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Eating for New Moms

Posted October 29th, 2008 | 3 Comments » | Bookmark and Share

 

 

One of my favorite classes all week is my Postpartum class on Thursday mornings.  All the moms I’ve grown close to in Prenatal class suddenly disappear once they have their babies. Over the past year that I’ve been teaching this postpartum class, I’ve been able to stay in better touch with my students and continue to observe and support their entry into parenthood (even if they’re already parents to older children).  Plus I get to hang out with cute babies :)

 

New parenthood is hard!  Most of my students are smart, organized professionals who have a fair amount of resources, and still they can really struggle with the first few months postpartum.   Not only do babies require a lot, but so do moms – proper physical exercise after carrying a baby for 40-some weeks, nourishment for supporting feeding a baby, learning to cope with a new sleep pattern, figuring out a new work/social schedule, etc. 

 

So, anytime a new resource comes up that can help new moms, I’m all about promoting it.   My dear friend Christi Collins has written a fantastically practical and super helpful Ebook called “How to Eat to Survive Motherhood.” 

 

I learned a lot by reading it, some of which I’m excited to impart to my students – for example, what the most important nutritional needs are in the postpartum period, and practical foods to have on hand for those needs.   

 

But if you are a new mom, or looking to help out a friend who is a new parent, I highly recommend you buy this Ebook.   This Ebook has recipes and worksheets that I think will take the important informational content and make it actionable.

 

Check out Christi’s site here to buy the Ebook.   Even if you’re a new mom who has it pretty together, this book will help you feel even better.   And I can’t emphasize enough, that if you’re a friend of new parents, please consider giving something other than a cute outfit for the baby.   I know it’s fun to pick out those things, but parents really need a good home-cooked meal, or a massage, or a yoga class, or an afternoon of babysitting or help with chores.   This Ebook could be the perfect gift.   

 

Also, my new mom’s class is Thursday mornings from 10-11:15 at Black Lotus for any mom.   You are welcome to bring babies up to crawling (usually 6-7 months).

 

Namaste,

 

Barrett

 

 

Posted under Education, Health and Wellness, Upcoming Events, Yoga

Yoga in the Classroom

Posted October 8th, 2008 | 4 Comments » | Bookmark and Share

 

I’m excited about how much yoga is cropping up in academic settings.  On Monday I had the opportunity to present some material for a college class at Lesley University.  I did some Masters degree work at Lesley awhile back, and still have a few great connections with some of the other grad students who are there and studying yoga academically. 

 

The format of this class is exactly what I’ve always wanted a class to be:  1 hour of physical yoga practice followed by 1.5 hours of academic class.  Students sat on the floor (not at desks slumped over) and I tried to tie in the physical yoga practice to the topic we were talking about afterwards (the yamas and niyamas – perhaps more on that in a later post!). 

 

My advisor when I was at Lesley has been spending time looking at how yoga is being incorporated into K-12 classrooms as well.  Though I don’t do that kind of work, I’m so excited to think that perhaps yoga can help us in our search for a new paradigm for our education system. 

 

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of controversy about bringing yoga into public schools.  In the last 15 years, several opponents to yoga in the classroom have cited the separation of church and state in the schools, claiming that yoga is too linked to religious practice to be considered secular.   Check out this recent article about a school system in New York state that is struggling with this issue. 

 

Though yoga definitely comes out of spiritual roots, it is so clear (to me) that we have really removed the “religion” from the physical practice we engage in today.   In this classroom (admittedly, at a private university, not a public grade school), it just seemed so obvious to me how some yoga mindfulness fit in to the learning environment.  

 

It makes me sort of interested to teach kids in school and see what that’s like!

 

I’m curious if any of you teach in schools, or have kids who are learning yoga in school?  Share your experiences in this expanding field! 

 

 

 

Posted under Education, Yoga

Yoga Research

Posted October 3rd, 2008 | 1 Comment » | Bookmark and Share

I am a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, and they put out a yearly journal of scholarly research on yoga.  I went to their first ever conference in January 2007 and was blown away by the resources (time and money) being invested into “proving” how yoga works for people.   I was mostly excited by it, but also a little worried that we were narrowing yoga’s efficacy down to what could be “proven” in a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial. 

I found this article in the NYTimes very interesting because it points out some of the other problems with “studying” yoga through scientific research.  Interestingly, Sat Bir Khalsa is interviewed in the article.  I met him at the conference in 2007 and he casually invited me to participate as a teacher in his insomnia study at Harvard Medical School.  I didn’t follow up, mostly because I wanted to focus on other aspects of yoga teaching and studying in my work.   But I think his work is interesting and will probably yield some very positive results for yoga.   I know from many many students how helpful yoga is for their insomnia.

Here’s a fascinating list of 77 health benefits from yoga practice.  This information is based off of many of the small studies that the NYTimes article mentions.  

Anyway, may each of us keep “proving” in our own ways how much yoga works!
Namaste,

Barrett

Posted under Education, Health and Wellness, Yoga, Yoga Articles

Know Your Lingo

Posted September 29th, 2008 | 2 Comments » | Bookmark and Share

This was a great article printed in the NYTimes a month ago.  I’ve been meaning to share it in my newsletter, but we will air it here instead :)

 

As I teach a lot of classes every week, I sometimes forget that newcomers in class don’t know all of our lingo, from the opening asanas (postures) to the last Namaste (our ending that we say to each other).  Below is a humorous run-down of what you might hear in yoga class.

 

 

See the article on The New York Times here. 

 

 

August 24, 2008   

 

NAMASTE  by Jaimie Epstein

 

‘At the beginning of class, we stood at the front of our mats and let out a long, dirgelike moan,” the first-time yoga student recollected. “Then the teacher yelled, ‘Chili-pepper pasta,’ and everyone hit the floor.” Sanskrit, the language of yoga, is said to unite sound and meaning; that is, saying the word gives the experience of its meaning. But for the novice yogi (the word for male as well as female practitioners), whose ears need to be tuned to a new frequency, that experience can be as elusive as an overnight parking spot in Manhattan. Thus, chaturanga dandasana (four-legged staff pose, which looks like the bottom of a pushup, your body hovering inches above the floor) might become “chili-pepper pasta” if you’ve got dinner reservations at the latest outpost of the latest fusion craze. And the ear-twisters don’t end there. So let’s do some untwisting…

 

To read the rest of the article and learn more about yoga lingo, go here.

Posted under Education, Yoga, Yoga Articles

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