Take a Deep Breath: The Yoga of Parenting with Sarah Ezrin

Most parents have a story well-nigh their toddler that concludes with an emergency room visit, but not everyone can say they were worldly-wise to remain (mostly) wifely throughout the experience.

“I 100 percent credit my yoga practice for staying (mostly) wifely when my toddler stuck a stratify hanger through his eyelid (!),” Sarah Ezrin writes in her new book, The Yoga of Parenting: 10 Yoga-Based Practices to Help You Stay Grounded, Connect with Your Kids, and Be Kind to Yourself.

And although her yoga practice looked very variegated surpassing she was a mother of two—what was once a two-hour vinyasa practice maybe now looks increasingly like a few minutes on a bolster—Sarah, a world-renowned yoga teacher, assures us, it’s ok.

“If we can remind ourselves that yoga is not well-nigh the poses but how we work with our mind, then perhaps we can be a lot kinder and increasingly realistic well-nigh what our practice looks like these days,” she writes.

To Sarah, parenting is yoga.

“The root of yoga is really well-nigh connection (the root word, yuj, ways ‘to connect’),” Sarah explains. “That ways that anything we do with a focused mind and whole heart is yoga.”

The Yoga of Parenting is not a handbook on parenting, but rather an well-healed well of resources. It’s a tightly personal reflection of Sarah’s wits as a parent and longtime yoga teacher, and a must-read for parents and future parents alike.

Each installment examines a yoga-based concept and includes a pose, showing how both the yogic principles and postures wield to parenting. Sarah weaves in breathwork, meditations, and exercises, and forms a full Yoga of Parenting sequence from Tadasana to Savasana.

Sarah asks her readers: How can we fill our children’s cups if we cannot fill our own?

Self-care is self-preservation, and as a parent, you must create the space to take superintendency of yourself if you want to show up whole heartedly for your kids. Sarah emphasizes the importance of creating healthy boundaries, considering sometimes saying no to something ways saying yes to yourself.

For Sarah, it’s all well-nigh her early morning routine. She chooses to wake up surpassing the rest of her family so she can meditate, write, enjoy her tea hot, and maybe plane petting her dog.

“Getting up early gives me time to fill my cup,” she said.

Sarah writes with honesty, compassion, and a keen sensation of yogic philosophy, helping parents slow down surpassing reacting to their children. As she says, “presence = awareness.”

She grounds the typesetting in personal reflections and experiences from other parents, reminding us to take a deep breath, that we are not alone, and that we are perfectly imperfect.

Parenthood is a yoga practice and maybe plane a spiritual experience. Considering just like an inhale and an exhale, we learn to hold space for our children while simultaneously learning to let go. Yoga reminds us as parents that everything is temporary.

“As our children change, we are asked to change, too,” Sarah said. “Watching our children grow up asks us to embrace the trundling of life and death over and over then while moreover letting go of resistance virtually those changes.”

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Cameron Joy Machell is a writer and journalist tent yoga, travel, and wellness. Always planning her next adventure, she has chased the Northern Lights wideness Iceland, camped under the stars in the Sahara Desert, and sipped kava with chiefs in Fiji. When she’s not traveling, you can find her at home in New England, in the garden or on her mat.

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