Check out the press release here:
I would like to share a new parenting book Whole Mama Yoga: Meditation, Mantra, and Movement for Pregnancy and Beyond which I received a physical copy of for this review. Check out the press release here:
As a mom who has pregnant twice and both pregnancies was totally different but lead to issues with Suzzie’s Colar Bone being broken from being so big. To me almost dyeing and Charlie having a whole in his heart. Even though I would have liked to have another child it wasn’t in the cards for me. I wasn’t even supposed to have another child after Charlie but the LORD blessed me with Charlie. Which I’m eternally grateful for.
I just wish I had had a copy of Whole Mama Yoga: Meditation, Mantra, and Movement for Pregnancy and Beyond when I had both of my children because I believe things would have been less traumatic. As you begin reading the book you will see how the authors have written the story y for real people.
For someone that has never done Yoga it can be so intimidating and make us feel so overwhelming to even try to start all the exercises and breath and meditation. Which can feel had while trying to learn how to be moms. Whole Mama Yoga: Meditation, Mantra, and Movement for Pregnancy and Beyond has things to practice that feel like anyone can do yoga including the average person.
Whole Mama Yoga: Meditation, Mantra, and Movement for Pregnancy and Beyond offers such good tips for the person new to yoga and for the experienced yogi. Even though the book is for women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant I had Charlie and I try a few of the very short breathing exercises when we’ve feeling overwhelmed, and the exercises helped us a lot and we will be using them in the future and I am praying David will also try them.
Whole Mama Yoga: Meditation, Mantra, and Movement for Pregnancy and Beyond will be a help to moms and moms-to-be and those even earlier in the process of trying to conceive, as well as those who are already postpartum. The exercises were easy to follow and the book was full of helpful tips for breathing, meditation, and adjusting poses. My favorite section was when they authors reminded us to “love our body (or at least respect it!) which all of us need to do each and every day.
About:
A unique way to see and process the motherhood experience through the lens of yoga, Whole Mama Yoga covers all phases and stages of becoming and being a mother or birth parent—offering a way to extend yoga’s gifts and tools for all who parent.
Women are drawn to yoga for its physical benefits, its ability to induce calm and presence, and its offering of spiritual depth. Whole Mama Yoga offers a way to extend yoga’s gifts into the motherhood experience and offers guidance that eases not just physical discomforts but existential ones. Many moms and birth parents balance boundless love and boredom, overwhelming joy and moments of isolation, self-confidence and self-doubt. Yoga provides an opportunity to practice the much needed body love and self-connection many parents need.
Accessible to new yoga students, advanced yoga practitioners, and yoga teachers alike, Whole Mama Yoga is for parents with children of all ages. It is for those just thinking about beginning a family, those in the early stages of pregnancy, those getting close to labor and delivery, and for those new moms, who often feel harried and overwhelmed. This is a book to reference as children grow, change, and become little (and big) people.
With yoga poses at the core of the text, yogi moms and instructors Alexandra DeSiato and Lauren Sacks offer helpful information in movement offerings that meet all moms and birth parents where they are. Organized into sections titled Relate, Move, Reflect, Wisdom, and Breathe, Whole Mama Yoga provides breathing techniques, suggestions for meditation and mantra, inspiring tidbits of yoga philosophy, funny and uplifting stories from yoga-moms, and journal prompts that allow readers to reflect on their own experience of parenthood.
Meet the Authors:
Alexandra DeSiato is an expert in the field of yoga. She has years of experience teaching other yoga teachers, working with students on healthy aging, and teaching prenatal and postpartum yoga classes. An Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher at the highest level (E-RYT 500), Alexandra is also certified in Pilates and has an MA in English Literature. Alexandra teaches Pilates, flow yoga and slow flow yoga, postpartum yoga, and prenatal yoga and more at Carrboro Yoga Company in Carrboro, NC. Find her fulls schedule of classes, videos, blog posts, and more at alexandradesiato.com. Alexandra is a regular presenter at Kripalu Center for Health and Yoga.
Alexandra has partnered with Sage Rountree on two books: LIFELONG YOGA, about healthy aging and yoga and TEACHING YOGA BEYOND THE POSES, about yoga themes and inspiration. TEACHING YOGA BEYOND THE POSES is a workbook aimed at helping yoga teachers and practitioners develop themes and mantras that make the physical practice of yoga that much richer. It has been translated into multiple languages and remains a popular book for yoga teachers and practitioners alike.
In pursuing yoga’s tools for all phases of motherhood, Alexandra co-created Whole Mama Yoga (wholemamayoga.com) with Lauren Sacks. Whole Mama Yoga offers prenatal, postnatal, and mama-focused classes, and is a Yoga Alliance-certified Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training program. Their book together, WHOLE MAMA YOGA, comes out August 29, 2023. WHOLE MAMA YOGA offers sequences for all stages of the perinatal experience, from preconception to pregnancy to postpartum to parenting. There are meditations, mantras, and breath work offerings, as well as expert voices from the fields of yoga, Ayurveda, perinatal mental health, and labor and delivery. It’s an excellent book for anyone on the path of motherhood.
E-RYT 500, PRYT, is a perinatal and hatha yoga instructor with more than twenty years of teaching experience. She was a founding member of Carrboro Yoga Company in 2004 and taught thousands of students during her fifteen-year tenure. Practical alignment, whimsical humor, and fierce authenticity are hallmarks of Lauren’s classes.
For twelve years, Lauren worked as an event and retreat planner in the field of arts and higher education administration, and draws from her experience there to facilitate retreats that are heart nourishing, soulful, and fun, and expand on the community created through her yoga classes. She co-founded Whole Mama Yoga in 2016.
Along with a collective of teachers, she leads yoga classes, workshops, and other events to support all aspects of parenting—from preconception to perimenopause. Several times a year, she also co-teaches an internationally renowned Pre and Postnatal Yoga Teacher Training program. Lauren’s expertise in perinatal yoga as well as her beloved Yoga for Motherhood classes make her a sought-after presenter in yoga teacher training programs, and she works regularly with both UNC and Duke to teach tools of yoga to residents, obstetricians, midwives, and their patients. Lauren loves reading, cooking, eating, quilting, napping, and her family and friends (in no particular order). She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her husband and their two children.
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Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
