“Mother is a verb. It’s something you do. Not just who you are.” Cheryl Lacey Donovan
Let’s talk about glasses of water. That old idiom about whether or not the glass is half full or half empty can stand to be revised to suit a more yogic view. How about this: the glass is always full, partially with water and partially with air. If you ask me, we’re too fixated on that water. The air is important, too. It is our breath, space, a medium for sound and light. Besides, if we are to make use of the water in the glass, it won’t be half full forever. Everything is in flux, a fact so obvious during the autumn.
Yoga is a little bit like the air in the glass. Most people will immediately value the glass or the water over the air because the air is not visible, tangible, or even apparently useful. We want to see what yoga looks like and sometimes forget that it is more important to breathe it and feel it. But what I’m getting at here is emptiness and how creating some amount of space in our lives and environment allows good things to flow into the gaps. Yes, we are moms, but that’s not all that we are. Sometimes we have to let go of mommy burdens and take a breather in our busy lives.
This past week I began potty training my daughter and so we spent most of our time at home. It lined up well with the fact that there are some major fires in Southern and Northern California, so the air quality has been terrible. An empty schedule with a 2-year-old can be simultaneously relieving and daunting. I was afraid she might feel pent up or ask to watch TV all day long, but she loved all that time at home. She found ways to entertain herself and enjoyed the extra mommy time. At the same time, I had the chance to get down on my hands and knees for some extra play time with her. We even did much more yoga on the mat together than we normally do, just to fill in the time and make up for that fact that we didn’t get to play in the park like we usually do.
Potty training is a big change. Combine that with so much time at home with mommy and my daughter has been asking me to pick her up more than usual. She has my slender build, but even so, after 5 minutes she seems to get heavier. It’s so much like this story about the glass of water that describes how stress builds. Strain plus time brings tension. Every mom knows the difficulty of having little to no breaks from being on mom duty, but if we are to have the endurance to be there to nurture our kids, we need breaks, even if they only last for a minute.
I find the trick with this is to either schedule in breaks or to commit to inserting short, spontaneous breaks throughout the day. In one of my September posts, I mentioned a Slow-ga (a.k.a. Slow Yoga) technique that you can do whenever you think of checking your phone. This might not apply to everyone since not everyone is hooked on smartphones, but it can be done using any habitual action you take throughout the day.
If anything, look around and make do with what you have. Use that toy bus or wagon as a yoga prop. Or even the chair from the kiddie table if you’re short like me! Whatever you do, when you notice yourself trembling under a load -- whether it’s a child that wants to be held constantly or a day full of to-dos -- find a way to take a break, take a deep breath, and take a moment in a spontaneous yoga pose. Every little bit counts. You might not go really deep in the moment, but over time you’ll find that that half-full glass of water can be like a mama’s schedule: best left half-empty whenever possible.