5 Ways to Fit Yoga Into Your Day

1. Practice with your baby or child

By practicing yoga with your baby or child, you will be giving your child the most wonderful gift of an introduction to yoga. Not sure how? See Baby Yoga or practice some simple yoga breathing or mantras with your child. Try, 'I am peace'.

2. Breathe

When you feel like you are stressed or upset, try counting to 10 and inhaling and counting to 10 and exhaling three times. Allow yourself to relax into the breath. You always have a choice in how your react and when you slow your breathing down, your body will make a choice from a better place.

3. Meditate

Try meditating, even if it's just for one moment each day.

4. Bring Yoga Postures off the Yoga Mat

Whether you're pushing your buggy or walking to the shops, be aware of your posture. Tuck in your tailbone, elongate your spine, feel like there is a piece of string lifting the crown of your head to the sky. Walk proud.

5. Use online Yoga Videos to Practice at Home

Autumn Blues

I love autumn - the changing colour of the trees, bright crisp days and the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot…

But it can raise mixed emotions.

Shortening days, cold winds making you wrap up against the cold, rain and knowing that the darkness and cold of winter is on its way, can leave you feeling anxious or down. Autumn is a great time to take the opportunity to let go. Follow the lessons from trees as they let go of their leaves to conserve energy over winter and allow for renewal and rejuvenation in spring.

Try and get out in nature as often as you can in the coming weeks and take in the show that this season puts on.

Go for a walk and listen to the wind in the trees, collect fallen conkers, notice the change in the quality of the light, appreciate the beautiful colours of the leaves as they change week-by-week…

Autumn is a beautiful season, so relax, let go and enjoy!

Lack of Memory Post Pregnancy

My baby had just fallen asleep. I sat quietly, watching his chest rise and fall as he breathed and noticed how peaceful he looked. 

Suddenly, a moment of realisation occurred. I can do stuff! I am free! Right, now what was it I had to do?  

A lot of the problem is that there is so much to do, and really, I don't know how long my baby will sleep for, so it's difficult to match up the job with an amount of time required to complete the job. Also, the tasks I need to do vary from the easy mundane jobs (housework) to more complex mundane tasks (tax returns). Quite often in these moments of freedom, I walk quickly and purposefully into a room, to do something and then, it's gone. I have no idea why I walked into the room. Sound familiar?

Why Do We Forget Things?

Working memory loss can happen for a number of reasons. Often, while caring for young children, we are sleep deprived. We are also very busy and it's been proven that it's difficult to keep more than 3 - 4 items  in your mind at one time (ref. Alan Baddeley).

Motherhood can be stressful too. It is proven that when we are stressed, our bodies secrete a toxic hormone. This is why stress is very damaging to our bodies. Stress can lead to memory loss too.

How Yoga Can Help

It is proven that, 'neurones that fire together, wire together'.  This means that by repeating an activity over and over again, you can teach your brain and your body to behave differently. You can change. Wise yogis say that 'a calm mind is a focused mind'.  By spending 5 minutes meditating each day, you can retrain your mind to become focused and calm. 

There are also some very beneficial restorative yoga poses which allow your body to rebalance and deeply relax. Here is a restorative yoga sequence you can try.

I recommend, before you rush around trying to complete the many tasks ahead of you in a short space of time, to spend 5 or 10 minutes practicing a meditation or a restorative yoga sequence. You may notice a big difference in a short space of time.