Last week we made a little time for the beach after school. It was so relaxing:)
“Be nice. You never know what could be someone’s final straw.”
It’s hard to be present sometimes
I so want to be that calm, collected mom that lets her kids feel their feelings; I try to be that mom that can hold space for her little ones to express themselves and feel the intensity of their emotions without criticism; I wish I could always be that mom that can use the tools she built up as a yoga teacher of adults and children to help her own kids. I am that mom, sometimes.
But I get tired and stressed like anyone else, and then the more ideal version of myself goes out the window!
I know that what I want to give to my kids is what I also need from myself, and I have to give that to myself to be able to offer the same to them. Am I calm, patient, and loving with myself? Not always!
I’m not saying that we should always be totally unruffled with our kids even when our kids are writhing on the ground in the middle of a tantrum; it isn’t realistic because we all have nervous systems that respond to stress.
Take that idea in: you have your goals and intentions in your mind, and then on another level, there’s your nervous system and body that might react to stress in ways that your mind labels as ‘flippin your lid.’ You might not want to be that way, but then you lose control in times of stress and fatigue, just as kids do.
I do it now and then and yet I know that if I lose my patience, it’s a sign to use my yoga practice to build my capacity.
What is capacity?
Think of a raindrop falling into the ocean. It just gets absorbed immediately and there’s no worry of the ocean overflowing. To me, that is such a lovely image of capacity, and how we can learn to take whatever comes our way. That’s not to say you should let people mistreat you - and sometimes when our kids have big emotions, it feels like they are mistreating us - but visualizing something like the ocean, which has a huge capacity, can help us to feel in our own bodies that we can take in the good, the bad, and the ugly without flipping out.
It still might feel like you’re losing it on the inside. How hard it can be to feel that stress when your kid is screaming and crying, all because you gave them square crackers instead of round ones! Anyone who has taken care of a toddler knows what I’m talking about;). How hard it can be to sympathize with such big emotions over seemingly small things.
Capacity is being able to kind of let those tough emotions wash over you, or through you without overreacting. Oh, so much easier said than done; though, we can make it easier by lowering our baseline stress to keep ourselves from just living life from an irritable place (I’m speaking from experience!).
It’s the little things: on micro practices
Keeping our baseline stress low means daily practice; but who has an hour a day to practice yoga? Most moms don’t, so that’s why I write so much about micro practices. These are mini yoga sessions, or simple practices that can be done either spontaneously, or built into our schedules.
It might seem like a few yoga postures or a few deep breaths a day won’t do much, but even the smallest commitment to yoga can slowly grow over time. Soon, a few postures or breaths will seem like a piece of cake; they will come automatically and then making that next step to a longer practice will be less daunting. Maybe you start with a few poses and work up to 10, 15, or 20 minutes - that amount of time tends to produce more obvious results physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Last Fall, I made a post on the September new moon that includes a very simple, but refreshing practice: adding round movements in yoga. Earlier in 2022, in the summer, I posted on what I call the Pause Pose: one yoga posture of your choice that you do throughout the day whenever you think about it!
Which yoga poses do you love? Which ones do you feel you need or want the most in times of stress? Let’s use our yoga to nurture ourselves the way we want to nurture out kids.
Looking within and without
“This is the first, the wildest, and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
-Mary Oliver
So the sky is the limit, but as I always say, the new moon (which is today!) is a great time for setting intentions or starting new things. If you’d like to dive deeper into a yogic way of setting intentions, read more on my post about sankalpa.
Also, working with the phases of the moon is complex; sometimes we are in a phase that is counter to the moon’s phase (for instance, we might be menstruating at the time of the new moon, which brings in different modes of energy. Read more in this post from 2021 on overlapping cycles). It can be really rejuvenating to be aware of your cycles and how they combine or clash with the cycles of the moon, the cycles of the seasons, and the cycles your children go through. It’s such a great way for a burnt out mama to slow down, take a break, and either relax or energize, depending on what’s needed in the moment. It’s the key to dissipating stress and really practicing yoga in a way that’s fit for you in each moment.
What are some ways you dissipate stress through your yoga practice? What are some other methods or activities you use that aren’t traditionally categorized as yoga?