A fabulous morning of supportive and nurturing yoga for couples, family members, friends… anyone who would like to explore a greater sense of connection, trust and support through practicing yoga together and learning thai yoga massage techniques.

Set in a private house, the morning will be run in the beautiful wooden ballroom, with real fire for warmth and breathtaking views of the Sussex Downs.

The yoga session will be run by Leonie Taylor, who will facilitate body and breath work, meditation and mantra to bring you first of all into a centred personal space so that you can better communicate on a deeper level with your yoga partner.

Thai yoga massage will be taught by Jane Swanney, who will teach the basic principles of thai yoga massage and palming techniques, so that you can practice this deeply relaxing massage at home.

Participants do not need any previous experience or physical flexibility, just open minds and hearts.

Delicious mid-morning snacks will be served between the sessions, followed by a tantalising organic, vegetarian lunch (special dietary requirements can be catered for with previous notice).

The cost for the event will be £70 per couple / £60 concessions. Prior booking essential as spaces are limited.

Childcare is also available on site with prior booking with a registered childminder, £15 per child. The house is set in beautiful woodlands so if the weather is good, the children can explore – suitable clothing therefore recommended.

Booking essential. To book please email Leonie on lcbtaylor@gmail.com or call 0780 907 5602

Then when you finally get a moment to change out of your pyjamas, you realise the midwife must have been a body snatcher and has left you with a weird gelatinous replacement body that’s leaking milk, with a pelvic floor so weak that laughing or sneezing are hazardous. While you’re overjoyed at the arrival of your little one, you may also feel dazed, tired, physically on the brink of malfunction and drastically unprepared. Add to this more than a dash of sleep deprivation, the sudden change in hormones following pregnancy and it’s no wonder you can feel emotionally all over the place.

So, amidst this sometimes/sometimes not so charmed existence, doesn’t it make sense to take at least an hour of your week to stop and breathe? Perhaps it’s the perfect time to start/restart yoga? But hold on, if the mention of the word terrifies you with thoughts of lithe eighteen-year-old pretzels in Lycra, or perhaps evokes images of saffron-robed mystics, none of whom are having to cope with a new baby on their path to enlightenment, don’t worry.

The word ‘yoga’ is rooted in Sanskrit and means ‘to merge’, ‘to unite’, ‘to join’, and definitely not ‘to bend’, ‘to compete’ or ‘to make shapes’. Geeta Iyengar describes yoga as giving ‘serenity and composure, an inward unity amidst the diverse struggles of life’. Now this starts to sound more attractive, doesn’t it? Also, perhaps, implausible… where is your baby going to be while you merge with this elusive inner peace? The answer is parent and baby yoga, where the focus is on YOU. Your baby (from four weeks old to mobility) is near you, either on a play mat near you (or on particularly lucky weeks asleep in his or her camper-pram) and you are led through a series of restorative breathing exercises and yoga asana (postures). Here, the emphasis is not on how far you can stretch, panting, over the stomach you’re still not happy with, but on practising within the parameters of your breath, finding a pace that honestly suits you and reconnecting with yourself.

Yoga allows you to investigate the nature of Being, and regular practise helps you to become less and less swayed by the turbulent fluctuations of your emotions. Working with the body in yoga asana, you learn that the body is in a constant state of flux: sensations you feel at the beginning of a class may have shifted by the end, tension and tightness are just transitory phases of being. In the same way, you come to understand that emotions change too: whether you’re feeling euphoric and energized or tearful and vulnerable because you haven’t slept properly in months and your baby is doing very good Damien impressions, these feelings are just temporary.

So, in fact, what better time to engage with yoga than at a point where your understanding of change takes on new dimensions; there aren’t many more transformative points in your life, physically or emotionally, than having a new baby. Not only is your body on a continual path of change, but your identity has shifted radically, your relationships with friends, partner, family are evolving, and you’re continually watching this little person who grows, changes and acquires new skills faster than you can blink in bright sunlight.

Parenting naturally demands that we respond to ever-shifting variables. There is no definitive guidebook to parenting, but even if there were, no one ever gets it ‘perfect’. And here too, yoga starts to really make sense: there is no perfect pose, perfect body, perfect parent, perfect baby… so if you can start to accept where you are as you are, without grasping for what’s next, without judging what’s past, you feel a sense of growing peace and natural flow. And the more you are easy with this flow, accepting what is at any given moment, the more peaceful you and your baby will feel. Being you, being the parent you are and practising yoga as your body and breath allow becomes, as yoga’s great sage Patanjali says, ‘effortless effort’.

As one of my students said recently: ‘Mother and baby yoga classes were an oasis of calm. I’d arrive at the class feeling vulnerable and slightly out of control and leave feeling balanced and much happier in myself.’

What’s great too is that the physical by-products of all this positive emotional centering are that you might just tone those uncooperative abdominal muscles, release some tension and discover that flexibility comes by breathing, letting go in the mind first – the body will follow.

Sounds simple, until you take into account that human behaviour means that as we get used to any feeling of wellbeing, we come to take it for granted and want more. In the psychology of happiness, this is referred to as getting trapped on the ‘hedonic treadmill’: the faster we run, the further we get, the further away we move our own goalposts.

This state of perpetually unfulfilled ambition, even in part, is what drives more and more of us in modern western society. It’s hard not to get caught up in the cycle of belief that if we have more money, bigger houses, faster cars, speedier technology, cooler clothes, shinier toasters, and so on, the happier we will be. Of course it is easy, at least on paper, to recognise that living in this state of velocity, of projecting our satisfaction to an undefined time in the future when our ambitions may be realised, can only cause stress and disillusion.

Dr Persaud recommends,
“Act upon yourself to render yourself less upset by unchangeable circumstances – a tactic termed ‘emotionally focused coping’.”

Yoga offers us this means of coping. As Aristotle said, “Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.” If we can take the pure joy that we can glimpse in our deepest asana, mantra and meditation practice – that simple, joyful realisation that we have all that we need to support ourselves within ourselves, within any given moment – we can find more sustainable contentment.

This is not to say that we should not try to move forwards with our lives, more that if we took the non-violent approach of our yoga practice into every aspect of our lives, we may notice the same movement in stillness. By appreciating the subtleties of each moment in our lives, by understanding and valuing the small details in each passing here and now, we can find more immediate, meaningful and long-lasting satisfaction than through endlessly chasing the unattainable.

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.”
Edith Wharton

* Negative feedback, past or present, that effects our self-esteem and become part of our self belief system
* Negative self image that we have about our looks, our bodies, our characteristics
* Negative assessment, by ourselves or others, of our own abilities
* Feelings of inferiority compared to others
* These feelings, however deeply entrenched in our subconscious, can lead us to have low self-esteem, self pity, pessimism, varying levels of depression and often anger and resentment.

Freeing ourselves
By taking responsibility for our emotional health and stability, we can begin to free ourselves of these negative assumptions about who we are. Through our yoga practice, by showing our bodies and minds due respect, by treating ourselves with ahimsa, we are setting ourselves on the right path to self worth.

By letting go of our past emotional bodies, in the same way that we let go of our physical shapes in asana practice, we can liberate ourselves from habitual negativity we feel towards ourselves.
By honouring both our physical and spiritual bodies with regular yoga practice, we give ourselves permission to be ourselves, and place value on being who we are.

Self-affirmation practice:
1. Each morning, spend at least five minutes, calmly seated with crossed legs, eyes closed, in a place where you will be undisturbed.
2. List at least five of each of the following kind of positive statements about yourself: “I am…”, “I can…” and “I will…”, such as “I am open”, “I am a good person”, “I am capable”; “I can trust my own judgement”, “I can grow”, “I can change”; “I will respect my own beliefs and decisions”, “I will feel positively about myself today”, “I will challenge myself to change today”.

Using these statements daily has been proven to result in a more positive outlook, optimism and increased feelings of self worth. Remind yourself regularly, especially in moments of self-doubt, of your positive self-affirmations.

Be true to who you are and treat yourself with the respect you deserve, just as you treat your body with the respect it deserves during asana practice.

Regularly assess and reassess how you feel emotionally and physically beyond your asana practice. Use the same techniques of subtle self-examination to honour the changes you feel in yourself from minute to minute, day to day.

Accept and rejoice in who you are.

“It is rewarding to find someone you like, but it is essential to like yourself. It is quickening to recognize that someone is a good and decent human being, but it is indispensable to view yourself as acceptable. It is a delight to discover people who are worthy of respect and admiration and love, but it is vital to believe yourself deserving of these things.”
Jo Coudert

For a start, being pregnant, and later giving birth, strips back the layers of human conceit: you’re no longer the sum of your clothes, possessions, looks, career, friends, family, etc, but a part of creation, of the cycle of life. Your body takes over from mental processes, wordlessly and effortlessly getting on with its natural purpose. Just as we move into the here and now, and tune in to the subtleties of our bodies in our yoga practice, pregnancy brings you to this point of deep physical awareness.

And just as the yogi, with a sense of ahimsa, loosens his or her grasp on the future or potential outcomes, freeing him or herself from expectation, being pregnant brings you firmly into the moment – your body is changing daily and your hormones bring emotional flux that you cannot anticipate, so you can only move into your present experience.

When it comes to labour too, taking a more yogic approach is invaluable. Asana practice throughout your pregnancy and an active birth employing breathing techniques and relaxation undoubtedly help ease the experience. But the most profound thing I found was to view labour and the inevitable pain from a non-western viewpoint: if you approach the pain from the stance that it is an essential physical and emotional journey that you can only evaluate at the time of experience, rather than trying to anticipate it, avoid or suppress it, the moving in and letting go inherent in yoga practice comes into full force.