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Pre-Natal Yoga: The greatest gift a mother gives her family

Pre-Natal Yoga: The greatest gift a mother gives her family

“The greatest gift a mother gives her family is a commitment to her own self-care” Cheryl Richardson.com

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new,” and so in you the child your mother lives on and through your family continues to live… so at this time look after yourself and your family as you would your mother for through you all she will truly never die.”― Osho Shree Rajneish

Caught your interest?  Tell me more you might be asking!

Pre-natal Yoga can provide the tools to access and connect with all the resources you have to birth your baby.  You, as a mother can unite with your breath, body, inner knowing, and the new life you are carrying inside.

Coming to a Pre-natal Yoga class can help you check in with how you are feeling.  Pregnancy can be an isolating experience, so our classes are also a great opportunity to make new mom friends! Aside from the relaxing and the physical experience, your “Mom Tribe” can come together, discuss feelings, fears, release emotions that may be building, and share resources. Pre-natal Yoga is also about building strong, capable, and competent mothers who are preparing to face some of the major changes ahead. The changes may be in relationships, like with the father of your child who may have been enjoying an exclusive relationship with you prior to the 1st born, and now is going to be sharing you with another family member.

What other ways can Pre-natal Yoga help me?

Pre-natal Yoga can provide benefits on every possible level: physical, mental, and spiritual bonding with the baby, balancing hormones, learning pain coping techniques, learning self-regulation through stress reduction and the using your nervous system, and conscious relaxation (relaxation on purpose)!

Practical application of Pre-natal Yoga knowledge

Pre-natal Yoga can help you have a powerful birth experience and help you to feel inspired and empowered, by overcoming fears about the birthing process.  You will learn about contraindicated poses, (whether to avoid or do in a gentler manner) or to avoid altogether. You will learn breathing techniques that can provide pain relief, control energy, teach you to find a focal point, and work synchronistically with the challenges of labor and childbirth, connecting the body and the mind.

But I’ve never done yoga before?

You can safely begin a Pre-natal yoga practice at any point through your pregnancy as long as you have clearance from your care provider.  You will be free to modify your poses with whatever props you want, and your teacher will give you lots of safe options, right up to delivery.

You are not done yet, and you are not alone!

This is just the beginning of your yoga journey.  Once your body has had a chance to recover from delivery, you can progress to your Post-partum Yoga. You might be thinking, “But I have already been through everything, what else is there?”

Delivery of that lovely baby is just the beginning of the journey.  You are now responsible for this new little life.  You may feel a desire to reintegrate with your Post-natal Tribe.  You have all gone through a unique experience, and now have a series of new experiences to come, in common.  You share in a spiritual companionship with other women.  You might build a community of moms, sharing new resources, building confidence in yourselves as moms.  You may be feeling blue, or even mildly depressed, often simply due to lack of sleep, which is not at all uncommon. Not to mention the physical rebuilding of pelvic core strength, regaining core strength and stability.  Repairing your posture, and maybe losing a few pounds.  There are other physical issues you may need to deal with, slight urinary incontinence, diastasis recti abdominus (DRA) which often presents as “Mummy Tummy.” Post-natal Yoga and Pelvic Rehabilitation can continue what you started in Pre-natal Yoga class to help you recover, and be your best in your new life as a Mom!

What better place to unwind, revitalize and “let go” and find that sense of belonging, than in the safe environment of your Post-natal Yoga class, with your fellow moms, your Yoga Tribe.

 

Stay tuned for information on Post-natal Yoga classes coming soon!

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We’re celebrating the opening of our new yoga studio by offering Pre-Natal Yoga classes as a 6 week Progressive Series! Pregnancy is a time to keep your workouts fun and safe! Experience with yoga is not necessary.  These classes are fun and educational and are open to all stages of pregnancy.

Sign up for you pre-natal yoga class today!

Have questions? Call Brenna at (604) 283-7827 ext. 709 or email brenna@alongsideyou.ca.

 

Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga Therapy in Practice

Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga Therapy in Practice

Gentle Vehicles for Healing

Case Studies in Metro Vancouver, bases on real life experiences

 

Case Study #1:  Ten year old Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) resulting in the following chronic symptoms:

  1. Soft tissue injury in upper back and neck, exacerbated by a fall onto the left elbow.

Results after one month, using Physical Yoga Therapy and Techniques:

  • Easing of pain in shoulder, which has resulted in improved sleep at night
  • Greater mobility in movement of shoulders and arms
  • Greater mobility and range of motion in neck
  • Improved posture
  • Improved mobility in hips
  1. Arthritis in facet joints, brought on by MVA:

Results after one month, using Gentle Yoga Therapy and Techniques:

  • Nurture and maintenance of spine flexibility

These improvements have resulted in our client having more energy, and mental clarity, being free from the exhausting pain. The client also now knows and has the ability to self-regulate and correct as necessary.  The client will move forward with back strengthening techniques, but for now is just enjoying being relatively pain free.

 

Case Study #2:  Lung surgery in adolescence – Resulting in severe Apnea until present age of early sixties, including misaligned left shoulder and hip due to compensating for breathing imbalance.

Results after two and a half months, using a combination of Physical Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga Therapy Techniques:

  • no longer anticipating the next breath
  • improved posture, increased lung capacity for the breath
  • shoulder position greatly corrected with posture
  • increased left hip mobility with a greater range of motion
  • client demonstrates greater confidence and a lighter, happier state of being

 

Case Study #3:   Previous student of yoga for many years.  No longer able to practice due to fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, resulting in tension in jaw & neck.

An example of how what happens in the mind is reflected in the body.

Results after 3 months, using a combination of Physical Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga Therapy Techniques:

  • Noticeable decrease in anxiety. The client demonstrates a lighter presence where there used to be heaviness
  • Release techniques have greatly reduced the jaw and neck tension
  • Gentle therapeutic program, designed for the client’s particular needs, has allowed for a return to home-based practice and resulting in becoming comfortable in one’s body, and eventually returning to group sessions
  • Trauma Sensitive Yoga Therapy breathing techniques and guided meditation to rest the body and mind, enables the client to stabilize and stay grounded
  • Gain key ability to tune in and listen to one’s body in order to be able to self-regulate at first sign of tension, anxiety and stress
  • Letting go of anxiety and tension using gentle therapeutic yoga practice, the aches from the fibromyalgia have decreased due to improved circulation, and the release of uptight muscles and joints

 

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Our yoga focuses on addressing the root of the issue before deciding, alongside you, what the goal of your yoga practice is and how to address this through therapeutic yoga.  Your planning with our professionals will look at your overall physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing and how therapeutic yoga can help you address these areas.

Have questions? Call Brenna at (604) 283-7827 ext. 709 or email brenna@alongsideyou.ca.

 

Need Help Managing Your Physical, Mental, or Emotional Wellbeing? Try Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga

Need Help Managing Your Physical, Mental, or Emotional Wellbeing? Try Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga

With 2017 underway, this is a good time to consider different solutions to manage many of life’s problems and opportunities. Did you know that Yoga can be utilized for treating various conditions? Built on thousands of years of knowledge, Yoga is not just a physical exercise or something to relax your body and mind over the weekend. Yoga Therapy is a type of therapy that can reduce pain and suffering for people with different physical conditions, whereas Trauma Sensitive Yoga is a type of clinical treatment for treating trauma.

The power of Yoga Therapy to change lives is what has drawn me to it as a teacher.  Starting by working on myself, it allowed me to regain control of my life and improve the quality of life, physically through Yoga Therapy and psychologically through Trauma Sensitive Yoga.

Yoga Therapy teaches people how to allow healing to occur.  In teaching Yoga Therapy, I become the facilitator of healing. By getting to the causes and conditions required for healing, healing will naturally arise once everything is in place.

What Does a Yoga Therapist Do?

There are spaces in the medical community where Yoga Therapy fits. Part of the job of educating people is to properly distinguish Yoga Therapy from Studio Yoga. Well, the good news is, people are becoming very curious about it!

The IAYT (International Association of Yoga Therapists) has been in place for the last 7 years, and holds an annual conference, at which amazing presenters bring forward new concepts in Yoga Therapy and bring the therapist community together.

For example, Dr. Baxter Bell, who is an M.D., became a Yoga Therapist as it allows him to treat the entire family.  Yoga Therapy supports healthy ageing, and can be applied to young and old, middle-aged citizens as well as seniors.

What is Yoga Therapy?

It’s not Studio Yoga.  It is an amazing tool that can be taught to a student and be used on their own at home after a few sessions, with success.  Any situation that has taken you to a chiropractor, physiotherapist, or a myriad of other physical therapy modalities, can also be treated with Yoga Therapy.

You do not need to have experience in any form of Yoga.  Yoga Therapy comes from a thorough education of the human anatomy. It is biomechanical and the integration of all systems –the key is the mind – body connection.  With many physical conditions, there is a corresponding psychological component, whether it is a result of a motor vehicle accident, Post-Partum Depression, infertility or urinary incontinence, just to name a few.

What is Trauma Sensitive Yoga?

Life is traumatic, it just depends on the degree! Yoga, particularly Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY) can help us to reconnect to our body and feel at home in our own shell.  It can help us learn to blend our experiences into our daily lives.  Through exploring yoga and mindfulness, we will be able to better thrive emotionally. In turn, we can contribute to our own wellbeing, and beyond into our communities.  Students learn simple, body-based self-regulation techniques that will help to build resilience in their bodies. They will be able to better equip themselves to manage stress, trauma, depression, anxiety and rediscover the true self and feel comfortable in their own skin.

Through this gentle yoga practice the internal experience is emphasized, you will be free to make choices in a safe, supportive place of embodied empathy and attunement.  Trauma Sensitive Yoga is an ideal adjunct to psychotherapy.

Trauma survivors are often referred for Trauma Sensitive Yoga by their healthcare providers to cultivate, “the simple body awareness that makes it possible to gauge, slow down, and halt traumatic hyper-arousal, and to separate the past from present (Rothschild, 2000)”

I hope this helps explain some of the intricacies of Yoga Therapy and Trauma Sensitive Yoga for you, and if you have any questions I’d love to answer them! We truly believe in the power of yoga in physical, mental, and emotional well-being here at Alongside You and would love to see you experience it firsthand!

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If you’d like some help to manage your emotions and anxieties, we’d love to help. Please give us a call at 604-283-7827, send us an email through our website, or book an appointment online and one of our counsellors would love to help you out!