Yoga For Motherhood by Bloomsbury Publishing

GREEN TREE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, GREEN TREE and the Green Tree logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Naomi Reynolds, 2022 Mother-to-mother illustrations and cover illustration © Kate Winter Mini masterclass illustrations © JP2 Yoga pose photographs © Scott MacSween All other photographs © Laura Edwards Design by Sian Rance for D.R. ink Naomi Reynolds has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. 224 constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes

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The information contained in this book is provided by way of general guidance in relation to the specific subject matters addressed herein, but it is not a substitute for specialist advice. It should not be relied on for medical, health-care, pharmaceutical or other professional advice. This book is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health or any other kind of personal or professional services. The reader should consult a competent medical or health professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it. The author and publisher specifically disclaim, as far as the law allows, any responsibility from any liability, loss or risk (personal or otherwise) which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and applications of any of the contents of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-inPublication data has been applied for ISBN: HB: 978-1-4729-8788-4; Epub: 978-1-4729-8789-1; epdf: 978-1-4729-8790-7 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Printed and bound in China by Toppan Leefung Printing

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Yoga for Motherhood Naomi Annand

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Introduction Yoga for motherhood Like every woman I know, my experience of motherhood has been one of extraordinary highs and serious sanity-endangering lows. It’s changed who I am and how I view the world, opening up new ways of being that I never imagined possible. But it’s also been stressful like nothing else I’ve ever done and it has challenged my sense of self, putting me under incredible strain physically and emotionally. It is, as everyone always says, the most important job in the world, and it’s also the most demanding. It calls upon every part of you – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – and requires every virtue in abundance: patience, diligence, kindness, humility. Which means, of course, that it is pretty much unrivalled in its capacity to send you into a spiral of self-doubt, to get your inner-critic’s juices flowing. I have lost count of the number of times I have got to the end of the day convinced that I am simply not up to it, this the mother of all jobs. Thankfully, there have been far more days when I have snuck into the children’s bedroom to watch them sleeping and thought myself the luckiest woman alive. And there have been plenty of days when I have felt all the emotions under the sun: resentment, love, frustration, anger, and a total unmatched outpouring of joy. Throughout this extraordinary experience, the thing that has kept me going is yoga. It has done what yoga has always done for me – saved me when I needed saving, given me strength when I was at my weakest, energy when I was at my most tired, kept me grounded when I felt I might just float off up into the sky. And that’s what this book is about. The lived reality of motherhood and how yoga can help you navigate its highs and its lows.

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INTRODUCTION

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pose library: restorative poses

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I realise now that before I had children I used to glide through my morning routine. Now, the day rarely starts so calmly. We always leave everything to the last minute in our house before madly scrambling to get everyone dressed and their teeth brushed, and it all gets too much and I find myself in the ‘fight, flight, freeze’ mode of my nervous system before I’ve even left the house. The surest way I know to coax me from this wired state so that I might settle into my parasympathetic nervous system is to slide on to my mat, after the school drop-off, and surround myself with cushions. Throughout motherhood, this set-up has been a sanctuary, a much-needed place of genuine calm and essential self-examination, somewhere to provide balance and the opportunity to recalibrate and soothe my sometimes frazzled and barely recognisable self.

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RESTORATIVE POSES

Getting ready to rest Don’t worry if you don’t have specific yoga props, just gather as many comforts as you can around yourself so you can reach for the extra layer of warmth, or cushion your head with that extra pillow. I try to create a proper cocoon so I can have some uninterrupted rest without distraction. Your body temperature may well drop – I like to have some extra socks warming for me on the radiator and my favourite jumper to hand if I need it. Having a practice that’s comfortable and makes you feel good will make you want to come back to it again and again. That doesn’t mean it’s about falling asleep (although it’s fine if you do) or spending time drifting aimlessly into your own automatic personal narrative (again, it’s normal if this happens) because that can have a draining rather than a

boosting effect on your system. Rather, bring your awareness back to your breath, your thoughts, what’s here in this moment. Be awake to your senses and practise bringing your attention back if it wanders off. As you prepare for restorative yoga, set an intention. It might be that you say to yourself ‘I am at ease’ or ‘I am confident’. You want your intention to help you set the tone for a deep relaxation. Let your senses be awake to the feelings, the smells, everything that makes up this unique moment. You can do sequences with as few as two poses, each of which might be held for as little as five minutes or as long as 20 minutes. The act of gathering the support and transitioning mindfully from one gentle shape to the next is the practice.

MY RESTOR ATIVE SET-UP AND TOOL KIT Bolsters or several bed pillows. An eye bag. Blocks or a few big chunky books. A blanket (or two). A strap, or something you can use as a strap.

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YOGA FOR MOTHERHOOD

SIMPLE SIDE REST Parsava Savasana

SIDE LINE TWIST Salamba Bharadvajasana

Place a bolster lengthways and kneel next to it with your outer thigh touching the long side of the bolster. Tuck your knees in and place a cushion between them if you have one. From here, turn your navel and ribs towards the bolster, keeping your knees to the side with your hip snug. Use your inhale breath to inflate your lungs and create some length in your torso, and, as you exhale, lay your belly down on the bolster. Turn your face down sideways, looking in the same direction as your knees, and then close your eyes to settle down. Scan your body for any gripping or holding and try to relax into these areas: your jaw, the root of your tongue, the back of your shoulders and your chest. Allow your whole body to sink into the props. Notice where you feel your breath now, and try to breathe even more deeply without too much effort. Keep watching the space that your breath inhabits with your total focus.

Place a bed pillow across your mat and sit next to it with your knees tucked in. Lie down sideways on to the pillow so that the side of your ribcage is cushioned with your bottom arm along the ground, perpendicular to your torso, and then rest on your outer shoulder and the side of your head. Place your other hand on to your ribcage, or even hug another pillow in front of your chest. Keep refining the pose until you’re comfortable. Now take five breaths, sensing into your ribcage. If you have more time, take a few minutes to sink into the pose and drift into a new mode of deep rest. Mother’s note Freeing up your side body can have a profound effect on your long-term breathing habits. My experience is that this pose helps me to take more full, satisfying breaths where my diaphragm can move more freely. Over time and with practice, this embodied rest will be something your muscles remember, which is handy when you’re too tired to sleep or haven’t got time for much more. ACCESSIBLE ALTERNATIVE If getting up and down off the ground is difficult for you, try some of these poses from your bed. The act of preparing your cushions and mindfully settling down into a considered position is the whole point.

Mother’s note If you find the bolster uncomfortable or you don’t have one, try this pose lying over a bed pillow or two. I find even just lying sideways without the full twist can be super-nourishing. It’s easy to lose your sense of time in this pose, especially if you’re exhausted. I like to practise both sides for equal amounts of time, and find that I can only do that if I set a gentle alarm to ring after five minutes.

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RESTORATIVE POSES

SUPPORTED CHILD’S POSE Salamba Balasana

Kneel down, with your knees apart and a little wider than your hips, then sit back into your heels. Place a bolster lengthways in front of you and rest your torso down on it so that you’re supported all the way up to your head. Turn your head to one side and surrender your weight into the support. If, once you’re in position, you can’t rest your forearms comfortably on the ground then position blankets, cushions or blocks to support them. Soften your jaw, relax your tongue, bring awareness to the changing quality of your breath and drop in. As you settle into the shape, bring your awareness to the back of your body. Try to be conscious of your back ribs expanding as you inhale, and drop into the prop as you exhale. Mother’s note This pose is very cocooning. When I need some selfmothering, I find this pose is a beautiful grounding anchor. ACCESSIBLE ALTERNATIVE If, when you sit back to your heels, it causes some aggravation in your knees, place a bed pillow behind them so create some support. If kneeling is painful for your ankles, roll a blanket or towel and use it to cushion them.

RECLINED BOUND ANGLE POSE Supta Baddha Konasana

Lie on your back with a blanket to cushion your head, if necessary. Bring the soles of your feet together and allow your thighs to fall outwards on to a bolster or two bed pillows positioned under them. If you have an eye bag, this is a good moment to use it to cushion your eyelids as the weight of it can help you succumb to the moment. Place your hands out to the side or on your ribs, belly or upper chest. Imagine that you can draw your breath in through your skin, your pores, so that your whole body is awake to the feeling of your breath. On an inhale breath, fill your belly and, on an exhale breath, watch if fall. Mother’s note I find placing a blanket over myself for warmth is such a simple gesture of self-compassion, as is placing a bolster under my thighs to rest into, and might be the starting point for something more profound.

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sequence: yoga for profound exhaustion I had always thought I was quite a good sleeper until I had a child and discovered I lacked one of the key parental skills: the ability to fall instantly back to sleep. I can’t tell you how much time I spent lying in bed listening to my husband, who upon returning from having settled a crying child was snoring away as soon as his head hit the pillow. I just couldn’t do it. And so I lost hours of rest. Hours and hours. There were days when I was so tired I felt like I would just collapse in a heap. I knew I was teetering close to burnout and it was on those days that I turned to sequences like this one. I found that the act of rolling out my mat sent positive messages to my nervous system. It felt like a considered act, a way of recognising that there were times when I needed to slow down and rest deeply. And it’s something I still do today whenever I’m feeling on edge.

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SEQUENCE: YOGA FOR PROFOUND EXHAUSTION

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YOGA FOR MOTHERHOOD

L+R

1. Savasana: supported variation, bolster to lift chest, support under head, three–ten minutes

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2. Simple Side Rest, blanket under ribs, three–ten minutes

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SEQUENCE: YOGA FOR PROFOUND EXHAUSTION

3. Reclined Bound Angle Pose, cushion under thighs, weighted with blanket, three–ten minutes

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4. Final repose: Meditation for Now (sitting or lying down), three–ten minutes

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YOGA FOR MOTHERHOOD

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SEQUENCE: YOGA FOR PROFOUND EXHAUSTION

FINAL REPOSE:

Meditation for Now

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Find a comfortable seated position or lie down. Take a deep breath and try to connect with the feeling of your body. Listen as it gurgles, bubbles, creaks and pops. This is about paying attention to the subtle sensations. Focus on them and away from big narrative-led thoughts. Keep zooming in on the small stuff: how your back feels, the feeling of your seat and how it connects to the earth. And say to yourself: ‘May I be well as I am. May I be content in this moment.’ When you’re the mother to a small child you have to take a practical approach to meditation. There’s a good chance that you won’t be long into it before the phone rings, or your child wakes or the washing machine starts beeping. Don’t try to fight it. Accept that it is part of the process and try to take the spirit of the meditation with you by not rushing on to the next thing. If you can, keep its essence in your mind and move slowly and deliberately, noticing the subtle sensations.

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YOGA FOR MOTHERHOOD

LETTERS

mother to mother: fourth trimester Most of us have heard of the three trimesters of pregnancy, but the framing of the first 12 weeks after the birth of your baby as ‘the fourth trimester’ isn’t as familiar. In this time, a baby is born into a totally different environment than the warm, dark space they’ve grown used to, and a mother is born too, with a whole host of physical and psychological changes to navigate. Although it might have felt appropriate to slow down in pregnancy as we completed the monumental job of building a human, when our baby arrives, it can be tempting to assume this quieter period is over. Our fast-paced, goal-orientated culture suggests we’ll bounce back to our old selves and old lives in no time, albeit with a cute little baby in tow. To realise that becoming a mum – for the first or a subsequent time – is a transformation of a much greater magnitude, can come as a shock. So too can the discovery that it’s absolutely normal for new babies to need to be held and fed around the clock, as their senses become used to a totally overwhelming new world. In these intense early days, maintaining pregnancy’s slow pace and sense of drawing inwards is often highly beneficial. After my first baby, I felt that I ‘should’ be out and about early on, looking like I had this

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LETTERS - MOTHER TO MOTHER

motherhood thing licked. But not only did my physical body need to recover – tissues need to rest before they can re-strengthen, something athletes understand – psychologically, I needed some space and quiet too. The weight of love and responsibility can feel so big, our hearts wide open. It takes time for you and your baby to get to know each other and for your confidence to grow. A slow postpartum can feel uncomfortable at first because it goes against the grain of our busy lives, of the culture of immediacy we’re so used to. But a nurtured beginning creates ripples months, and even years, into motherhood. Like the practice of setting an intention at the beginning of a yoga class, the way we start this new life of ours matters. It’s us, planting a seed, promising to be tender towards ourselves (as a bonus, this makes it easier to parent our children compassionately). By the time I had my second, I was able to be much kinder to myself, and take adequate rest, eat nutritious food, ask for help and expect little in the way of ‘achieving’ anything except nurturing myself and my new baby. I knew this time – really knew – that no pace of change will ever be so fast and miraculous as the change in your baby and in you during the fourth trimester, even if some days feel a hundred years long. I could draw on what I’d learned from yoga – that everything moves, nothing stays the same. The breath comes and goes, the body moves then is still, we feel one thing then we feel differently. Time passes. Babies stare, then smile, then giggle. You grow, too, until one day in the mirror the girl is gone, and there’s a mother looking back at you. Chloe George

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YOGA FOR MOTHERHOOD

MINI MASTERCLASS: WRIST AND TENDON RELIEF

Motherhood puts a lot of pressure on your joints. Prior to giving birth, your body kicks out a lot of the hormone relaxin, which does what it says on the tin, and helps enable the expansions of labour. Unfortunately, it hangs around for up to 12 months afterwards, and can create extra laxness in your tendons just when you don’t need it. This, combined with a drop in your levels of bone-strengthening progesterone, might create a badly timed vulnerability in your joints. In the early stages of parenthood, both my husband and I found that we had terrible pain in our wrists as we both developed new (and not always brilliant) ways of carrying this new precious little bundle. The following exercises can be done after you’ve given birth but they’re also good while you’re pregnant, in order to build strength, flexibility and awareness in this area.

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Exercise one: rotations Make your hands into lightly held fists with your thumbs tucked into your palms. With relaxed wrists, start to circle your fists any way you can. Go gently. After circling in one direction, try the other way. Do three–five rotations then, like a dog flicking water off its back, give your hands a shake to release any residual tension in the joints. Exercise two: extension Kneel down, sitting back on your feet. Place your hands either side of your legs. Peel your fingers back so that your wrist extends. At this point, if you don’t feel anything, you could place your hands ahead of your knees and repeat so that you can feel more of a stretch. You’re not aiming to feel any pain, just a satisfying stretch. If that feels good, you could make tiny little circles in one direction and then the other. Take five– ten breaths and release.

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MINI MASTERCLASS

Exercise three: flexion Kneel down, sitting back on your feet. Place one hand on the floor with your wrist pointing forwards, fingers peeling back, and gently lean into the stretch. I like to do this one hand at a time. It can be a strange sensation and I like to manage the pressure and weight for each wrist as they have a different range of flexibility. This is common, so never push through to make the two sides unrealistically match – our bodies are brilliantly asymmetrical. After five or so breaths, change sides. Exercise four: massage Before you embark on any self-massage it’s always worth reminding yourself that most of us tend to squeeze too much, apply too much pressure. So, go slow and steady. I like to begin with a rub, as it warms the tissues and alerts the region without taking much effort. Once I’ve rubbed up and down the outside, inside, upper and under parts of my lower arm a few times I use my thumb pads to create a gentle squeeze, down the inner seam of my arm from my elbow all the way to my wrist and through to my palm. Once I’ve pressed my thumb down one side a few times, I take a moment to pause and notice the changes in the texture of my skin and the shift in circulation, before doing the same on the other side.

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‘Beautiful, useful, tender.’ Kathleen Baird-Murray, British Vogue

Motherhood is the most important job in the world, and it’s also the most demanding. It calls upon your every resource – mental, physical, spiritual – and while it is frequently a source of unmatched joy, it is also often depleting like nothing else. Naomi Annand shows you how yoga can help you navigate its emotional highs and lows, how to tap into the creativity of motherhood and also how to nurture yourself so that you might nurture others. Using breath-led sequences and simple two-minute life hacks, this beautiful practical companion teaches you how to soothe rattled nervous systems and uplift tired bodies whatever your age and whatever your experience. Naomi Annand has been a yoga teacher for 20 years and a mother for seven of them. She lives in east London with her family and runs her own yoga studio, Yoga on the Lane. ‘More than just a yoga manual… takes a wide-angle look at motherhood and contains bountiful tips on how to keep yourself grounded and calm.’ Hannah Ridley, Harper’s Bazaar ‘This book feels like an embrace. It lays open the full spectrum of what it is to be a mother and holds your hand through the joy and the love, the craziness and the exhaustion. I will be buying it for every mother I know.’ Anna Jones, author of One: Pot, Pan, Planet

£22.00 US $28.00 ISBN 978-1-4729-8788-4

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