A Liverpool yoga teacher who introduced the city’s first pregnancy-focused classes twenty years ago is now supporting three generations of local women as demand for women’s health and wellbeing support continues to grow.
Jenni Jones, who lives in Crosby, began teaching pregnancy yoga in 2005 at a time when most people in Liverpool had never heard of classes tailored specifically to expectant mums. She remembers launching her first session just weeks after becoming a mum herself and wondering if anyone would turn up.
Within a fortnight the classes were full, and word quickly spread through midwives, community groups and women recommending it to each other.
Since then, more than 16,000 women across Merseyside have passed through her classes at venues including Liverpool Women’s Hospital, St Hilda’s School, community centres in Crosby and West Derby, and online. Many women she supported in her early years are still practising with her today, and she is now seeing their daughters join her pregnancy and women’s yoga sessions.
Jenni said:
“When I started, pregnancy yoga wasn’t known in the city. People didn’t know what it was or whether it would be suitable. Over the years I’ve seen women through their first pregnancy and then their second, third, fourth and fifth. Now I’m meeting daughters of women I supported twenty years ago, which feels incredibly special.”
Alongside pregnancy yoga, Jenni has spent the last two decades training in women’s health and supporting women through major life transitions. Her work now includes baby massage, baby yoga, women’s practice for different stages of adulthood, meditation, breathwork, one to one fertility sessions and seasonal retreats in North Wales. She is also a doula and has been present at more than 100 births in Liverpool.
She said:
“Women carry so much. They are juggling work, family, caring responsibilities, huge emotional loads and the pressure to be constantly on. My work is about helping women get out of their heads and back into their bodies. Deep rest and steady breathing are incredibly healing for the nervous system. Women need a safe place to land.”
Over the years her classes have become known for the long-lasting relationships formed on the mats, with some groups of mums still meeting almost two decades after first practising together.
As yoga has grown across the UK, Jenni says demand for women’s-specific support has grown with it:
“For women to feel connected to themselves again, that is what keeps bringing people back. Yoga has become far more widely understood, but the heart of it for me has always been the same: giving women space to breathe, feel supported and find their own rhythm.”
Jenni’s 2026 programme will include new six-week pregnancy courses at Liverpool Women’s and St Hilda’s School, baby classes in West Derby Village, women’s practice across Crosby and South Liverpool, online sessions and four Shakti retreat weekends in North Wales. Booking opens in January.
For more information on Jenni or her upcoming classes, visit the website (pregnancy, birth & babies) and here (for all of her women’s classes).
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