Team Member
Faculty
Menstruality Medicine Circle Facilitator
Trainee Menstruality Medicine Circle Facilitator
Business Team
Advisor
Red School Member
laura tonello
Yoga Teacher, Menstrual Educator, Sexual & Relational Counsellor
From the beginning the spiritual search has been an important driving force in my life; I graduated in theology in Trento in 1992 and then for years I dedicated myself to teaching religion in state schools.
I started practicing yoga and meditation as a child, from the age of 10, with an uncle who was a Hatha Yoga and meditation teacher. These practices have accompanied me in my adolescence and until adulthood in all the major stages of maturation both on a physical and psychological level.
In 1995 I graduated from the two-year school for teachers of Education to Sexuality and Affectivity, organized by the Diocesan Pastoral Center of Verona. For 6 years I held courses on Sexuality Education for adolescents, in the public and private school sector, in a team with a psychologist and a midwife.
From 1997 to 2001 I lived in Manchester, Great Britain, where I deepened the study of the English language.
In the years between 1999 and 2004 I had two spontaneous miscarriages and three wonderful children, then, until 2010, I worked as a freelancer dedicating myself with love and passion to their growth and to the care of "my family business", as I liked to call it!
In this same period I cultivated some personal interests, including photography and swimming, obtaining the City & Guilds diploma and the qualification of swimming instructor.
The integration between mind and body, between bodily presence and spiritual awareness has been an important guide in my path and a stimulus in the dynamics of personal individuation.
I met Alexandra Pope in Milan in 2009. Her work to support the Feminine and to help women discover and celebrate their identity, through a new awareness of the menstrual cycle, was literally a turning point in my journey.
In 2012, I completed the "Women's Quest Apprenticeship” training with Alexandra Pope in England, a program to train and empower women through the practice of menstrual cycle awareness.
Also in 2012, I conducted a specific training on accompanying mothers and daughters at the transition of puberty, marked by Menarche, "A Celebration Day for Girls", organized and led by Jane Bennet.
In parallel to this research in the world of the feminine, my yoga practice has also evolved, through the knowledge of Uma Tuli-Dinsmore and Womb Yoga. A practice of fluid yoga that accompanies and supports women through each of their cyclical phases in life: menstruation, pregnancy/delivery, postpartum and menopause.
In 2012 I completed the Pregnancy and Postpartum Yoga Teacher Training and I am now leading the "Well Woman Yoni Shakti Yoga Therapy" training as an assistant.
During this same period I began to collaborate with the Association L’Acqua che balla, in an increasingly passionate and involved way.
With the association I organised, also playing a role of translator and assistant, several seminars in various Italian cities conducted by Alexandra Pope between 2010 and 2014.
In 2020 Red School Italia was born, together with two dear colleagues and sisters of this path, Elena Poli and Cristina Pietrantonio, leading to the creation of the first Italian training for Educators to Mestruality, according to the MLP model of Red School®.
My interest in the experience of women's bodies led me to deepen in 2016 the study of the female pelvic floor with the training Perineo Integrazione & Movimento® led by Nuria Vives and organized by Mipa. I currently follow women in groups and individually to support them in the functional and emotional recovery of this part of the body. We must remember that it is not true that "it doesn't exist, because you can't see it"!
As an enrichment of this journey, in 2018 I started the "Training in Professional Counselling on Sexuality and Affective Relationship", with Gestalt address, with Ornella Marini and Emanuele Perelli, at the Association "A Cuore Aperto". A three-year path of exploration and listening to the feeling of the body and the heart, in the context of the relationship with myself and with the other.
In April 2019 the impossible has happened: my son Pietro had an inauspicious accident in the pool during a freediving training, and died... three weeks before turning 20....
I have no words to share, in our language there is not even a word to define a mother to whom a child dies.
This experience has been like a Matrix, it has completely revolutionised every level and area of my life, every cell.
Currently, two years later, I continue my activity at the association L'Acqua che Balla in Trento: working with women, starting from my colleagues of the association and the "expectant mothers", and collaborating with the feminine energy, continues to accompany me, even in this new phase of my life, both on a personal and professional level.
I believe in the body, particularly in the wisdom of women's bodies, as a place of consciousness and, together with women, I would like to change this world. This has become my activism.