PROFILE

Nancy Bardacke is a midwife, mindfulness teacher, and the founding director of the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) Program. She has been assisting birthing families since 1971. In her many years working as a midwife, Nancy has attended births in homes, birth centers, and hospitals. A longtime meditation practitioner, she began her professional training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reductions (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, in 1994. After teaching MBSR for a number of years, Nancy began adapting the program to meet the needs of pregnant women and their partners, creating the MBCP program. Since 1998, Nancy has taught MBCP to more than 1,500 expectant parents. Nancy currently leads the MBCP program at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center. She is also an assistant clinical professor in the UCSF School of Nursing. Nancy offers mindfulness workshops for expectant parents and healthcare providers, as well as professional trainings for MBCP instructors nationally and internationally.

Nancy and her colleague, Larissa Duncan, Ph.D., also at the UCSF Osher Center, have developed a robust research program to study the impact of mindfulness skills in reducing stress and anxiety during pregnancy, reducing pain during childbirth, and enhancing attunement between parents and their infants after birth. Nancy is also in collaboration with colleagues at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre at the University of Oxford in the UK, both researching the MBCP program and developing an MBCP instructor training course. In addition, she is working with research colleagues at the University of Amsterdam and the Chinese University of Hong Kong investigating the impact of the MBCP program on expectant families and their babies.

Nancy’s book, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond, was published in July 2012 by HarperOne. Recognition for Mindful Birthing includes:

• American College of Nurse-Midwives’ Best Book of the Year Award: 2014
• National Parenting Publications Award: 2013
• Mom’s Choice Award: 2013
• Greater Good Science Center’s Top Ten Books: 2012