08/20/2020
When I became a mom 30 years ago I had no idea what I was doing. When I was a girl I didn’t play with baby dolls, didn’t babysit, and as the youngest of 4, didn’t have to look after younger siblings. I was clueless. What I would have loved was a guide book, a road map of how to do it-how to be a great mom. Oh, I know, there are plenty of how to books out there explaining in great detail how to be an amazing mom. What I longed for was something different, something simple, concise, profound and applicable to all aspects of my life.
Enter yoga, and specifically the yamas and niyamas.
The first two limbs of the 8 limbed path of yoga, the yamas and niyamas, can be thought of as guidelines to living your best life. One of my teachers refers to them as the Don’ts (the yamas) and the Dos (the niyamas.)
While at first glance they may seems a little austere, the yamas and niyamas don’t limit us from living life fully. They are simple, practical, and easy to understand and implement.
As Deborah Adele puts it in her book, The Yamas and Niyamas, “These ten guidelines sit as both a vision of the possibilities of human existence as well as providing the practical guidance to make skillful moment to moment choices in our daily life.”
So to celebrate Mother’s Day 2020, I offer to all of the mothers out there, seasoned and rookie moms alike, a yoga playbook for mothering. Keeping in mind, mothering comes in many shapes and forms, aunts, extended family, nurturing friends, and neighbors, all contributing to the collective mothering that is required to raise our children to be fully formed happy adults.
