Colleen Larkin

Colleen Larkin holds a master’s degree in international relations with a specialization in global health from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Colleen has been working in the field of sexual and reproductive health for more than two decades. Her work has focused primarily on reproductive health in the countries of Haiti, Mexico and the United States. She is a birth educator and a trained DONA doula. Her approach and paradigm to birth work and education is from a holistic, somatic, mind-body perspective. In her work she also addresses the systemized machine that birthing has become in many parts of the world, as well as the over medicalization of birth that currently is reflected in negative birth outcomes. Equally she is an advocate for change around sexual and reproductive health education for both women and girls, that largely emphasizes looking outside of oneself to the experts for the answers, with little to no focus on coming into deeper connection with the innate wisdom, guidance and feedback of your own body. This alienation from one’s own body has a cascade effect on the health decisions women make on down the line as well as in other areas of their lives. In her work as a consultant for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Colleen guided the creation of a sexual and reproductive health curriculum for adolescent girls in the country of Haiti. During this time, she was also a supporting facilitator for the Trauma Informed Mind Body yoga initiative with leaders in the Haitian community after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Colleen is a prenatal yoga instructor and is currently participating in a year long trauma informed feminine embodiment training. She is a mother to her spunky four-year-old daughter and currently resides in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico where her daughter was born.