Park Slope Reader

Jessica Phillips Lorenz

Toddlers, Tantrums, and Tree Pose

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Uh oh. We have a hitter. A shover to be precise. As soon as any of my other students get close to him, he turns his body square to face them, pauses, and then pushes them, sometimes to the ground. There are tears. Can you imagine this happening in an adult yoga class? Power Vinyasa yoga would take on a whole new meaning, eh?

But in my world of teaching yoga to toddlers, this is just part of business as usual. Because, sometimes, small children hit or push or pull hair or take something that doesn’t belong to them. Because they are toddlers! They are walking babies who may or may not be able to communicate their complex feelings and discoveries. There are countless developmental arguments to support the simple fact that very young children are learning how to be in the world. What better place to nurture the nebulous transition from being the center of the universe to part of a community than a yoga class?

Why yoga?

The benefits of yoga for tiny practitioners mirror the benefits for adults. Yoga cultivates a practice of meditative concentration or focus. I am easily distracted. It can be difficult for me to dig in and concentrate on something, like writing an article for the Park Slope Reader, say. My own yoga practice has helped me tremendously on this front. Little children are building up the mental muscle it takes to focus, too! And all the while the bright, new world beckons from all angles. Focusing is a skill and takes practice!

Brianna Klemm’s original objective for coming to a yoga class with her twenty-month-old son Casper was, “to get my toddler out of the house!” Over time, yoga became a big part of how Klemm understood her son; “Because of this class I know how quickly he can learn, I know how many of his body parts he can identify, I know he can follow instructions and pay attention. Class has been an amazing tool for learning about my kid.

Other benefits for toddlers include body awareness, reinforcing gross and fine-tune motor skills with playful activities, and learning how to balance. Most new walkers have an adorable wobbliness and, like older humans, tend to favor their dominant side. When we practice yoga with our tots, it becomes an even richer experience. Let’s model for our children how good it feels to move our bodies and hope this healthy habit lasts a lifetime. Oh. And it’s fun! Yoga can be a lot of fun. (Even if you hate real, grown up style yoga.)

So what does a toddler yoga class look like?

When most people think of yoga, they imagine a quiet, calm room, sitar music, and healthy people stretching their sweaty bodies in complicated ways. They may even imagine shivasana—the comfy copse-pose relaxation that happens at the end of class. Then, using some sort of mental photoshop, they replace the adults in their mental image with seventeen-month-olds and everything short circuits. A robot voice goes off inside their heads: Does not compute. Toddlers scream. Toddlers bang walls. Toddlers eat sand. Will not yoga. Repeat. Will not yoga.

Yoga is not a practice reserved only for strong, fit adults! For young children, yoga can be a way of exploring animals and shapes, overcoming obstacles, learning about their bodies, embodying dramatic play, balancing and stretching, and discovering what they didn’t know they could do.

Let’s get rid of that image of the relaxing, quiet yoga class, OK? This is different! Toddler yoga classes are typically lead as a ‘mommy & me’ partner style class. Every child has an adult to accompany them. Parents and caregivers are the key to having a great class. The more involved the parents are, the more both the child and the adult will get out of the experience.

Yoga Play Activities

So what do you do with new walkers through threes in a group yoga class, then? I believe that very young children do well with structured group activities. It gives them a sense of security to know what’s coming next.

Don’t worry that your little one needs to behave in a certain way. My job, as the instructor, is to help support that learning through safe, age appropriate, engagement. That’s it. Your little one may seriously not do a single thing I say—and I don’t expect them to. They may be taking in more than you think. There is a bit of leap of faith that my parents have to take.

Abstract thought is lost on most small children. That’s why I like to use lots of puppets and stuffed animals in my classes. Not only do the puppets represent a concrete image of the animals, they also help small children understand compassion and gentleness. I like to let students feed the puppets and give them kisses. Then it’s time to become the animal! In tot yoga the down dogs bark, frogs hop and say ribbit, and trees balance with their leaves blowing in the breeze.

Can’t make it to class? Here are a couple of games you can play at home.

I Went to the Farm and I Saw a…

This game is a playful way to organize some traditional yoga postures around a kid- friendly viewpoint. You can play at home by having a few varied stuffed animals at hand. Say, “ I went to the farm and I saw an…” and then pull a stuffed animal out from your pile. If your child is verbal, see if they can say the name of the animal. If not, tell them the name and then show them the yoga pose. This game can become very silly if you find an octopus at the farm! (Again, have fun with it.)

Poses and Pages

Reading a book to fifteen walking babies is a bit like being approached by tiny zombies. They just keep getting closer and closer and closer. Every time a new animal character is introduced in the book, we do a yoga pose associated with that animal. That means you, too, mom! Find a small open space at home, pick a couple of stories, and have at it. The stories will come to life as you embody the animals. This is a great way to share books with an active child who may have a harder time sitting still for an entire story.

Songs and Music

Music is a terrific way for a young yogi to access poses. Songs have had a big impact on Davina Wilner’s daughter Adelaide. Wilner writes, “It’s been fun to watch her language progression through yoga. She started off just repeating a few words from class, such as, “tree pose” and “down dog.” Now she likes to sing every single one of the songs she’s learned at class when we’re at home.”

When Adelaide broke her arm and had to spend hours in the ER in the middle of the night, “the only thing that would keep her calm was when I would sing the final song we sing at the end of yoga class, “My little light shines to your little light, Namaste.” I have never in my life been so thankful to know a song!

But what about “the shover”?

It’s important to remember that nobody is teaching their tot how to pull a barrette out of someone’s hair or push a kid over when they are off balance. That’s not real life. Being in a group with the same families each week gives us a chance to support one another. Incidents at the playground have a fleeting quality; it’s easy to vilify “the shover” and “the shover’s” parents there. As a parent, I love knowing that other people in my community care about my kids! It’s tough to be a human animal. I’d much rather kick up my heels in horse pose. Nay!

Jessica Phillips Lorenz teaches yoga to babies, tots, and families at Bend and Bloom in Park Slope on Fridays and Saturdays.

Mom Bod

By Filed Under: Yoga Tagged With: , , ,

We all sit with our yoga mats in a circle, moms holding their babies. At the beginning of each class, I ask everyone to share their name, their baby’s name and age, and what’s new for their child that week. Whether it’s a fresh-cut tooth, colic, or 5 a.m. ready-to-play wake-ups, I like to hear about it. I also invite the mothers to share what is going on with their bodies. “What body?” I can hear them thinking, as they unload the contents of their diaper bags and peel infants out of Moby wraps. One by one, we go around the room, and each mom shares a “discovery.” Or, what I’ve begun to think of as chapters in a book called:

Things That Happen to Your Body After You Have a Baby That No One Told You About

Your hair might fall out. (Maybe no one else will notice the change, but that doesn’t spare you the indignity of wiping up handfuls of your own hair off the bathroom tile.)

Your abdominal muscles may have separated, a condition known as diastasis recti. (You mean, I shouldn’t be doing sit ups?)

You wake up in middle of the night dripping wet with sweat. (Hormones give you the business.)

You can’t sleep even when the baby does. (Your nervous system is on hyper-drive.)

You feel like you have a hunchback. (Nursing and feeding does a number on your posture.)

Your thumbs, wrists, knees, feet, or back hurt in weird and confusing ways. (Hormones, again.)

You are tired. Really. Freaking. Tired. (It’s shocking how tired you can feel. You’re so tired you can’t come up with creative ways to express how tired you are. )

Recently one mommy said she was ready to get her “body back”. She continued, “I’m ready to feel like myself again.” From feeling like ‘me’ to feeling like ‘mommy’ and back again Whenever someone says they want to get their body back, I immediately think, “From whom?! What happened? Did that cute baby steal your body?!” Because you still have a body. Your body. But it’s different now, and that’s a hard truth to swallow. I think what they really mean is, “I want my body to be something I know and something I like…because I’m not sure I like this.”

Wanting to feel like yourself again—now, that’s big time stuff. Just like our bodies have changed by becoming mothers, there is sort of a seismic identity shift that happens as well. Unfortunately, you may have to wade through some pretty murky, unknown waters until you suddenly realize, “Oh yeah. This is still me. I should get out of this gross water now.”

You may think I am sitting from a perch of answers at the front of the class. Not quite—I’m in the circle, too. I have an infant and a four year old. I know what my students are talking about because I feel it in my own body. I want what they want. I, too, want to tighten up my ish! I want to feel stronger! And sexier! Or at least start caring about being sexy again.

This is where aparigraha can come in handy. Aparigraha—one of the Yoga Sutras or Eight Limbs of Yoga—represents the practice of non-possessiveness otherwise known as non-attachment. Breathing and stepping back, at least figuratively, can be a secret weapon in making peace with the body and the baby.

But how do we practice non-attachment in the age of attachment parenting?

One of my favorite moving meditations is a simple one: “Let. Go.” I encourage my students to breath in the word “Let” and breathe out the word “Go”. Inhale, “Let.” Exhale, “Go.” That’s it. Let go of the expectations. Let go of trying to lose the weight. Let go of wanting the baby to be good. Let go of what you read last night on Babycenter.com—and maybe just stop reading it altogether!

The idea of non-attachment in yoga is about fully participating in the process without getting tied up in the outcome of the product. Sounds breezy, right? Um. Maybe. But it takes practice just like the physical aspect of yoga takes practice.

Working towards non-attachment has been particularly helpful for me when it comes to toddler mealtime. “What!? You don’t want to eat your favorite meal I made for you? That thirty-minute meal took all day to make in five-minute increments! I was looking forward to eating with you and watching you enjoy it BECAUSE IT’S YOUR FAVORITE! But today, you’re not going to eat it!? Okay.”

I get it. Making the meal was the process. Daughter actually eating it was the product. So much for the good intentions of my home cookin’. Deep breaths. Let. Go.

Potty training is another time when aparighara helped my parenting strategies. It would drive me absolutely bananas when we were about to leave the apartment and my daughter would refuse to go potty. A gentler reminder to “give it a try” would become a wild-west style stand off. It wasn’t until I stepped back a little—well a lot, really—that things improved. Let. Go.

How do you let go without letting yourself go?

The media is relentless when it comes to inundating us with images of how a woman should look, especially after having a baby. The beautiful people seem to have little arrows pointing to their bikini bodies saying things like, “SEVEN WEEKS AFTER BABY!” A lot of women internalize this to mean, “YOU LOOK BAD IF YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE THIS SEVEN WEEKS AFTER BABY”. Maybe we should stop reading this stuff, too.

I’m trying to refocus the lens a bit, one class at a time. I want my students—my fellow new mothers—not to feel bad for having bodies that change. If you were lucky enough to get pregnant, give birth, nurse or feed an infant, and shift your identity to include being a mother, then YEAH, stuff has changed. Also, let’s not forget that the last time you tried to wear those shorts was two summers ago—last summer you were pregnant, remember? Now you are two years older. Time is marching on, my friends.

So let’s sit in a circle and marvel at our bodies—their health, their vigor, what they can do on six hours of constantly interrupted sleep for months or years on end. Let’s be proud of what we just did! We had some babies!!! We adopted some babies! Some of our wives had babies, too!

Post-natal and baby yoga classes are not exclusively about getting in shape, although it’s important to have an opportunity to exercise with your little one. I want people to feel like they are a part of something; they are connected to their babies and each other in the circle. I want people to laugh and blow off steam, because that may help you feel more like yourself again. But there is a fine line between feeling good in your skin and trying to get skinny in order to feel good. Let’s stick with the former, shall we?

I recently started practicing yoga regularly again since having my second child. It has been a humbling experience. When I curl my body into child’s pose, I feel my hip flexors boing-ing me upwards. I am tight and loose in all the wrong places. There are no arm balances or binds. At least, not yet!

But you know what? I just built some people with my body! Who cares that my boat pose may look a little like a sinking ship? I do, but I don’t. I’m trying to let go, too, one breath at a time.

Jessica Phillips Lorenz has been teaching yoga and creative drama classes to children and families in NYC for over a decade.  Also a playwright and lyricist, she has performed many original solo works and her songs appear on the award-winning children’s record  Come Play Yoga.  Her work has appeared in Mutha magazine.  Jess lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two kids, who sometimes co-teach family yoga classes with her.  She teaches at Bend & Bloom Yoga in Park Slope.