Miranda Jay Began her professional training in 2001 at Heartwood Institute where she graduated with a diploma in Asian Healing Arts and Integrative Nutrition. Since then she has been practicing shiatsu, nutrition and lifestyle counselling and in more recent years specialised in pregnancy shiatsu and massage treatments, at Bella Mama in New Zealand. She has also been a doula (childbirth assistant) and beholds the miracle of conception and the woman's rite-of-passage of giving birth as one of life's greatest mysteries.
A long time dancer, Miranda has embodied a myriad of ecstatic dance practices, namely Gabrielle Roth's 5 rhythms and she is a certified ecstatic trance dance facilitator. She has also undertaken experiential trainings in counseling, youthwork, dance movement therapy and integrative arts psychotherapy. These studies have given her a detailed psychological framework for mapping human experience and an understanding of unconscious processes that shape humanity. Her bodywork treatments are an integration of working with soma and psyche, trauma and body memory. As a singer-songwriter, she enjoys sharing her reflections and revelations through the practice of performing. Miranda loves to sing with people and create sacred spaces for transformation, both on the dance floor and in groups.
Now a trained Birth into Being facilitator who has been extensively mentored by her teacher - Soul midwife and filmmaker Elena Tonetti-Vladamirova, Miranda has found a way to weave together her love of sacred theatre, birth processes and ecstatic dance and delights in offering this medicine to people. She is also a youthworker with LIFEbeat, sharing a creative community model and trainings for adults to work creatively with groups of adults and with young people.
Miranda lives in her hometown of Oxford, England.