Inatzin’s Warmth

Traditional Postpartum Care

  • Mother/Parent Roasting & Herbal Baths

    Indigenous traditions working with water and fire elements for keeping the postpartum body warm to avoid common sickness/wind from entering the body.

  • Mind, Body, & Spirit

    Plática/Kwentuhan (sacred storytelling), Cerradas/Pagbalot (wrapping the body with traditional fabrics), abdominal massage, Reiki, craniosacral, cupping, limpias (energy clearing with plants, sounds and egg), and more.

  • Plant & Food Medicine

    Customized herbal medicine blend in tea, tincture, spray, body oil, smoke bundle, etc. Each offering will be facilitated in ceremony. We can also prepare traditional postpartum foods for you and your family, such as atole (warm corn based drink), caldos (broths), sinigang (tamarind soup), adobo sa gata (coconut milk adobo), and more.

Who We Are

We are earth stewards, sacred space holders, community herbalists, and ancestral birthworkers, with the hopes of bringing traditional postpartum care to our local communities and families in wanting to experience the postpartum period with deep nurturance and sacred rest.

Joyce Zara (she/they/siya) comes from a lineage of healers, community leaders, and cultural keepers with deep connection to traditional Filipino earth-based practices. Having grown up in her ancestral lands of Lipa, Batangas, Joyce was shaped into becoming passionate about learning, protecting, and preserving the various ancient or centuries-old traditional healing practices all around the world–in hopes of reclaiming, re-indigenizing, and striving to be a better steward of the earth each day. She is also inspired by the teachings and wisdom of Mahayana Buddhism, in which she has been a student of for more than a decade and humbly walks the path of the bodhisattva. Through Inatzin’s Warmth, she is excited to offer general postpartum doula care, Reiki-Hilot, abdominal massage, suob (Filipino herbal body steaming), guided vision journeying through sounds, bengkung belly binding, and more. She is fluent in Tagalog.

Rubi Vergara-Grindell (she/they/ella) is a community herbalist and practitioner of curanderismo (Mesoamerican folk medicine). They are queer and mixed (Mexican and white) and grew up on Kalapuya land in Oregon with ancestral roots in Mexico (Central & La Paz), Ireland and Scotland. Rubi gives thanks to nuestra madre tierra Tonantzin, her teacher Maestra & Curandera Estela Román and her ancestors who practice land-based healing and brujeria/witchcraft. Rubi honors the call of her lineages by supporting children to elders in connecting with their ancestral medicines and deeply believes we heal in connection. Within Inatzin’s Warmth, Rubi is honored to bring limpias, cerradas, herbal baths, plant/food medicine and craniosacral for adults and infants. She is fluent in Spanish.

Our Vision

Inatzin’s Warmth is a name co-created by us to call in the ancestral traditions and intentions of our work. We formed the word Inatzin from a combination of “Ina” (Tagalog for mother) and “tzin” (a Nahuatl honorific that means sacred or venerated). Inatzin therefore translates to “sacred mother.”

Through Inatzin’s Warmth, we honor and envision the divine work of creating life, and we strive to provide a warm embrace to support you as you take on the role of parent. Inatzin’s Warmth is not only the offering of our hands but also of our lineages and the interconnections between them, due to the shared resilience and survival from Spanish/Kastila colonization. We embrace the similarities of our cultures, foods, and languages that are shared across Mexico and the Philippines. This connection was not only shaped by colonial forces, Indigenous peoples were at the root of this exchange. One example is that Tagalog and Nahuatl (one of many native Mexican languages) share many words. Through Inatzin’s Warmth, we reclaim that connection in language and in spirit. In addition, we also honor and incorporate some of the many postpartum traditions across all cultures from the world in our offerings. Our ancestors and deities walk beside us and we welcome you and yours to join us in this healing work.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Our sessions are a gentle and restorative approach to ceremony. We provide accommodations for your individual needs so you can be comfortable and present. We follow your lead on what offerings you would like to receive and the intentions you want to set. We will include your baby, other children or partner/loved ones in our sessions if that is necessary or feels good for you.

    Disclaimer: Please note that we are not licensed mental health professionals and encourage you to seek a care team if that’s what you need, in addition to our services.

  • Fill out the “Inquire Now” form below and we will reach out to you in 2-5 business days. From there, we will email you our intake form and client agreement form, then schedule a free 30-minute consultation via Zoom.

  • We offer home visit services in Portland, Oregon and surrounding areas. Please be prepared and ready to have a space in your home for us to offer our services, preferably in a quiet and comfortable space.

  • This is for people who have just given birth (six months or less), centering queer, gender expansive, and migrant/refugee families, and for people interested in reconnecting with their cultural traditions. While we honor the many ways a person becomes postpartum, please note that our services do not include pregnancy loss/abortion support during this time due to our capacity and expertise. 

    This work is for people and families who honor, give utmost respect, love, and protect the profound healing arts of various traditional postpartum care practices. We welcome people and families of all identities, spirituality, religion, tradition, gender and sexuality, socioeconomic, and ability. In addition, we center queer, gender expansive, and migrant/refugee families, as well as people interested in reconnecting with their cultural traditions.

    Our teachers have shared with us that postpartum rituals appear in ancient texts and in many cultures around the world. While these practices are all unique there are also many similarities and ways we can connect across our different lineages. If your lineages are different from ours, we will share our practices with care and also invite you to bring in your own ancestral practices. We are humbled to learn from you. 


    This work is not for people who seek to dominate, culturally appropriate, disrespect, or those who do not have an open-mind/open-heart in receiving these trusted, sacred traditional postpartum care practices. We honor the ways that Indigenous communities continue to lead the fight to preserve these practices from erasure, appropriation and destruction by colonialism. Part of preserving and protecting this work means cultivating a respectful relationship or foundation with us prior to booking a session with us. These sessions are not instructional and in no way give you permission to teach or in any way exploit these traditional practices.

  • We offer a sliding scale of $200-$300 based on income for each session. If you are an existing doula client of Joyce, this service will be included in your doula care. Depending on your preference and financial capacity, we can offer just one or multiple sessions.

  • Our suggestions for preparation includes:

    • Clearing your schedule for the whole day or limiting labor and responsibilities for the day

    • Having nourishing and warming food ahead of time or have someone else take on cooking for the day.

    • Avoid consuming violent and distressing media/conversations. Be mindful of the energies you are taking in a week before ceremony day.

    • Spend some time meditating or finding solitude time and writing down intentions on what you would like to release and what you would like to call in.


    Our suggestions for post-ceremony care includes: 

    • Resting as much as possible.

    • Keeping your body warm and avoiding going outside if possible.

    • Being gentle with yourself as you may feel tender or open for the next day or so.

    • Journal/sit with the reflections that show up.

    • Reach out to us if you need continued support.

    If you are bleeding heavily or unwell, or if you and your family members are sick, we will need to reschedule. Please note that one of us is an on-call birth doula and if we are at a birth, we will need to reschedule.

Inquire Now