Growing Together with Family Yoga
Raucous giggling, rolling about the floor and swinging through the air to the accompaniment of hysterical laughter are not activities that many people associate with a yoga class. However these can all be regular features of toddlers and parents yoga sessions. But then, so can the more traditional yogic sounds of chanting and rhythmic breathing. With family yoga sessions, all the usual protocols are abandoned, class planning goes out of the window, and creative improvisation makes every session unique.
Yoga provides an astonishingly diverse range of practices that can engage
and challenge the minds, bodies and sp irit of parents, babies, toddlers
and children. At each stage of development - from the unborn baby in the
womb through to her school-age siblings, from rookie first-time parents to
experienced mums and dads who've cheerfully weatherd five waves of toddlerhood
- yoga is a fantastic way for family members to learn from each other and
grow with each other.
The learning process with family yoga is mutually inspiring and energising, and the best place to practice yoga with your family is right at home, in bite-sized chunks that fit in with your family's daily activities. In the following paragraphs I outline a few key yoga practices that are appropriate for the early stages of the parenting adventure.
Before birth
Even before the baby is born, rhythmic full yogic breath and resonant humming and chanting have a powerfully calming effect on the wriggler within. Many newly delivered mums who practiced yoga during pregnancy are delighted to discover that their little son or daughter evidently remembers the sounds of the pre-birth yoga practices, and canny new parents can put this fond remembrance of sounds from the womb to good use: "She instantly stops crying when she hears those Om chants" they say. It's as if the yoga practice gives the mum a special 'sound bond' with her new born.
Many of the asanas (postures) from pregnancy yoga, especially when practiced regularly in the last few weeks before the birth, not only maintain ease of mobility in the heavily pregnant body, but also assist the baby to move into an optimal position for easeful delivery. Practices on all fours (like the cat, or the hare pose relaxation posture) can encourage the baby to move to the occiput anterior position. With the baby's chin tucked in, and the spine curved forward and leftwards, both the mother and baby's birthing experience is often shorter and less stressful than otherwise.
Baby yoga
I've written here before about the mutual benefits of parent and baby yoga
in the first few months following birth, when babies enjoy gentle passive
stretches and rhythmic movements with singing, whilst mothers can use specific
post-natal recovery asanas (postures) to counteract post-birth aches and
pains, and offset the twin stresses of feeding and carrying their babies.
Integrated mother-and-baby practices, where the adults and baby move together,
are a hugely enjoyable way to deepen and develop bonding and understanding.
As the rapidly changing infant hurtles through one developmental stage after the next, the relaxed intimacy that's fostered through shared yoga sessions can provide parents and child with a firm foundation from which to step into the vastly different world which they enter when that imobile infant becomes a busy toddler on the move.
Toddlers
At the toddler stage, what parents need most from family yoga sessions is twofold: on the one hand the chance to develop strength, speed and stamina to keep up with their newly acquired domestic whirlwind, and on the other, the opportunity to relax together in a calming environment. So during this period its helpful to work with fluid sequences of postures like the classical surya namaskar (salutation to the sun). Strengthening, extroverting practices such as backward bending sequences (cobra, snake, bridge) leave parents feeling energised. Swinging and rolling yoga fun for toddlers not only develops parents strength and co-ordination, but nearly always promotes chuckles and delighted smiles from the toddlers. Together, resonant chanting and singing to the enthusiastic accompaniment of toddlers on temple bells and tiny cymbals can bring the session to a harmonious close.
At all these stages, from foetus to toddlerhood, from expectant mother to
parents of eighteen-month old explorers, the emphasis is upon practices that
assist both the parent and the child to relish the stage they're at. Perhaps
the central aim of any yoga practice is to assist us to live in the moment.
Yoga practices of all kinds - for breath, for body, for mind and spirit -
promote the flexibility and strength, the spontaneity and wisdom that are
necessary to live fully in the present. As we enagage in the great parenting
adventure with our c hildren, we need more than ever to develop the capacity
to give our full attention to precisely what is going on under our noses
(or behind our backs) - right now in this moment. Our children appreciate
it, and we can appreciate every stage of their development more fully as
a result.
Yoga is such a help in all this, and the benfits are always mutual: the practices which calm the unborn child also provide the expectant mother with deep relaxation; the practices which soothe the three month baby's colic give the desperate dad a peaceful moment of intimacy, and a rhythmic focus of healing touch with his daughter; the practices which bring flexibility, strength and energy to the aching body of a tired mum of a non-stop eighteen month old provide a fascinating mobile climbing frame for the curious toddler. Yoga is a great resource for growing families: use it and enjoy it together, at home, in classes, or wherever you are.
Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, January 2001
(First published in National Childbirth Trust Lambeth and Southwark
Branch Newsletter Spring 2001)