Yoga for pregnancy a simple 5 hours training

Yoga for pregnancy and birth is a great goal and I guess business but is not a solution to pick up a few months before giving birth. I would say it is like a gift to receive during pregnancy (specially first pregnancy) as breath awareness and some yoga postures are important during the work to give birth. Indeed my first lesson focus on breath and body awareness, my second and third on the postures which can be helpful to prepare the body and during the delivery. In the end I would say 3 lessons of 1 hour and half can be useful for exercices and postures basis in order to know them and pratice home, can be helpful to find your posture if you decide to give birth naturally and to bring into your delivery a stronger breath and some yogic elements to your delivery room and that it. If you need more (because of past tragic experience of yoga or of delivery, because of hard baby posture or any complication, because you are afraid of or completely new to give birth) I would suggest to you a yoga meeting every 2 weeks for 6 months.

In the end aiming at giving birth is nice to prepare (get a toolkit and be happy) but nothing is more useful that to let go during the delivery your basic instinct.

Some people need yoga because they lost their body and mental balance. So the first easy thing to communicate to pregnant women is to educate their breath with a simple body scan you can check with them a breath dynamics. I personnaly use body scan technics from a medic called Bohle (yogatherapy). It consists of using hands on the side of your upper body to understand that breath is or is not regolar. That breath is a sound and a home which is a doorgate to a mindful life. Taking care of our breath, educating or reeducating our inhalation and exhalation is a good job to do while waiting for our baby. Breath awareness bring to body awareness for exemple. At the end of the first lesson women would get a new breath/body awareness and some advises how to use breath during delivery.

Some others come to yoga for the discipline of asana and the body discovery while practicing unusual postures. For the second lesson I taught some of the relaxing postures recommended for pregnant women in any books: for lower back pain release (cat pose...), for pelvic gym (chair agint wall, use of bandas...), heart burn and indigestion pain (stik pose, body side awareness...), ankle strenghtening (warming up on feet and massage) and the most important resting postures.

Lastly some people discover with yoga a natural way of life, a yogic lifestyle on and off the mat. Bringing all your knowledge about yoga into your delivery room is not easy specially if you have opted for an assisted delivery for any reason you have decided. Last lesson (open to future fathers) focus on compassion practice and emergency or instinctive postures (in case of natural birth preparation). I am 37 years old and in the last 15 years I have assisted many friends and students a small time before and after the birth. I Noticed that something was lacking for and from women, from their partner and family: family compassion practicing and woman instinct valorization. In order to bring mindfulness to my students of the pregnancy yoga course, I like to speak to the male partner to stimolate his protective attitude towards his female partner. Male usually need to see/listen to (more than to feel) so I introduce them to some simple postures to assist their partner to memorize in order to understand how the baby is positioned. Checking the position of the baby (normal birth position or any others) the man is aware of the engagement of his baby and can help to keep a natural position or to bring back his baby in a normal birth position. Last important thing about baby positioning but not least is to let understand if baby is arriving from left or to the right side. Lastly the most interesting thing about body awareness is to bring mindfulness and instinct to rise. As I use to say to stop your mind, to shut up the dancing monkey, feel free to practice a simple Come back to your breath exercize. Feel instead of think. Inhale I am here alive and exhale Let go what is useless. While giving birth you will need a few things, a few thoughts to do what you have to do, so train to be grateful for who you are and let go what is useless. Last lesson finish with chanting as it could be helpful to use it while giving birth.

This course has been done for the first time in Sohum yoga shala in Antibes. Copyright free with permission of Benedetta Spada mentoning your source.

Books:

On Amazon.com http://tinyurl.com/n5qyjze

On Google suggestions http://tinyurl.com/ksja7ac

My suggestion is Olivia H Miller book Prenatal yoga

Global meditation as an experiment of peace

http://globalmeditation.chopra.com/

Why am I teaching yoga?

Holiday is a new opportunity to discover your life and have a mindfulness experience.

So I want to share with you my last yoga class in French Riviera specially the final mantra I have writen to my students:

Kabat-Zinn says in Full Catastrophe Living, " it is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself. That is the reason for practicing yoga in the first place". The worst thing you can possibly do is to look around and compare yourself to somebody else, whether it is in yoga or any other field of endeavor.

To be yourself is more simple like to drink a cup of tea but we forget how to do it in our life and we find ourselves busy trying to be like somebody else and comparing us to somebody else who has more beauty, more flexibility, more strongnesss, more anything than us.

Here is my first point, nowadays I have difficulties to find in yoga shala and in life enough moments where someone ( a teacher, a lover, a friend, a yoga mate...) say to another: " try to be yourself" or just to find somebody who loves you like you are, or even better "try to walk in your life respecting yourself and knowing that you can recieve love just because you are you(rself), not because you are somebody else"! 

In many case I have heard people talk about yoga-mindfulness but I keep asking for myself do they really know what is yoga or mindfulness... Sometimes I met acrobatic yogi or some others who practice daily meditation on the rocks and so many others, but outside of their mat they start to be so different, like to be someone else into life or with their family, so I asked for me why should it be like this?

The answer I have given to me for the moment is that one is too much outside of oneself and too much in competition, too less inside oneself, too much in conflict and so on.

In many cases the first step to fond ourself is to find more compassion for our fears and our feelings. So while you meet one of this fears comes you can choose to start to create a new tension because you don't accept this limit or fear and just after increase tensions and pains (or you can decide not to do so).

If you want to change your life you have to come back to a simple option: to be in love with yourself, with your fears, body and mind limits, pains, tensions. If you start to accept who you are, you can help yourself in many moment of your life when may be something not so good happen. At the same time, when you start to reconnect with your breathe, with your heart and yourself you can love your partner with his/her fears, limits, stress, tensions, pains, this is my way to love. My beloved Thich Nhat Hanh would have said if the fear come into your mind just say "Hello my dear fear (inhale). I say you Good bye (exhale). As many times you need".

I like so much to practice Jivamukti yoga or Ashtanga yoga but I believe that in this society there is too much space for our body and competition and there is not enough space for mind, heart, mindfulness... also when you go to the yoga shala and practice you can forget what does mean this practice, not only how use your breath or performance but how to accept yourself, how to love, how to use your tenderness and only throught this way to change your life! This is the power of yoga and mindfulness, not to be perfect, but to give a new opportunity to you and your life. Yoga and mindfulness starts when your vinyasa yoga workout ends up.

In this summer yoga time I'm here in Antibes to teach in a new studio, after many days I'm thinking what I want to introduce in my life and in my yoga classes and I think we need more compassion, more patience with ourself that means for me need to give more space to what happen inside not outside and give more space to our family with the same patience and love everyday.

So if this summer you want to share your yoga with me, please write to me your story, why did you start to practice yoga and mindfulness in your life? Or why not?

Is it possible that you can start to love yourself throuht your limit and fears now is right time!

Benedetta Spada

Thanks to Marc A. Vincent for the english translation.

Photo credit: Marvin

Love 2014 - Part 2

How to pass from romance to love?

Jeopardize, free your choice! One day a maestro, a kind of guru told me: love is a choice of every moments, so take your responsability and love!

The tricky idea is that there is no rule, but I could advice on the contrary: where there is worry there is no space for love.

To my two friends who are getting married:

I wish the best life and to find anytime the willing to choose themselves into irregularities of life.

I wish them to find the right quantity of irony to finish the daily problems.

I wish them to take the responsability not to loose time for unuseful affairs (unuseful to love)

I wish them to find freedom not to look for external confirmations also to be strong as a seal

Here a word for all this called Namaste which means: I glory into you the place where all or the world, if you are in that place we gonna meet there because I am in that space waiting for you, so to be one a d only (una cosa sola).

Love,

Benedetta

La Fontaine maxim remix of mindfulness

 

with courtesy of @francoislange here is a modern maxim to begin your day. Benedetta on holiday think about you: @festivalyoga @yjit @yoganomics

Best 5 Ashtanga vinyasa books

Best book means that the 5 books give you a complete librairy about vinyasa yoga
1- A collective book about Sri Pattabhi Jois
Where does my yoga comes from?!
2- Maehle's ashtanga theory
What does my yoga means?
3- Long's book about anatomy
Where are body joints and channels?!
4- Life and sharon Gannon's book
What is the difference between sequenced yoga and freestyle yoga?
5- Scott's book with sequence illustration
One of the few books with ashtanga primary serie sequence

Yoga season detox (from cold season to warm)

For 3 days in our family we have done a fast time. Fasting with light centrifuge of veggies and fruit, fresh organic infusion, bouillon of veggies from our garden. This time gone away in silence, meditation, gardening, walk and more has given more complicity, and help us to find new mindfulness and new tastefulness.

At this point I want to say: dont eat to lose weight or to get more weight, but eat to feel better, to take care of us and our loved ones.

Anyone can choose freely what to eat, but sometimes our choice is unaware or even worst when to have a lunch has becomen a routine. 

While reducing food portion for a few days, we understood that fasting (including only fresh juice and bouillon) is awakening our senses again from a state of hibernation, and may be finding our body coordinates, reseting our taste and our mind so to sudden restart with mindfulness our own life.

I would say someone who is all-counscious vegan or even openminded macrobiotic can be epicurean.  I do believe in the possibility to change our food education and habits. At 30 years old for exemple, we have many pieces of food education (including fetal, infantil, childhood and adulthood diets) and we have a food pattern made of some really creative fabrication!  I remember myself at 18 eating almost nothing (low fat yogurt and fruit) which had no sense except to be fashionable and beloved. And after a period of being pissed of food, a new way of eating. In a nutshell, it is possible to shut up emotion chaos and having care of yourself for a few days facing your food pattern while fasting. Objective: reset your senses and feelings about food to genuine taste (infantil taste?) and slowly recognize new taste. In a few words tactics is decrease to increase.

You asked (facebook, twitter @mammayoga and radio) me for fasting:

- what to do when happen some signs on the peel?

I personnally use antisectic cream called Kimuli (biosophia)'made of tea tree oil.

- how to prepare fasting?

Classical ayurvedic remedy called triphala (biosophia or any other) for 15 days before. I drink it with water. It can be used also to prepare deeper cleansing.

- what to do when against headache for fasting?

During first 24 hours headache is normal as if you quit drinking coffee. I personally use umeboshi plum.

- how many times do you fast during a year?

Once upon a time the season were 4... Fasting was done during the fifth season, twice a year when changing from cold to warm season and the opposite. But nowadays I would say once during a period of 3/4 days of cold before a warm period, before summer. And some other times as you feel to do it.

- what to do if fasting bring in mind mental fixations and nightmare?

I would say meditate and dont analyse tour nightmare.

Thanks.

External link:
- http://www.biosophia.eu