After thirty five years of accompanying families in birth, speaking around the globe Vanessa Brooks director of Daaluzoasis realised there were glaring gaps of necessary knowledge in present midwifery training and a loss understanding of what lays at the heart of the birth keeper.

To serve families with skill, instinct and freedom….

We are proud to present our project to transform midwifery education for a future generation, a sustainable network of autonomous practitioners to support families to birth how,where and with who they wish.

Co director Deborah Rhodes, independent midwife and expert in Breech and twin birth has joined us in the last five years pushing the project towards being a centre of excellence providing balanced training for the birthkeepers of the future.

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Our school is a beautiful of grid temple in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a small village called Órgiva that has also become a centre of home/alternative schooling, permaculture and other inspiring off grid projects, a rich and social place to be, dancing and celebrating life is important to us.

We are truly blessed to live in this incredible place

The fertile land is abundant with oranges, lemons, almonds and olives. Many students live off grid in a community setting living here feeds the mind and soul.

We have gathered the sharpest, most passionate minds in midwifery to create a centre of wisdom away from modern medicine, protocol and insurance issues which stop true midwifery from flourishing.

Rather than fighting a non functioning system, we have created a new paradigm… Starting afresh, being the change.

It’s hard to write about owns own place but here’s a beautiful piece of writing by Scoorne Vikingson

‘What does it take to create a truly thriving community?

One of the most special places we have visited this far is the community of Cigarones. Or should I say the destination, as it is more of an anarchistic valley in Orgíva, housing several enclaves and communities of different sizes, both legal and squatted. Around 2-300 people in total.

The beating heart in the middle of it all is Da a Luz Oasis. A holistic midwifery school built around honoring the mother and supporting motherhood. Training 15 new women per season to become doulas and midwifes outside of the medicalized system.

The Norwegian scholar Jan Bang who have researched eco villages and communties says that the most important factor in the success of these places is to have a greater why. A purpose for the whole, which is larger and more important than the individual needs and egos. That is a wise observation and Cigarones is an example of this.

@daaluz_oasis works as a beating heart for the area, creating a stream of people with a shared set of values including a base revenue. It makes it easier for everything and everyone else to form around it. And it doesn’t put too much pressure on the founders – as the project and mission becomes more important than the personal identities.

This community is built around the one rule of having no rules. This is an interesting experiment making it resemble Christiania with a strong punk and hippie vibe. It feels a bit chaotic but has a very particular charm over it. Actually it is probably the most well functioning communities of all we have seen so far, probably because of this beating vision in the middle of it.

It felt like being Alice in Wonderland as we uncovered the hobbit-like layers of community hidden behind stones and trees. When we arrived at first we couldn’t find it. Not online and maybe «not wanting to be found». But as we found our way in through the community’s open day with celebration, market and open mic, being introduced to the director Vanessa Brooks – we felt integrated at once.’

A little about the director of the Oasis Vanessa Brooks…

DA~A~LUZ oasis was created by myself, Vanessa Brooks, I became a midwife empirically “with woman” in an incredible community in the South of Spain.

Many, many babies were born on that mountain side with the support and love of a tribe my children were born there in my teepee, I knew nothing of birth before living in this unique place I learnt so much here’s a chance to thank each family that trusted me 🙏

I became partera. I studied hundreds of books about birth, but it was the actual births that taught me, and still do 30 years later. To be with Woman in her most instinctual, intimate moments has taught me skills I wish to pass on.

My first experience within a hospital setting was to feed my passion to change birth. A ‘normal’ birth was, it seemed, the most terrible experience, the woman lying on her back, this beautiful mother was cut and her baby dragged from her… This account, compared to the ecstatic, if sometimes long and hard births I had seen, was truly a hideous sight.

This fired my interest in looking at birth in other countries, surely women in more ‘modern’ places were not enduring this experience? Well, apparently yes! Birth practices across Europe were not serving families leaving damage and trauma in many.

I became a Birth Activist travelling the world with Midwifery today, alongside Ina May and her fantastic colleagues, studying what were the root causes of the present birth culture. What I discovered was that midwives were trained in a medical model not at all suited to good birth culture. From this realisation Da a Luz Oasis was born.

I WELCOME OTHER ELDERS OF THE MIDWIFERY COMMUNITY TO JOIN ME ON THIS PATH, DO LET ME KNOW IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO OFFER. X