Guest Post from Heather Brown: Having a Home Practice Post-Baby

You can find Heather Brown’s blog at teenyyogini.blogspot.com. Heather teaches a Pregnancy Yoga classes at Fells Point, Thursdays at 5:45pm and at Pikesville, Fridays at 6:15pm. She also teaches a Beginner Yoga class at Pikesville, Fridays at 4:30pm. If you’re interested in becoming a Pre-natal yoga teacher, check out Heather’s Pre-natal Teacher Training program.

If it is important to you, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.

I’m not sure who said this gem that I saw on Facebook this week, but it rings true for me in my efforts to find space in my life for my yoga practice. After welcoming my third daughter in December, I’ve found it challenging to find a consistent, dedicated time to devote to my practice. Establishing a consistent home practice in general is something I’ve always wrestled with – wanting to do it, but somehow mostly making excuses or thinking that somehow it doesn’t count if it doesn’t resemble the 90-minute Ashtanga practice I’m used to in a studio setting. In fact, after the birth of each of my daughters, there has been an adjustment period where I am figuring out the new normal of my life and how my yoga practice fits into that new landscape.

My reflection has been that it is important to let go of preconceived notions that the practice has to have a certain structure or last a specific amount of time, to count as practice. Today, I remembered that it doesn’t. Today, my practice looked like this:

5:00 PM
Breaking out of my grown up comfort zone (I didn’t want to get itchy) to roll around in the gorgeously green spring lawn with my daughters.

Practicing asana without a mat on same green lawn – bare hands in the fresh grass felt cool and soft and rooted as I worked on reclaiming my handstand. Shoulderstand, plow pose, forward bend, Partner stretch with my six-year-old daughter. Falling into heaps of laughter with three year old. Nursed my newborn in deep awareness and connection by a flowing, glistening stream.

1:20 AM
Awoke feeling significant neck and back pain from carrying aforementioned newborn in the Ergo baby sling on a couple mile walk. Got out of bed for deep breathing, neck rolls, forward bend with arms clasped behind head, downward dog, twist in easy pose, gomukhasana arms, rabbit pose.

I sometimes chide myself for not having the motivation to wake up at 3 AM (5 AM? 7 AM?) and practice a full primary series, but I revel in the feeling of waking instead to a gaggle of giggling, snuggling girls in my warm bed. I lament that I still can’t press up with straight legs into a handstand, but in moments when I’m tempted to judge something lacking in my asana practice, I take a deep breath, turn my face to the sun or look at one of my daughters, and remember what it is I’m really practicing. I’m practicing connection with source. I’m practicing love beyond bounds. I’m practicing unfettered joy. I’m practicing gratitude for the earth, for my breath, for those who love and support me, for my three tiniest teachers. I’m practicing presence, patience, peace. I’m practicing living in freedom of spirit, on my own terms. I’m practicing a life of simple abundance, creativity, radiant happiness.

Though I miss the spaciousness of hips and shoulders in supta kurmasana (and am determined to feel it again in time), I am deeply grateful for the spaciousness of soul that I feel every day as I live the life I imagine. Often I find one or more children riding my back as I flow through cat/cow pose, or piled in a heap under me during downward dog. Sometimes I can get them to give me adjustments. Usually always things end in a heap of laughter instead of savasana. And though my children may sometimes keep me from a practice that is highly acrobatic, they teach me to practice non-attachment to the ego that can come from performing challenging postures and contentment with my constantly evolving practice. Relating to my daughters mindfully on a moment-to-moment basis brings me to the essence of the practice itself.