Giving Your Baby the Best Start

The neurons in a baby’s brain, from birth, start to connect optimally when they are engaged in a positive communication with their main carer.  This exchange of love helps babies develop and make smoother transitions to the next phase in their development, for example from lying to sitting, from sitting to moving.

Therefore, best gifts an adult can give a child are attention, bonding and communication as well as time to play, create, dream and explore. It is scientifically proven that children learn best by listening to words coming from loving adults, either through talking or reading, by playing and by touching.  Research shows that bonding with a main carer is of key importance during the early years of a child’s life, particularly the first year.

When we are attuned with their desires or communication, we give and they receive cues to help understand their world.

As babies develop during the first year, they start to actively explore the world through all of their senses, the key being ALL of their senses. Often they will do an activity over and over again, and still think it is funny or fascinating. They are looking to their primary caregiver to interpret the world for them. When we are attuned with their desires or communication, we give and they receive cues to help understand their world. They are communicating using ‘words,’ eye contact, body language, and cries. As children become more mobile their world expands. It is truly amazing to watch a child go from sitting to becoming mobile in a matter of months, thus acquiring the new skill of independence.

Given the enormous physical and cognitive growth during this period, here are some ways baby yoga and baby massage can support the developments taking place:

1.       ATTUNEMENT – The art of being present and responsive. During this period of curiosity, attunement is essential; it is how babies learn. Baby massage and yoga bring connection and communication, stimulation and relaxation, calming and healing.  Babies need quality interaction with the adults closest to them to feel secure and free to explore.  Baby yoga encourages a relationship with your baby based on acceptance and patience and how to learn to decipher your baby’s cues. For example, when a baby looks turns his/her head away, your baby needs a break from interaction.  This can be misread as rejection. The only helpful response to this is to give your baby the break he/she needs.

2.       HOLDING –When a baby is being held, he/she feels safe.  Baby yoga encourages you to trust the power of positive touch together with your baby.  Through relaxed walking, specific holds and breathing exercises, it is possible to calm a crying baby.  Of course, it may not always work, but it is useful to build on techniques, knowledge and confidence in handling your baby. 

Babies can often spend a lot of their day separated from their parents’ bodies; in car seats, bouncers and cots.  Baby yoga exercises recreate active closeness, a structured way of relating dynamically with babies.  The postures are very gentle in the first few classes and then explore a greater range of movement.  This enhances the vestibular system, the part of our brain that coordinates our spatial awareness, sets a foundation for good posture, balance, flexibility and agility.

3.       PLAY – Children learn and develop both cognitively and physically through play. During a baby or toddler yoga class, a parent joins his/her child and they explore the world together through play.  The neurons in a baby’s brain, from birth, start to connect optimally when they are engaged in a positive communication with their main carer.  After three/four months, a baby loves communicating through play and starts to copy what he/she observes. As a result, the child feels safer to take risks and go beyond the original safety zone.  Yoga helps toddlers give physical expression to emotions, images and adventures as well as promoting spinal alignment, balance and flexibility.

4.       TOUCH – During pregnancy and birth, new mothers release the hormone oxytocin, associated with relaxing, connecting and nurturing.  Baby massage and yoga both stimulate the ongoing positive effects of this hormone.  A loving touch also helps regulate the stress hormone, cortisol.  The more massage and yoga practiced with your baby, the greater combined sensory effects take place to enhance this closeness.

There are many educational toys and activities available today which help foster curiosity and learning in babies. Having options to help promote the growth and development of children is wonderful. However, there is no replacement for positive one-on-one time with mum or dad and what better way to do this than by practising baby yoga or baby massage. Remember, most babies are more impressed with the boxes that the toys come in than the actual toy. Have fun with your baby; it is a time of incredible growth and learning for both of you.

www.teenytinyyoga.com

Ref. Cindy Hill-Ford, Francoise Freedman

Born to Move

I have been searching the internet to find some research to evidence why babies love movement so much. There is lots of information on baby wearing, which does involve movement, but nothing specifically on movement.  Perhaps the answer to why babies love movement is very simple?  

When I was pregnant, I noticed that while I was busy during the day, the baby was quite still, but once I got into bed, the baby kicked. A lot. So maybe this is the origin of why babies love the sensation of being carried and held. 

An unsettled baby loves to be held and a great way of holding a baby is in a sling or baby carrier. It makes life so much easier for the caregiver, as it enables you to have both your hands free and still provide comfort for your baby.  Many newborn babies spend a lot of time sleeping.  I found my babies slept for only short bursts in a moses basket, but would sleep for much longer periods in a sling. 

Once a baby starts to be awake for longer periods, you may wish to look for ways to play with your baby.  And this is what makes baby yoga so unique.  Baby yoga involves movement for your baby, while combining exercise for you in the process. As your baby's caregiver, you are the centre of their world and by interacting with your baby through touch and with movement, you will find a whole new way of playing with your baby. There are different holds to help relieve colic and calm them, different ways to give your baby some much loved feeling of movement and ways to hold your baby to protect your back.  I have held many babies in 'Tiger in the Tree' pose at the end of the class and it never fails to settle a tired baby. Unless of course, they are hungry.

Knowing a few baby yoga tricks can make life with a small baby so much easier and even more fun. Teeny Tiny baby yoga classes are also a personal journey as babies change so rapidly, you'll notice the developmental differences between movements your baby did at the beginning of the course and at the end.  While toys and external stimulation have a place in your babies life, I strongly believe that you are all your baby needs and baby yoga is a beautiful way of giving you more resources to play with, and comfort your baby.

How I fell in love with yoga

Welcome to the Teeny Tiny Yoga blog. This blog aims to cover aspects of yoga linked to babies and children, lifestyle, food and seasonal changes and inspiration.

As this is my first blog EVER, I thought it apt to fill in the gaps and explain how I arrived here.

I fell in love with yoga in my early 20's.  Here was a non-competitive form of exercise which made me feel great and keep fit. I loved that it wasn't just about exercise, that my vegetarianism and personal philosophy fitted so perfectly with yoga.  My father was a GP and my mum, a nurse, I have always been interested in how the body works, diet and complementary medicine. I went on to train as a massage therapist and a reflexologist and often bring my knowledge of these areas into my classes. I set up a pampering business with a friend and worked in the evenings running pamper nights and 5 days a week in the city.

 After having my first child, Ava, in 2006 I took her to a baby yoga class when she was only 6 weeks old. The baby yoga class completely changed my relationship with my baby. Having not had any contact with babies before my baby came along, the class taught me ways to settle her, play with her and enjoy her. And after 6 months, I returned to my job in the city. Something had shifted and while I continued to practice baby yoga with Ava, I realised there was a way to combine two things I love, babies and yoga. I signed up for a Birthlight Baby Yoga Practitioner course when Ava was one year old.

Two years later, Aaron was born. Initially, I decided not to return to work and set up two baby yoga classes a week in local church halls. I called my business, 'Love Baby Yoga'.  A year after Aaron was born, I realised that for financial reasons, teaching baby yoga had to be put on hold and went back to the city with a heavy heart and a plan. The money I earned in the city funded the SMART (Stretch Move and Relax Together) Toddler Yoga course which I completed in 2011.  'Love Baby Yoga' no longer worked as a name, as the business name needed to encompass toddler yoga.

Once I completed the course, I spent a long time writing a business plan for 'Teeny Tiny Yoga', building a website, a logo and carefully selecting venues, and I was ready
 to set up my own business, teaching baby and toddler yoga. I handed in my resignation and was about to work my three months notice period, when...I
 realised I was pregnant.

 This was a tough time for me as my energy levels dropped and I found it difficult to carry heavy yoga mats in and out of venues.  I ran classes until one month before baby Louis arrived and started again when he was only 10 weeks old. He was my perfect demonstration baby.

 Baby Louis is now 8 months old, my 4 year old has just started pre-school
 which finishes at 11.45am each day, and Ava is now 6 years old.  They all
 love yoga.

It is very difficult to make a profit, when you consider the cost of childcare, hall hire and marketing. It has taken 17 long years since I left university to find a job I can do that I love.  I used the time while I was working in the city to build a portfolio of skills which would help me when I had set up my own business, for example, using spreadsheets, web design, gaining a CIM Marketing Certificate, copy-writing and PR and communication. I've since formed a network of people running pre-school groups, ante-natal groups and yoga teachers. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be doing
 something I love and also be there for my children when they need me.  This
 the optimum position for me to be in. My next steps are to complete the Advanced Baby Yoga certificate and become a Hatha Yoga Teacher
 by the end of this year. I see my teaching growing with my children and hope to train as a children's yoga teacher and teach at lunchtimes in primary schools.