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November 18th, 2006

Holidays Have You AND Your Baby Stressed Out?

Try Mom and Baby Yoga!

The benefits of yoga are now well-known: practicing yoga everyday increases flexibility, keeps ligaments, tendons and joints lubricated, massages all the internal organs, gently detoxifies your body and keeps muscles strong and toned. Of course, the immediate benefit is it’s an excellent way to relax for busy grown-ups. But did you know that babies and toddlers need help relaxing just as much as adults? It’s stressful learning new things everyday and any time mom or dad is stressed out, so is baby. On the flip side, when you are relaxed, your baby tends to relax as well.

What better way to de-stress than to do yoga together! Beyond the physical benefits of yoga, it also creates a special bonding time between baby and mom (even dads can join in the fun!).

Helen Garabedian, author of Itsy Bitsy Yoga, has been blessed to share yoga with thousands of children between birth and age four since she conceived the Itsy Bitsy Yoga exercise program. Helen found that the benefits for a baby doing yoga include: they sleep longer and better, have improved digestion of breast milk and formula and less gas pains and colic. Long term, it aids in neuromuscular development, creates an early positive body image, increases self confidence, strengthens immune systems and helps toddlers regulate their emotions.

Youngsters also benefit from the social interaction and self-expression in yoga classes. It puts them on the path toward higher self-esteem and a more active, healthy lifestyle—a powerful antidote to the growing problem of child obesity.

While Helen Garabedian’s work and her book are for only baby and toddler yoga, in my classes, I designed a combination workout and relaxation program for mother and child to do together. I have found ways to integrate babies into their mom’s poses. For example, when we do the cobra pose, mom is belly to belly with baby, thereby getting all the benefits of the pose, while baby watches and enjoys the closeness. The more your baby, and especially your toddler, sees you doing yoga, the more they will want to participate themselves!

After taking a few classes to get the basics down, you can do yoga anytime, anywhere. So during the inevitable stress of the holidays, with all the to-do items to cross off, keep in mind that yoga is an easy way to just to take a moment out of your day to rebalance and distress with your baby.

Stephanie Brandt is a Contributing Editor for C3 Mothering and a Certified Yoga Instructor. She specializes in pre-natal and mom-baby and mom-tot yoga. She teaches in her home, the YMCA in SouthWood and at Best Beginnings-a prenatal boutique. Stephanie is a Licensed Massage Therapist and Certified Infant Massage Instructor, Doula, Birthing From Within Childbirth Educator and Happiest Baby on the Block Instructor.

You can contact her at sbrandt113@earthlink or go to her website www.mamaandbabylove.com for more information.

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