Sara Zia

Since graduating from UVA with her MA in Philosophy in 2009 Sara has been a full-time yoga teacher at Hot Yoga Charlottesville. Sara’s passion for supporting birthing people in their childbearing year took root when she attended prenatal yoga training in 2011 during her tenure as assistant manager at Bend Yoga. She currently teaches prenatal yoga at ACAC and continues to lead yoga full-time at HYC, as well as at our local women’s prison. She began her training to become a midwife in 2013 and joined Bright Birthing as a full-spectrum doula the following year. Since then, Sara has attended many births as doula and community birth student midwife in the Charlottesville Area.

Sara apprentices as student midwife under the supervision of Kelly Sicoli at C’ville Midwifery. She completed a month long residency as primary midwife under supervision at a high-volume birth center in Utah in March of 2019.

With a deep passion for serving incarcerated people, especially incarcerated mothers, Sara is currently working with local and state prison officials to create the first Virginia Prison Birth Project.  Sara has drafted an initiative for gender sensitive, trauma-informed childbearing year education as well as doula-supported birth and postpartum care for incarcerated mothers at our local prison.  She is also working to expand their lactation support program so that all willing incarcerated mothers at our local prison can pump their breast milk and have it shipped to their infants. This work is slow and steady and full of promise.  

In her spare time, Sara loves to feed the people in her life, to create community, to chase her little girl around town and to travel the world when she is not on-call.

Each birth Sara has attended to date has been an unprecedented gift; she can't imagine not being on this path. Sara is grateful and honored to be present with a woman in all her beauty as she claims her power, and then, at that miraculous intersection where soul meets body in breath--when a new baby, a new mother and a new family is born.

Sara is currently attending births as a doula and rising midwife. Email her for consultation information at sz3d@virginia.edu