Whether you are a mother, grandparent, daughter or aunt, today’s yoga is for anyone in need of a nourishing and uplifting yoga session. It’s nourishing because caregivers give so much of their time to others that self-care is often put on the back burner. This session is also meant to be uplifting. After all, apart from tremendous love and joy, motherhood or a caring role can bring exhaustion, fears, guilt, and having to let go. Therefore, this self-care yoga routine centres on the heart area: stretching chest muscles, strengthening and lengthening the upper back, it mobilises and engages an area that can often be held quite tightly. I’ll start with some reflections on motherhood and mothers, and then we’ll move and breathe deeply.
Reflections on motherhood
Being a mother is the hardest role I have ever had. Of course, there was immense joy and love. But there was also having to deal with exhaustion, guilt, fear, and lack of social prestige. Hardest of all was letting go. Even if you have no children, you have or had a mother, with all the emotions that relationship brings. Maybe there’s trying not to make the same mistakes, while making your own, of course. Maybe there’s trying to be as good as her. Perhaps, by now, the roles have reversed and you are looking after her. Maybe there’s having to let go as well, while always somehow being connected.
Yoga helped me become my own person when I was a young student. It reminded me revisit some kind of self when I was intertwined in motherhood. It helped me stay contented when I had to let go of my children, and cheer them on as they left the house and the country.
When I arrived in the UK as a young mother, I played with the idea of continuing my studies in cultural anthropology, and research ‘identity and motherhood’ in London. That was quite vague, and I never got far, partly because I was so immersed in being a mother myself. I remember feeling extremely fulfilled and extremely exhausted and aged by three decades during that first year in the UK, when my son was 2 and my daughter just born.
Instead of back into my studies, motherhood led me to yoga. Even though I had started yoga as a student, yoga now became a supportive friend, one that demanded me to get out of my busy mind. It also called me to forge a different career. Yoga doesn’t only make us feel better physically, easing aches and stiffness, but it also offers a platform to calm the whirling thoughts and emotions. Inner peace may be a cliché, but that’s what it feels like. It can also feel like being more centred, clear-headed and content. These are qualities we can go back to again and again to help navigate our life.
Self-care yoga routine
Arm movements:
To start this self-care yoga routine, let’s move our arms. Here, we are lifting and rotating the ribcage and stretching chest muscles, which allows us to breathe more deeply. The breath is essential if we want to nourish ourselves. Paying attention to calm, free breathing tends to make us feel more content and at peace.
Shoulder shrugs:
We can begin by releasing some tightness around the shoulders: inhale and lift the shoulders towards your ears. Then drop them with a sigh, as if you are dropping a heavy weight. Repeat several times.
Raising the arms:
Inhale and lift the arms to the side and up, so the palms touch above the head if comfortable. Exhale and lower your arms. The arms will automatically rotate so the palms are facing the legs again.
Repeat several times.
Lateral stretch
Interlace the fingers behind your head and exhale while lifting the right elbow and stretching the right side. Inhale to centre and exhale to the other side. Repeat several times to each side.
Floppy arms:
Rotate the upper spine and allow the arms to flop gently from side to side. Keep this movement very soft, as if the arms are hanging loosely from the shoulders.
Releasing the spine
Now place the legs wider and bend your knees a lot. Go forward to hang down in a soft forward bend. Because the legs are bent, his position is quite gentle on the spine and lovely for the neck. Stay for a few breaths if it feels comfortable. If you have high blood pressure or glaucoma, don’t stay in this position.
Now let’s come down to a mat or carpet and encourage the upper spine to move backward. When teaching the cobra pose, I always tell my students not to push with their arms. If we do push on the hands, the upper back doesn’t have to do anything, while the lower back may get strained. Likewise, if you look up too much with your head, the neck will do all the work and possibly get even tighter than it is already.
Cobra
Lying on your front, place your hands underneath the shoulders so that the tips of the fingers are in line with the top of the shoulders.
If your lower back feels a bit fragile, engage the muscles of the lower abdomen to protect your lower back and hold the core firm.
Leave the legs heavy, press down slightly through the toes and knees.
Raise the head and shoulders forward and up without pushing on your arms. Done without weight on the arms, this is a small movement that spares the lower back but lengthens and strengthens the upper back.
Keep the back of your neck long, looking at the mat rather than up. The neck is supposed to continue the curve of the upper spine in this pose.
Exhale and lower the head and shoulders down. Repeat a few times.
Strengthening the lower and upper back
This is a strong pose, not to be undertaken (yet) if you have lower back pain, or at least not without adjustments. I include it here because it may counter hunched shoulders and strengthens the upper as well as the lower back.
Start in child’s pose with one arm extended in front of you, the other resting on your lower back.
Inhale and reach the arm forward, straightening the spine to come parallel to the floor.
In the same inhalation come up to sit on the feet or (harder) stand on the knees. This last movement engages the lower back muscles.
Exhale and lower the body to the floor by bending in the hips and placing the head on the floor last.
Repeat a few times with each arm if it feels ok for your back.
Rest in Child’s pose.
Dog Pose
There is something fun, young and careless about hanging down with the head. I like this feeling of hanging out, allowing the spine to lengthen in the opposite direction with the pull of gravity.
Start in child’s pose with the arms stretched in front of you, fingers spread, hands mat-width apart.
Tuck the toes under.
Unfold the legs but keep them bent, at least for a while, so you feel that you are bending deeply in the hips and there is the sense of sending the tailbone back and upward while the spine is ‘hanging’.
Press on the index fingers and thumbs to align the shoulder blades. Never push the chest down towards the floor.
Stay for a few breaths and then return to child’s pose.
Child’s pose with breathing along the back:
Finally, rest in the soothing child’s pose.
As you breathe in, sense the subtle expansion along the whole back: the ribs widen to the side, the back lifts and there is a widening all the way towards the lowest part of the back. Breathe out and feel the whole back rest down.
Stay in this position for a while, allowing the breath to move the body in this subtle way.
Finish by resting on the back with the legs bent for at least ten minutes. This is possibly the hardest thing to do, but give yourself ten minutes so the body can assimilate the movements and the mind can rest more deeply.
I hope you enjoyed this self-care yoga routine for mother’s day. To work with me and learn more poses that can benefit your particular health concern, contact me here to arrange a free Zoom consultation.
Namaste
