IAIM Trainers

Meet our truly inspirational and highly experienced trainers in Canada. Our trainers have dedicated their lives to the growth and promotion of IAIM's infant massage program in Canada and around the world.

Sylvie Hétu

Sylvie has been an international trainer and Certified Infant Massage Instructor with the IAIM for over 30 years. She has pioneered infant massage in Canada, as well as in various countries around the world, including South Africa, Hungary and Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Sylvie was the President of the IAIM for 12 years and has been a member of the IAIM International Educational Committee for 18 years. Sylvie can affirm that she has witnessed the benefits of the IAIM program with families all around the world.

Sylvie has a diploma in nutrition from Maisonneuve College (1976) and a BSc degree in Education from Montréal University (1980). Sylvie is also a qualified Steiner-teacher trained with l’Institut Rudolf Steiner au Québec (1998). She has taught primary school, as well biology and nutrition lessons to teenagers, and is an international lecturer on parenting and education. Sylvie is a mother of three grown children.

Sylvie is also the co-founder of the Massage in Schools Programme (2000) along with her Swedish colleague Mia Elmsäter. Furthermore, Sylvie is the author of The Song of the Child (2004), co-author of Touch in Schools: a Revolutionary Strategy to Replace Bullying by Respect and to Reduce Violence (2010), and has a published chapter (The Myth of Early Stimulation for Babies) in the book Too Much too Soon (2011).

Sylvie is currently working on her next two books; one will focus on protecting babies' brains, while the other looks into her “one million miles in the air” following her travels and cultural experiences.

Françoise Lefebvre

Françoise has been an international trainer with IAIM since 1997 and a Certified Infant Massage Instructor since 1988. As well as teaching parent and baby classes, Francoise's also teaches IAIM Infant Massage Instructor training sessions across Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. Françoise has taught and mentored thousands of students for IAIM.

Further to her work with IAIM, Françoise is also an early childhood educator and specializes in the Newborn Behavioural Observation System from the Brazelton Institute, Harvard Medical School in Boston. She is a trained doula and was a breastfeeding counsellor for several years.

As a result of Françoise's invaluable experience working with infants, she is regularly asked to lecture on this topic at events around the world including with the Infant Mental Health Organization.

In addition, Françoise has developed two programs for parents and professionals working with children and babies. The first program is called "Attention", which helps people to have a better understanding of the learning process and attention span in children. The second program called "Understanding Baby's Potential" discusses babies competencies in all aspects of their development.