A Yoga Story: Back on the Mat

Yoga with Noga
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

I had my daughter four months ago. It has been four months since my body went from one shape to another; where my capabilities in yoga drastically changed. One moment, I looked like I was smuggling a watermelon under my shirt and the next, it looked like a slightly deflated beach ball. Six weeks after giving birth, I was cleared to exercise and teach yoga again.

The entirety of my teaching career at the studio has been pregnant. I found out I was pregnant just before starting to teach and taught up until I was 37 weeks along. Now, I have to start new and re-learn how to teach with a non-pregnant body. I can do so much more and accomplish more poses, but at the same time it sometimes feel like I am starting from square one. I hadn’t practice crow pose, shoulder stand, or chaturanga in almost a year. My body was the same, but not the same at all.

How does one go from A to B in this scenario? Sure, I looked like I had before I got pregnant, but my body internally was not the same. I had just delivered a human child and recovery is a necessary period of time in order to heal. Not to mention that there was so much I could not do while pregnant so as to keep my child safe in the womb. Going back to yoga meant that my body had to remember things it had not done in quite some time. And it takes time to build a practice, meaning that after giving birth I would have to rebuild what I had been able to do before pregnancy.

Being a yoga teacher and a new-time mother is humbling. I have stated in my classes to the students that I have a hard time doing a pose because of recently giving birth. I let them know that I am still working on getting back to where I was, that some poses that were so easy to me before are being worked on gradually. And though it is difficult to admit your flaws or weaknesses, I believe it will help teach them that yoga is a practice we are always developing.

I am back on the mat and letting go of the idea of bouncing back and achieving perfection immediately. I am back on the mat and stronger than ever, because I am a mother.

Yoga with Noga

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southern nh based yoga teacher | finding balance between life and motherhood