Babies and Yoga

Family Post Article – Holiday Issue 2005

By Deborah Jordan, Yoga & Meditation Instructor

Why, you may ask, would women want to take their babies to a yoga class? Even some of my colleagues at the yoga center seemed amazed and bewildered at why I would attempt to teach yoga with babies in the room. After all, don’t babies cry, spit up, and stink up the room with poopie diapers? I remember one teacher saying to me, “I think it’s great what you’re doing, no one else wants to do it – so it’s good you really love it.”

Stereotypically, yoga is considered to be an inwardly focused practice of breath and movement best learned in a quiet and calming environment. Attending a class allows you to de-stress like getting a massage or going on a mini vacation but for considerably less money. Baby & Me Yoga students actually report the same results because even though the environment is not quiet it can still be calming.

Yogic philosophy promotes the idea that calm or for that matter any state is created from within not by some external reality. That means we are responsible for our own experience of life instead of being victims of it. This is empowering when you realize that with a different attitude you could be having a different experience of the same situation. Parents, especially new ones, meet many challenges: sleeplessness, breastfeeding issues, and communication issues as they bond and learn baby’s signals. Remaining calm in turn helps your baby stay calm when issues arise.

Baby & Me Yoga supports the belief that loving and caring for another does not require completely abandoning our own needs. To do so is to teach children to not be responsible for their own happiness and well-being. Instead, as new parents, we can use our creativity to look for the win-win solutions to meet our needs for adult interaction, physical exercise, and relaxation. Breathe relaxation techniques, short meditation, independent, and interactive movement with baby are paired with baby massage, guided movement, and sound to stimulate bonding and honor the needs of both. This means we stop to change the diaper, nurse, or change what we are doing if baby isn’t enjoying it. We keep a sense of humor, welcome all the baby sounds, and practice compassion with ourselves if either one of us has a difficult day.

I encourage parents to use the tools from class to practice at home. Alumni, Marit Scheiber shared with me that she had found beauty and strength in her postpartum physique. She said the class helped her to learn to decompress, de-stress, and center. Marit said: “As a certified Equine and Canine sports massage therapist, I also enjoyed learning some massage techniques [that] I now use every evening as part of our bedtime routine.” Another alumni, Karin Fachisthers, wrote: “It’s great to find a place that we can be mom & baby so naturally in company of the same.” Karin says she uses the tools from class at the 3:00 am waking to relax Lilianna.

It is a delight for me, and sometimes surprising to parents, to see how quickly babies embrace this new activity. It is also interesting to notice how many yoga postures reflect natural baby movements as their bodies develop the abilities to crawl, sit, stand, and walk. Babies also naturally “belly” breath whereas adults new to yoga have to be lead back to their connection with this capacity. All in all, yoga has a lot to offer families in the way of bonding, exercise, and fun.