We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elizabeth Alderson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elizabeth below.

Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My business is Travelling Yoga Teacher, I am a yoga teacher and I am also a Birth Doula. I started my business when I moved to Colorado in my late 20’s. I moved to a little mountain town that did not have a yoga studio. I decided to start marketing as a private yoga instructor, that specialized in the needs of the individual that hired me. The majority of my clients where hiring me for either rehabilitation after injury or for yoga as therapy and emotional support. It became my niche. I started to collaborate with a local wellness center. The owner wanted to do a trade. The exchange agreement was, I would teach her and her daughter private lessons and she would let me use her space for yoga privates, and workshops at no extra charge. It was a great connection. She would also refer her clients to me. I would say that 90% of my clientele was word of mouth. I hardly did any marketing other than connection via social media with the community and a flyer I made and posted around town.

I also used daily conversations with the community as an opportunity to spread the word about who I was and what I was offering. It really did stretch my comfort zone and was great practice for bigger thing to come. Eventually, while visiting other towns I would make connections and more opportunities to travel. Business owners would hire me to travel to them to teach yoga for stress management. These would be private one on one as well as company group privates. I would charge more for my travel time, and this is where I came up with my business name, Travelling Yoga Teacher.

Then I moved to Utah while I was going through an ugly divorce. I had to start over. I ended up getting a corporate job for awhile but I quickly realized how I was not fulfilling my hearts desire helping someone else that Ive never met, create their dream. So I saved up money to quit and create my own business again. I got a job at a local yoga studio. I’ve learned to listen to the need of the community and to create something based on that need. The area that I moved to is a family oriented area. A safe area with a lot of big families. I was asked to teach prenatal yoga at the studio and quickly realized how much I loved teaching and nurturing mamas. I also realized how much of a need there was for pre/postnatal care in my new community.

The prenatal class became such a sanctuary for these mamas. They would often describe it as their emotional support group. I always started class with a check-in, “How are you feeling today? Is there anything new you’re feeling in your body and mind that you want to share? What would you like to work on today?” were the questions I would open class with.
Mamas loved this class, I was the only prenatal yoga instructor in our area and I only taught once a week. So this lead to mamas hiring me for private in home sessions. One of my clients that I worked with 3 times a week asked me if I would be her birth doula. She said that she didn’t want to have her baby with out me present. I laughed, but then actually realized that I have always wanted to be a birth doula. I had a doula with each of my birth experiences and I absolutely loved them. My birth experiences planted that seed in my mind many years prior, so having one of my favorite clients ask me to become a doula so that I could be there for her during her birth was an immediate YES. I took the training and got my certification to be her birth doula. I was her doula for both her first and second births. So this is how I became a birth doula.

As a prenatal yoga instructor, my yoga class was such great marketing for my doula career. I would introduce myself at the beginning of each class and mention that I am a birth doula and my goal for each mama is to feel supported during their time with me on the mat, and that if they had any questions after class, birth related, hospital related you name it, that I would hang out with them after to discuss.

This eventually evolved into creating a couples class also known as The Daddy Birth Coach class, and later on a Birth Doula certification course. The DBC class came about from a need that was made know to me after a prenatal yoga class. One of the mamas came to me in tears. She wanted to hire me as her birth doula but her husband didn’t want to hire a doula and felt he could be her doula. She was so mad and from how she described it, terrified. She said she didn’t feel safe and supported. She told me her husband was a great guy but he just wasn’t very in tuned and she feared she would feel alone. She asked me if there were anyway I could teach him everything I know, and could make him a birth doula. I thought it was a funny request at first and then I realized it was a genuine need and a brilliant idea. So I created a workshop specifically for the dads to give them a tool box so to speak, to support and feel confident when the big day came. The goal for the workshop was to make mama feel seen, supported and to may I say create a sense of romance, union between lovers in this sacred space of birth. Can birth feel romantic..? Um yes, absolutely, and from what I’ve learned this moment will ripple into their relationship forever. How a partner shows up during birth has so much to do with how a mamas perspective of her birth experience will be, feeling supported, loved, validated and safe.

Fast forward, I teach this workshop both in group settings, and in-home privately with couples. This has become my nichè. I travel to Hawaii, California and Florida to teach this workshop and also offer it virtually. Additionally, I now have a Birth Doula course, which was also created from the need in my community. So many births, and so many interested in what I do. I would get a lot of feedback from clients saying, “I would love to be a birth doula, but I would love for you to train me”. So I decided to create a curriculum. It wasn’t until my oldest child passed away, that I actually pulled the trigger to move forward with my course. I had been working on it for a few years and after Adrian’s death I felt I owed it to him to do the damn thing. I wrote little sticky notes ” Do it for Adrian!” and posted them all over my house to remind me to just do the thing. So I did it, and now I am certifying rock star doula’s and am in the process of creating a doula agency. I have paired up with a friend, who is a midwife and has a midwifery center and midwifery school and together we are building our birth worker community. With my advanced doula training, proteges have the opportunity to work one on one with midwives and myself, getting hands on experiences at the birthing center.

I am currently in the process of preparing for my next big addition to my career which is expanding abroad. I will be moving to Italy in 3 years. I am travelling there this summer to start scouting out properties to buy a retreat home. I plan to host yoga retreats, and yoga teacher trainings along with my doula courses as well. I am so excited. This has been my life time goal and it is finally happening. My youngest child is 16 and will be graduated in less than 3 years so this is the timeline I am working with. I plan to go to each summer to prepare and find the perfect location. Next year, I will be hosting my first yoga retreat in Sardinia, Italy, which is the area I am most interested living in at this point. I have always known that I would eventually end up in Italy, which is why I have spelt my businesses name the way I have. Travelling with two l’s is the European way to spell it. I am half Italian, so I plan to get dual citizenship and then move there. One day at a time one moment at a time.

I have worked really hard to create community in the places that I travel to. I envision bringing my community from all over the world to my future space in Italy, to retreat, and fall in love with the simplicity of life, wellness and union, with each other but most importantly to connect with themselves.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Elizabeth Rose. I am a solo mama living in Utah. I am a yoga instructor and Birth Doula. I offer in studio and private yoga lessons. I love to teach and facilitate yoga and wellness retreats. My clients hire me to help them find balance. I work with an array of clientele. As a birth doula I work with women and anyone with a womb to help them have a better birth experience. I work with couples to prepare them for birth and postpartum. I teach a couples birthing class, that I offer one on one or in the group setting.

I host Doula Training certification workshops, and offer an advanced doula mentorship program for birth doulas.

My goal for my clients is to learn to listen to there body, to know how to find balance and calm.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think that my story is a journey of resilience. There were a lot of obstacles in my path and I have learned to use them to be the fuel to fight for what it is that I truly want. To purse my dreams, knowing that everyone and everything will come and go and to seize the moment and the opportunities that life presents us. I’ve learned to utilize what may be looked at as my most painful life moments in life to grow and create from.

My story I guess we could say started when I was a teen mom. I was only 17 when I had my first child. I had no idea what I was doing. On top of this already challenging situation, my mother was fighting for her life with breast cancer. She was told by her doctor to start doing yoga to help with stress and to prepare her body for the journey ahead. She asked me to go with her and I am so happy I did. I fell in love with yoga. I had never in my life felt so calm and grounded. The owner of the studio approached me after class and asked if I would like to come back to their prenatal yoga classes. I was 8 months pregnant.
I started taking classes regularly and found out that the studio also provided birth doulas. I had no idea what a birth doula was and was so happy to have found the birth support that I didn’t even know I needed.

My mother passed away when i was in my early 2o”s and it was the practice of yoga that truly helped me get through.
That studio that my mother asked me to go to was the beginning of my journey into yoga and the birth world. I realized after my third birth experience how I would so love to one day be a birth doula.

Fast forward 5 years, my now ex-husband had been living a secret life, that damaged our family. I ended up leaving him in a fight or flight situation with my three kids and whatever I could fit into my Subaru. We went through a ugly divorce. I’ll spare the details but it was through this hardship that I found the fuel to create my own way in life. I couldn’t work a 9-5 because I couldn’t be away from my kids that long. I was a single mom living alone with three kids in Utah. No support from my ex-husband and hardly any support from my family who basically disowned me after divorcing my ex-husband. They are very religious and frown upon divorce even if there is abuse, infidelity and an unsafe environment .

My children really struggled with all of the change, the abandonment and the scar tissue left behind from the abuse. I had to create a way to be around while make money to support my children. So I created my own business teaching yoga privates, and became a birth doula.

Then the hardest thing happened after all we’ve been through, my oldest took his life 2 days after his birthday. He had been living on his own with his partner and they both struggled with suicide ideation and depression. Both had a really hard upbringing with abuse, and loss. My story is so unbelievably tragic, and this is the first time I’ve really shared it. It’s almost to horrible to even believe. My sons partner took his life 2 days before his birthday and he couldn’t handle the pain of guilt and heart break and took his own life 2 days after his birthday. They both died in the same week. It will be 2 years since my son passed away and to be honest I feel completely lost. I am doing my best to not completely fall apart but there are days that I do allow myself to. It is necessary and part of healing.

My son was an amazing artist, and while he was still living in my home, created a logo for my doula work. We had talked about me making a doula training course and he had just gotten a new I-pad with adobe on it. I was so impressed by the logo, but like many things I put the dream of the birth doula training on hold. A year after his death I kept finding sticky notes I had created with reminders to start the curriculum. I felt like it was Adrian telling me to do the damn thing. To live and create. That there is no time like the present. So, I decided to post sticky notes all around my office and home that read, “Do it for Adrain! So last summer I did the damn thing and hosted my first Birth Doula Training. I printed off the manuals, with his art on the cover. I did it for Adrian. I will be hosting my second training this summer, August 2024.

This is a hard story to share but its mine. Life is not always beautiful, it’s hard, and in my case really hard. But, it’s also beautiful. There are glimmer moments, and these are the things that keep me going. One day at a time, one moment at a time. I think the biggest take away is that when life gets hard we can shut down, give up and not live the life we truly want to live. We don’t have control over what happens to us, but we can choose everyday what we do with the cards we’ve been dealt. We can try everyday to get out of bed and try again at life.

I have bigger plans to move to Italy in three years. My oldest will be 19 and graduated from high school. I want to buy a retreat home and create a space for yoga retreats, yoga teacher trainings along with my doula training. I am looking forward to creating my dream, and I am doing for Adrain. I am doing for myself. I am resilient and I will overcome the obstacles by being gentle with myself, by connecting with my purpose and community.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

As a birth doula, my best source of new clients is from my prenatal yoga classes I teach. I started offering prenatal and postnatal yoga classes and it is through these classes that I was able to grow my doula clientele. From there it’s been a lot of word of mouth connections and repeat clients. My story has come full circle, as I found my birth doulas through the yoga studio I attended 21 years ago, during my first pregnancy.

Contact Info:

• Website: travellingyogateacher.com
• Instagram: @thetravellingyogateacher
• Youtube: @thetravellingyogateacher

Image Credits
Me