Philippa ("Pippa") Fourie
In sum
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Pippa is a mother of two, Yoga instructor (circa 2005), and a labor/birth Doula for over ten years. She planted her dream seed to open Sacred in the Round just after graduating uni in 2011 when she was living in a yurt off-the-grid. This dream seed started simply with teaching Yoga out of her yurt to individuals/couples and initiated her desire to use the hand drum as a means for meditation and assisting others. But this sprouted into a "garden" so to speak with many flowers just as businesses naturally do since they are a direct expression of those who create them. Pippa began to understand her strengths and what she needed to offer the world around her and so Sacred in the Round became an umbrella term for all of these tendrils of expression. Thus began the tending of "seedlings", in other words, elements of her budding business called "Sacred in the Round".
Some of these seedlings grew into flowers that continue to garner attention today, such as, Pippa's Yoga offerings; some seedlings grew into fruit that gave forth seeds for future plantings such as, her hoop dance career and the hooping arts; while other seedlings simply nestled into their space in the "garden" of Sacred in the Round like perennials that come back without too much effort on the part of "gardener", such as, her calling to help women during the childbearing year; yet, still, there were other seedlings that germinated over time as Pippa developed in her own path that are still being transplanted in order to find their place in the "garden" where the precise amount of sunshine and moonbeams will help make them what they need to be when they are ready, such as, guiding others through drum journeys, Hoop Yoga, as well as the Red Yurt Project.
To bring into focus one of those flowers that many of you know her as tending to, like annuals that continue to be planted in the front row of the "garden": Pippa's Yoga guidance. This began when she was 19 while she was living and working at Kripalu and then she took this profession through various settings and in multiple countries before settling in to launch a Yoga studio at age 30. Opening a larger studio outside of just teaching Yoga to individuals and couples out of a yurt, was a huge transition for Pippa as it wasn't satellite instruction for other studios, gyms, or groups as it became a way to grow roots and discover community in a deeper way. This studio was where Pippa learned the ins-and-outs of managing a brick-and-mortar business: learning how to hire and manage other teachers, run a studio with a full schedule, teach regularly, and foster a thriving sub-community within the community in which it resided (Jeffersonville, VT) where people could network, heal, and form lasting friendships. However, the pandemic of 2020 basically uprooted this flower of four plus years and changed its form into a studio-without-walls deck & canopy project that will be in its forth year this Summer. This Seasonal offering has brought Pippa full circle top satellite instruction again and you can view her offerings here or hop-on our list-serve and receive our eNews updates.
Background:
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For post-secondary, higher-education, Pippa became a non-traditional student as she matriculated credits from four different schools until eventually graduating in 2011 with a B.Sc. in Wellness & Alternative Medicine from what used to be Johnson State College. She found that transferring schools meant a new way of travel to learn about different communities and more about herself in the context of various school settings. But the path was clear after receiving her Yoga teacher certification: learn about the human body and the sciences.
Her path started in 2004 when she got into her first choice school after high school with the help of her soccer career and attended the small Liberal Arts school in Maine, Bates College. However, it was from this initial time at Bates where she learned to redesign her life entering young adulthood just after the loss of her brother and father. By making the life-changing decision to quit soccer and take a leave of absence from Bates, she chose a path of healing through Yoga and went to spend time living and working at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. This then led to a teacher training program Pippa completed in 2005. She worked multiple jobs on Nantucket to save up and travel the country and the world. Among these travels, Pippa attended volunteer programs, such as, "Cross Cultural Solutions" in Moshi, Tanzania, and volunteered at UPENDO orphanage in a small village called Rau. There she made a good friend whose life goal was to summit the nearby infamous mountain, Kilimanjaro. So together, with a guide and porter, they hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2006.
After more explorations of other parts of the world, returning to Bates College again as a second semester freshman when all of her peers were juniors quickly revealed it just wasn't the right fit anymore so she switched sides of the continent and move to Vancouver, Canada to transfer to UBC. Just before doing that though, Pippa and two friends, whom also lost their father to cancer, raised over $11,000 for cancer research to ride their bicycles from Anacortes, Washington, to Plum Island, Massachusetts - a 4,000+ mile bicycle journey across the northern tier of the US. They documented their trip on a blog called "Leave Cancer in the Dust" (who knows if it is google-able at this point). At the University of British Columbia Pippa attended the School of Human Kinetics where she learned a lot about the human body while focusing on the sciences (and snowboarding at Whistler/Blackcomb).
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From Africa to Southeast Asia, Australia to Vancouver, Alaska, Guatemala and many places in-between, Pippa has been ravenously taking in life perhaps maybe to compensate for the life her brother and father have missed out on. Since she received her teacher certificate from Kripalu, Pippa has thoroughly enjoyed guiding Yoga sessions, both in the group setting and one-on-one, wherever she goes. It wasn't until after transferring all of her credits in the end to JSC in Vermont where she made another professional connection to her passion with empowering women through birth assistance. In 2011, Pippa traveled to Summertown, Tennessee to stay with and learn from the legendary "godmothers" of home birth midwifery at "The Farm" (one of the last standing communes that birthed out of the 60s and 70s). She then navigated down a winding path of midwifery education, attending what was formerly "Midwife International" in 2014 in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala at the wonderful women's clinic called Manos Abiertas. There she also learned from incredible practicing midwives who attended many births and related many important lessons as unsung heroines tend to do. She also attended rotations in the famous birth center, El Parto Natural, in Guatemala City. After some midwifing education Pippa went to Bali, Indonesia to learn from the midwives at the birthing center, Bumi Sehat and formerly enrolled in the Doula International training with Katherine Bramhall, Robin Lim, and Debra Pascali-Bonaro (author of Orgasmic Birth).
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When Pippa moved back to Vermont in 2015, she started growing roots with her now husband and young family. She opened Stepping Stone Yoga Studio in 2016 in the foothills of Moosehead Mountain (popularly known as Mt. Mansfield), six months after the birth of her daughter. After four wonder-filled years of community building, this sacred container and its many lovely teachers was becoming a growing resource for healing, grounding, and connecting. Alas, the pandemic of 2020 closed its doors. However, the lessons of dissolving walls relayed that when a studio "with-walls" limits us under a respiratory pandemic then a studio "without-walls" allows us to see the sky as our limit. This provided Pippa with a lesson in dissolving walls as breaking down boundaries. So, she left the studio-with-walls world and opened the Outdoor Yoga Space.
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Due in large part from her journey through and enduring grief from the loss of both her brother and father during her teenage years, also from traveling into motherhood and birthing both of her children at home, as well as, in being witness to the births of many others through her doula work, Pippa has discovered there exists both a solid guard around the heart and yet the possibility for an incredible opening that can break through this many-layered armor. This heart opening is a place she studies and has offered Pippa's life an unbound sense of Gratitude, a practice that has propelled her on a quest to dissect this concept found within the Buddhist tradition called, Boddhichitta, or one who is a warrior of the heart path and who seeks to dive into what they call the soft spot in the heart that is essentially the crack into our inner Universe.
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Pippa on Sacred in the Round
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When I first learned about yurts in my early twenties I was immediately drawn to them because they were built to withstand harsh climates and stay standing while simultaneously providing a moveable shelter to the wanderer. This turtle shell of sorts resonated with me in large part through the work I wished to share in life and the resonance I hoped it would permeate into those who wanted to share in it. It seemed that my lifestyle as an entrepreneur had many limbs but each extension of my self shared a common theme: the symbol of the cycle of life - the circle. I taught Yoga in circles, I danced with the hoop and crafted dance hoops, I made myself available as a guide during the childbearing year from prenatal to birth to postpartum. Along with drum journeying, meditation, and my deep reverence with nature, it inevitably all led me to the same concept: the yurt as symbol to my craft and services.
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So, when I moved to Vermont in 2010, I sought out a used 20-foot yurt to live in and get to know it. It literally became my turtle shell and eventually my work place. It became the symbol for my offerings and Sacred in the Round the umbrella term. I felt so at home living in a round space that I just knew it needed to be an extension of my entrepreneurial efforts as well because it made me feel closer to the natural world and its sounds. As the nature of yurts are and as the turtle moves its home wherever it goes, I too moved my yurt northward several migrations and established Sacred in the Round in 2011 as my business from this yurt.
Sacred in the Round represents that journey we navigate through Nature's ever-changing cycles, rhythms, and uncertainties.
Services within this business are based on the lessons that we witness from natural rhythms and thus cyclical strategies that we are able to develop and maintain for personal strength and renewal during these processes.
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Where I Come From
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I grew up in Newburyport, MA to an Aussie mum and Dad from New Jersey. My parents taught me the bond of love and trust, strength and support. I moved away at 18 to attend higher education both in the university setting and the vast world of travel.​
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I am now in the Mother season of my life and live as a lifestyle entrepreneur on our little homestead in the north woods of VT. I find myself cycling between birth work, Yoga instruction, and guiding drum journeys. Other times I create and play in the hooping arts and guided nature fitness hikes. I am creatress of Hoop Yoga, the Red Yurt Project - where the Maiden Seasons Journey was born, Pippa Pippa Hoops, and Stepping Stone Yoga Studio. I have dreams to become a wildlife rehabilitator but I have children and need to pay the bills so I am considering going back to school to become a PT in the near future. I value my time and the way I spend my energy so all of the offerings I make, I do with intent and purpose. My oath as a guide through any of my services is to always remind the practitioner your answers are there within you and that you have whatever it takes to bring you closer to the home that is at your very core. My mission through this work is to empower my clients and through that we enter mutual respect and presence.
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I gave birth to my two children six years and two months apart but in the same exact spot on our bathroom floor and in the same exact deep squat into my own hands during planned home births. I went through very similar self-doubting phases during the arduous labors that I experienced but my birth team and birth partner helped me navigate me back to myself.
When I first heard my calling to help women at birth, I was confronted with a dream while I was camping in my tent alone and there was drumming going on in the distance all night long. This dream that came to me showed me catching a baby with a midwife by my side. So I followed this and went to learn from the best of the best in 2011 when I went to stay at The Farm in Tennessee to learn from the infamous midwives there and witness what it would take to assist midwives and laboring mamas during childbirth. From there my journey took me to Guatemala to study under midwives at Manos Abiertas and El Parto Natural, and then to Bali with DONA International and Bumi Sehat. Intermittently I attended births and navigated my way to understanding what it means to be a hand for someone to hold during the process that is childbirth. This process is a very personal path and one that only the laboring woman can walk on her own. However, with the making of a solid birth team, that journey can be a very positive experience.
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The Yoga I Practice, I Teach
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I have taught Yoga for about sixteen years and practiced since I was a teenager initially to navigate the athlete body. I hold a Bachelor("ette") of Science in Wellness and Alternative Medicine and I have spent the years following this degree devoted to my entrepreneurial lifestyle and development in/ study of woman-centered childbirth assistance and sacred female well-being from various programs, wo-mentorships, and self-study.
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My teaching style is said to emerge from a place of intuition, an awareness of the energy and limitations of those present, and from a foundation of the safety and efficacy of proper alignment with an emphasis on breathwork. At age sixteen, my father introduced me to my first Yoga teacher, Pam Britton. My Dad, often the only man in attendance, would moan and groan making the women practitioners giggle. Pam would embrace these "coo"s and integrate them within her class as if it were all a part of what she wanted to say and left a forever imprint on my own teaching style. If it wasn't from my father, it was Pam who taught me the importance of maintaining a sense of humor in one's spiritual practice. She also guided me to Kripalu where during the winter of 2004/5, I lived and worked in exchange for a deeper practice and understanding of the Yogic world, and it was there I enrolled in and received a Yoga Teacher certification at the age of 19.
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Experience and Related Trainings
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Pippa graduated high school in 2004 as a major athlete in both soccer and lacrosse. It was soccer that gave her a nudge towards Bates College where she attempted to begin College after the loss of her father but quickly learned it was too soon and took time off to stay and work at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health where she received her Yoga teacher certification in 2005.
Since her Yoga certification in 2005, Pippa has taught Yoga asana, pranayama, and meditation to many people of various levels at studios and schools throughout the world (Australia, Tanzania, California, Massachusetts, and Vermont).
She received her Bachelor of Science in Wellness & Alternative Medicine at Johnson State College, Vermont, in 2011, but also studied the ways of the human body, "Human Kinetics" (University of British Columbia in 2009), and the multi-dimensional Liberal Arts (Bates College in 2004-06) for a well-rounded academic background.
Pippa is a Dona Internationally trained Labor & Birth Doula (Bali, 2014), a certified prenatal Yoga teacher (Prenatal Method, 2014), post-natal fitness guide, and lifestyle entrepreneur (starting with the up cycled dance hoops she made from disposed sugaring equipment called Pippa Pippa Hoops, she was co-founder of Green Mountain Hoop Troop a group that encouraged free hoop dance gatherings and choreographed performances throughout VT, through to Stepping Stone Yoga studio, and Sacred in the Round).
Pippa owned, managed, and taught regularly at Stepping Stone Yoga studio in Jeffersonville, Vermont from 2016-2021 (when the pandemic closed its doors). During the life of Stepping Stone Yoga Studio, with the help of some good friends and her life partner, Pippa birthed the Red Yurt Project, her contribution to the worldwide effort in healing the sacred feminine through events and gatherings, and the Yoga-studio-without walls concept of an outdoor Yoga deck that seeks to dissolve metaphorical barriers to economic inequality in the wellness field.
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Pippa collaborated over the years with Birth, Love, Family in her efforts to empower girls and women, and, from her private wo-mentorship with teacher Jane Hardwicke Collings, she has developed a curriculum for a 2 year program for girls entering womanhood called the Maiden Seasons Program.
Pippa enjoys beating the drum to help others journey through the inner dimensions of self and inward processing. This is a tool she learned from attending Jane's workshops and wo-mentorship and has since developed her technique over time with private and group drum journeys. She believes that the drum has a place in all human's hands and transcends the limitations of cultural appropriation if done so respectfully and without use of specific cultural techniques.
Creator and founder of Sacred in the Round, Hoop Yoga, Pippa Hippa Hoops and co-creator of Green Mountain Hoop Troop, Pippa promotes hoop dance as a form of self-expression, using the artful and playful connection with the hoop as an intimate dance partner, and as a tool for meditation.
Hoop Dance:
Taught hoop dance at the Artful Cup studio in Jeffersonville to adult women 2010
Taught in Cambridge Elementary's 21st century Enrichment program 2011-2012
Hosted a hoop-making workshop at Johnson State College 2011
Performed at Dealer.com's spring 2012 spring party
Performed with Conscious Roots at Nectar's Pub in Burlington 2012
Choreographed and coordinated Evolution Yoga's Burlington Art Hop hoop dance performance 2013
Part of The Human Canvas' performance at Magic Hat's Halloween Party at the Echo center in Burlington 2013
2014 Project with youth in Guatemala
Performer/choreographer at Celsius Winter Burn in Jericho, Vermont (December 2014)
Returning teacher at Frendly Gathering
Returning teacher at Vermont Dance Festival
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GRATITUDE
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"We must always honor those who have contributed to our path... I would first like to thank my mother, Christine Dahlsen, for showing me support, resilience, and constant compassion above all else. to my grandmother, Evelyn Dorfman, for modeling to me what strength is and how to age with grace. To my teacher, Jane Hardwicke Collings, for inspiring me to remember the ways of the Moon and helping me edit my Maiden Season Program. To all the teachers I have learned from, from Lisa (Joy) Lottie for showing me that there are no limits to hoop dancing and one must "just go out there and perform!" to those who have contributed to encouraging me on my path to find my dreams and live free, including the inspiration I gain every day from my two children, my husband, and my dog. To my students who enjoy my guidance and keep it real with me. To this life, this gift, the unknown.