Meet Jacqueline: Yoga Mom Putting the “OM” in “MOM”

Hello, and welcome to the first “Yoga Mom” post, or should I say “Yoga Mom” post! I’m Jacqueline, mother of two boys, now eight and ten, who are amazing on many levels. As a 13-year yoga teacher and therapist with five+ years of freelance writing experience in print and online, I am fascinated by how we could creatively combine our best skills in service.

My business card reads “The Karma Yoga Scribe” because karma yoga works for the good. It’s my passion to help people by teaching yoga and writing about it. Having found yoga in college, I was hooked on the body-mind connection, especially how it relates to using the practice to get rid of tensions in the body by making it a fit vehicle to hold a more quiet mind. Ah, peace of mind, who doesn’t need it, right?!

Like so many other moms and yoga students I’ve talked with, it seems one of the greatest challenges of motherhood is striking a balance between taking care of our family’s needs and getting our needs met.

Let’s face it: mothers often operate on a busy schedule while being sleep-deprived and putting everybody else’s needs first. Most of us have heard about the healing benefits of yoga for everything from lowering blood pressure to relieving stress. Still, the challenge of breathing exercise may be overlooked in its simplicity. Moreover, even if you are “not a yoga person,” you can still adopt a yogic lifestyle whether you ever take an official yoga class or not!

Did you know that when you breathe fully, you support vital functions such as utilizing your full lung capacity while quieting your mind? In facilitating the latter, you create a stop-gap in which you give yourself time and more attention (aka being mindful) to how you react.

To that end, I’d like to share a simple yet effective breathing technique for use during the challenging moments of your day, like when your little one is losing it or you are about to. These deep, full breaths can be done on the spot – when you are in line at the grocery store line where your little one is at eye-level with the candy shelf and tracking towards a temper tantrum or lying down during a quiet moment before falling asleep at night.

Three-Part Breath

1. Put one hand on your belly and one on your chest.
2. Inhale. While breathing in ascending order, inflate your lower belly, mid-belly, and chest, filling them like a balloon beneath your hands.
3. Exhale. Breathe out, deflating your chest, mid-belly, then lower belly in descending order.
4. At the top of the inhale, the chest should lift gently. At the bottom of the exhale, the abdomen should be in.
5. Start with five minutes, if possible.

Even though breathing is automatic, doing it more fully and with awareness can make all the difference in how you feel and react to whatever situation life throws at you. Yoga master BKS Iyengar said, “The mind is like a leaf in the wind of the breath. When you control the breath, you control the mind.”

I had a yoga teacher, friend, and mother of five who liked to say, “Short, shallow breath equals short, shallow life.” Maybe she had a point that short, shallow breathing could be likened to a more reactive state, whereas using a conscious breath like the above-mentioned would likely lend itself to a more peaceful state. Please don’t take my word for it; try it yourself, and let me know how it worked for you!