Yoga is a path to healing for mothers

I didn’t start practicing yoga consistently until I was well into my pregnancy. Up until that point I had practiced yoga here and there, but had never really enjoyed the experience. I typically found myself watching the clock hoping that it would all be over sooner rather than later.

That all changed when I found a great instructor. She was a perfect fit for me and what I needed at that point in my journey. Ironically, it was not what I thought I needed.

As someone that loves tough, strenuous workouts, I assumed I would enjoy a rigorous yoga flow – something that would have me sweating and feeling the burn. However, that is not the type of yoga I fell in love with during my pregnancy.

I found myself hooked on the slow flow classes, where we held poses for minutes at a time and leaned into the discomfort of holding each pose. It was uncomfortable, yet somehow was just what my body and mind needed. It brought me a sense of peace and helped me truly get in touch with my body.

A good yoga teacher and studio can make all the difference when it comes to a positive yoga experience.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with a few of the powerhouses behind Whole Mama Yoga, Lauren Sacks, Alexandra DeSiato, and Erin Hanehan, to talk about the ways yoga can positively impact a mother’s life. Let’s dive into the conversation.

Tell me about Whole Mama Yoga. What does it stand for? How did it get started? What are the benefits for participants of your classes, retreats, and teacher training?

Lauren Sacks: Whole Mama Yoga is yoga, community and commiseration for all phases of motherhood and parenthood - from preconception to parenting. Alexandra and I started Whole Mama Yoga in the spring of 2016 in the hopes of bringing together a community of women and birth parents with the shared experience of mothering. We knew the benefits of yoga and its many tools, and thought that those tools could be applied to parenting in so many ways.

What began as a means of connecting parents through blog posts and links to our respective classes has turned into a collective of 8 - 12 yoga instructors (who all also offer support to the perinatal community as doulas, mental health and physical therapists and lactation consultants).

Our hope is to provide those going through the experience of motherhood the sense that they are not acting in isolation, that they have support – both through yoga and what it offers, and through the camaraderie of others experiencing similar journeys.

What benefits do you see for those that practice yoga and mindfulness regularly? In particular, how does it impact a person throughout their motherhood journey?

Lauren Sacks: Whew - this is a big one! So many benefits. In general, yoga increases strength and flexibility, improves focus, contributes to a greater sense of calm and a feeling of groundedness and can be really therapeutic for many specific challenges. There are so many resources and books about how good yoga is for all populations.

Yoga has been a guiding force for us both (Lauren and Alexandra, founders of Whole Mama Yoga) as moms. The philosophy of yoga has helped us in our parenting choices and helped us consider our relationship with ourselves. The breath practices of yoga have given us an anchor for our attention, and a tool for calming our minds (or sometimes enervating our bodies.) The physical poses and movements of yoga – asanas – have given us a chance to have tactile, tangible relationships with our own bodies, as they’ve changed through motherhood.

Yoga asana has sometimes given us a chance to find space from our motherhood roles (on our mats or in a class or in retreat). Sometimes we move our bodies in yoga as a tool of coping with discomfort, whether that be physical or existential. Often we move our bodies in yoga because it’s pleasurable, joyful, and grounding to connect to our spiritual selves through our physical selves.

Whole Mama Yoga also offers Yoga Teacher Training which you’ve said can be healing for mothers. How so?

Erin Hanehan: Being pregnant, becoming a mother and raising children can be thankless, confusing and lonely – especially in a culture that doesn’t do a great job of empowering female identifying folks with information about their bodies. Our yoga teacher training provides an accessible yet comprehensive dive into the experiences of pregnancy, postpartum and parenthood. We explore what is happening biologically and anatomically during pregnancy and the postpartum period. We read an entire book devoted to the female pelvis. We invite participants and guests to share their birth stories. We discuss infertility. Putting words to our experiences and learning about our own bodies is healing because it validates that our experiences are important.

We also work to research and discuss birth equity and social justice in our yoga teacher training, and so many of our students are already doing incredible work in the perinatal field. Tapping into this network of passionate birth workers can feel incredibly healing and inspiring as a birthing person because it reminds mothers that there are people working to make pregnancy, birth and parenthood more equitable and supported.

Lauren Sacks: The knowledge gained from our PYTT can serve a wide range of birth professionals. We've had doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, massage therapists, pediatricians, physical and occupational therapists, and OB/Gyns in our training, in addition to yoga instructors.

Lauren and Alexandra, you both just recently had a book published. Congratulations! What prompted you to write the book? Who is the book written for?

Alexandra DeSiato: Lauren and I know that yoga offers tools for moms and birth parents beyond the obvious poses and movement practices. As moms ourselves, we have found breathwork, meditation and mantra helpful aspects of yoga that truly make us better mothers. We wanted a place to share that knowledge, and a book seemed like such a beautiful, logical option. This book was written for moms, birth parents, anyone on a fertility journey, anyone prenatal or postpartum or with children of any ages: it's for the breadth of the parenting experience.

What are the biggest takeaways from the book?

Alexandra DeSiato: The biggest takeaway from the book is that yoga is not just the asana. Movement and poses are obviously valuable aspects of yoga. When we move, we get stronger and more supple, and there are many shapes we can make that can be healing for the postpartum era, for instance, or helpful for the common complaints of pregnancy. But movement is not the only (or even the most) valuable aspect of yoga for parents and moms. It just happens to be the one that is the most Instagrammable. Learning to deepen and slow your breathing can help you manage anxiety, for instance, which is incredibly helpful if you're a parent.

Aiming to have any sort of meditation practice helps cultivate patience and mindfulness – again, hugely helpful tools for the parenting journey. And chanting and mantra can serve as a way to learn to "make some noise" heading into labor, but it can also serve as a way to create family rituals around anxious spaces, like bedtime. (My daughter and I have a nighttime mantra we love to repeat: "I am home, I am loved, I am safe.")

Whole Mama Yoga, the book, offers movement practices, meditations, mantras and breathwork for all stages of motherhood, from preconception and the fertility journey, through all three trimesters of pregnancy, through the postpartum experience and into the parenting years. It's a book that is comprehensive in its scope.

We want moms and parents to know that yoga is a way to deepen their experience of motherhood and motherhood is a way to deepen the experience of yoga.

Whole Mama Yoga also offers Yoga Retreats, which are such a special experience. Tell me about yoga retreats. What do they look like? Who are they designed for?

Erin Hanehan: Whole Mama Yoga offers two retreats per year – one local, day-long retreat in January and one weekend-long retreat. For the past two years, we’ve traveled to the North Carolina coast over Mother’s Day weekend.

All of our retreats are designed for mothers with children of any age. Our retreats offer an opportunity for moms to carve our time for themselves, which can feel impossible in our busy, responsibility-laden lives.

Connection with other mothers, movement, rest and indulging in delicious, nourishing food are always a part of any Whole Mama Yoga retreat.

Our retreats include yoga, of course – both energizing flows and restorative sessions, but our itineraries also include moments of stillness through meditation, journaling and plenty of free time.

What are the benefits received from attending a yoga retreat? What kind of growth have you seen in participants at the end of a retreat?

Erin Hanehan: One of the largest benefits of attending a yoga retreat is simply reminding yourself that you are deserving of time for yourself. You will likely leave a Whole Mama Yoga retreat feeling renewed, rested, pampered and calm.

Noticing these shifts in ourselves can serve as a powerful reminder of how impactful self-care can be. And obviously a full day or weekend of self-care is not always possible, so we try to incorporate tools that students can take home with them. Self-massage, a short meditation or making a cup of tea may not completely erase your day-to-day fatigue, but a little bit can go a long way.

We really love that our retreats are an encouraging nudge to recommit to any self-care rituals that serve you when you return home.

Also, many of our guests express how nourishing it is to spend uninterrupted time with other mothers. Yes, our time spent together includes a lot of conversations about our children, but there are also so many moments of silliness and laughter as well as inspiring, powerful discussions about our bodies, politics and current events. It is hard to make time for friends and many of our students have told us that our retreats are an opportunity to spend quality time with folks who make them feel seen, heard and understood.

Be sure to explore the Whole Mama Yoga website to learn more about their offerings, book, teacher training, and yoga retreats.

Crissy Fishbane is the co-founder of HER Health Collective, a supportive community and resource hub for moms. She is a certified therapeutic exercise specialist, personal trainer, wellness coach, and former high-school psychology teacher. Crissy believes in a holistic approach to women’s health and is a strong advocate of improved screening and treatment of perinatal mood disorders. She is passionate about building a supportive community for moms where they can make genuine connections and build authentic relationships. Crissy is a regular Go Ask Mom contributor.