single mother who has rebuilt her life in another country, Vanessa knows exactly what a full life looks like. She was determined to create an education that makes room for women's actual lives.
All five modules are open from day one. Plan around eight hours a week. Some weeks you'll devour a module, others you'll mostly digest. The work on relationships, boundaries, nervous system regulation, communication, and your own history will ripple into your own life. You’ll notice shifts in how you respond to your children, handle difficult conversations, recognize your needs, or understand yourself.
Learning how to support women exceptionally well has a habit of changing how you treat yourself, too.
Weekly live mentoring takes place on Tuesdays. The exact time will be confirmed once the group is formed, taking into account where our students are based. With only 18 women in the cohort, Vanessa can make a thoughtful decision about the schedule rather than expecting everyone to fit into a time zone chosen months in advance.
The seven ceremonial Deep Dives will be scheduled in advance so you can plan around them. All live sessions are recorded, so if you can't attend, you won't miss the teaching.
Life happens. Sessions are recorded and available for replay for four weeks, and you can always send your questions in advance.
Yes, much of it. Presence, communication, ceremony, nervous system work and osteopathy-informed touch can all be taught and practiced online. Vanessa teaches the principles behind touch, then guides you through exercises that develop awareness and sensitivity. You begin by observing and exploring sensation, practice on yourself and with willing partners, and learn to notice and respond to feedback. As with any hands-on skill, confidence and sensitivity develop through practice. One graduate wrote that her hands became more sensitive during the training, which still surprises her. Certain techniques, such as rebozo, are introduced but require additional in-person training to learn properly.
A private community space for your cohort. You can also book private sessions with Vanessa during the training at 50% off her regular rate.
Supporting women and families through fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, love, loss, and becoming with the knowledge, practical skills, and professional judgment to meet a wide range of needs.
You'll be equipped to provide emotional, physical, and informational support; facilitate meaningful conversations and informed decision-making; offer comfort measures and appropriate hands-on support; recognize when a situation calls for additional expertise; and help women navigate complex experiences without imposing your own beliefs or agenda. You'll also learn to design and facilitate ceremonies, support significant life transitions, and build a professional practice that reflects your skills, values, and the women you want to serve.
And you'll understand your scope of practice. Doulas don't diagnose, prescribe, perform medical procedures, or make clinical decisions for their clients. Knowing when to act, when to listen, when to refer, and when to step back is part of what makes an excellent birthworker.
Doula work is not subject to a single international licensing system, and requirements vary by country. In many places, you can practice independently without a government-issued doula qualification. Some countries, hospitals, insurers, and professional organizations have additional requirements. Your certification documents the education you've completed, the skills you've developed, and the standards you've been assessed against. It is designed to support you in building your practice wherever your work takes you. If you plan to work in a particular country or institution, check its local requirements before enrolling.
Six months. If you'd like to keep going, you can stay in the weekly mentoring and keep access to the course materials as optional paid extensions.
You can pay your tuition in full or in monthly installments:
In full: €4,900
3 monthly payments of €1,634
6 monthly payments of €850 (€5,100 total)
12 monthly payments of €450 (€5,400 total)
Once you’re accepted, Vanessa sends you a private, secure payment link. Your first payment confirms your place, and the following installments are charged automatically to your card each month, ending on their own after the final payment. If a payment doesn’t go through, you’ll be notified and asked to update your details. Access to the training is paused until the payment is completed, and the full tuition remains due once the training has begun.
Vanessa personally reviews every application. You'll then receive an email with the full curriculum, an introduction video, a free guided journey, and a link to book a discovery call with her. You'll have the chance to ask your questions, talk about what brings you to the training, and get to know the woman who'll be teaching you for six months.
Vanessa meets every prospective student before enrollment. With only eighteen places, choosing the right people matters.
Applying is free and doesn't commit you to enrolling.
Yes. Private sessions with Vanessa are €450 but during the training, you get 50% off of her regular rate. Enroll by November 30, and one session of up to two hours is included in your training.
You can cancel within 14 days of enrolling and receive a full refund, no reasons needed. After that, your place is reserved for you, and with only eighteen places, a late cancellation leaves one empty. If you cancel before the training begins on January 11, you’re refunded minus a cancellation fee of €500. Once the training begins, the full tuition is due, including any remaining payment plan installments. If life truly turns upside down, talk to Vanessa.
nobody is going to
tell you
you're ready
There will always be reasons to wait. A full calendar. A family that needs you. A business to run. A financial decision worth thinking through.
However, this pull into birth work won't go away. Some things need more than a "someday."
You don't need to arrive with experience, certainty or a perfectly mapped-out future. This training is built for full lives: about eight hours a week that move with your tides, payment plans that spread the investment, and a circle that holds you when life gets loud.
Six months. Weekly mentoring with Vanessa. Eighteen women. An investment of €4,900. A decision worth making thoughtfully, and one you don't have to make before you apply.
Vanessa reads every application herself. If it feels right on both sides, you'll meet for a conversation, ask your questions, and decide together whether this is the right education at the right time.
Our goal is simple: that you become exceptionally good at standing beside a woman without standing in her way.
January 11, 2027 · €4,900 · Payment plans available · 18 places
Enroll by November 30 for your private session with Vanessa.
Not quite ready yet? Feel The Medicine First
wE COULD TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENS
IN THE TRAINING, BUT...
They put it better. Translated from German, lightly shortened, otherwise exactly as they wrote it. Hear what our graduates have to say about their experience in the Rising Mother Full-Spectrum Doula Training.
If you're not sure where this leads
"At the beginning I didn't know where to go with myself. Today I see my path clearly. I'm a completely different person than I was a few months ago."
- Nadine
"I was actually just looking for a pediatric osteopath. After the first appointment I knew immediately: I want to learn what she knows."
-Daniela
If you're wondering whether depth works online
"Even my hands have become more sensitive, although this is an online training. That still amazes me."
- Melissa
"I've never met anyone who holds a virtual space so safely."
- Josephine
If you're doing this for yourself first
"I used myself as a 'test subject' and accompanied my own pregnancy. I'm 100% convinced this training prepared me perfectly for my birth and the time after. It's worth every cent."
- Pamela
"I got pregnant for the first time during the training. I didn't just have my doula at home, but a whole tribe of women by my side."
- Marion
If you've had enough of being told the right way
"In this field there are so many opinions, so much judgment, and often one prescribed 'right' way. In this training I found something completely different."
- Julia
"Vanessa's warm, loving and humorous way won me over immediately. My biggest learning: there is no one right way."
- Jana
Join The RIsing MOther tribe and
become competent and confident
in your doula practice
I'm Ready
If you are feeling the call to become a Rising Mother Full Spectrum Doula, we would love to get to know you and read your application.
I want to know more first
Intrigued but undecided? Learn more about the training and get a taste of Vanessa unique medicine to help you make a decision.