In this course you can expect to learn how the tools of yoga can support your body and mind postpartum. Birth is a physiological event that requires the person we used to be to transform into a parent. Not only do we birth our baby but we birth ourselves. No matter what your birth experience was like, your body has forever changed.

This course will provide you with tools to rebuild with ease, restoration, and compassion. To utilize your innate strength as well as your deep need for rest and connection to support your new body and your new role as parent (or of 2nd, 3rd, 4th time parent).

This course will build your physical strength as well as your inner resilience and increase your capacity to breathe wide and full. You'll feel both rejuvenated and energized as we move through these practices made just for you and your new body.

Part 1: Foundations

The first week will cover the foundations of how our bodies shifted during pregnancy and birth. We'll also cover the importance of rest and what's happening in your body during initial postpartum and how to create ritual and ceremony in your postpartum practices.

Part 2: Breathing

This week we'll explore how to breathe wider and more fully. We'll also explore ways to use breathing patterns to create and build strength as well as how to use breath to release and to build connection to your body.

Part 3: Core

Explore your whole core. This includes your glutes and your back muscles. We'll explore movement that feels stabilizing, connective, and restorative as well as incorporating self-touch and self-massage as tools of healing.

Part 4: Pelvic Floor

This is probably the week you're most excited for! We'll cover the importance of pelvic floor stability as well as release. We'll also touch on various pelvic floor dysfunctions and their symptoms so that you can make sure you're utilizing the tools that are best for your body in it's current state.

First and foremost: take what works for you and leave the rest.

There is no ‘right way’ or ‘best way’ to do anything. There is only the way that you need in each moment. Take each of these practices and shape them to your unique experience.

And remember: You know yourself better than I do. Give yourself the tools you need, the grace and compassion you deserve, and the challenge of knowing you can do hard things.

Your breath is a direct connection to your nervous system. With each inhale, your heart rate slightly increases, each exhale a slight decrease. This is called heart rate variability.

As our heart rate increases with stress, anxiety, and overwhelm (all of which are common feelings postpartum), there is less variation in the heart rate, meaning that the heart rate is less likely to slow on the exhale. This can create a feedback loop with the nervous system - our circumstances make our stress levels and heart rate increase, and the heart rate increase also increases our stress hormones. So that they continue to feed into each other.

The same is true for when our nervous systems are in a freeze response, or we are dissociating, or feel stuck. Our heart rate will actually decrease and continue a feedback loop in the other direction.

In this practice, you will explore observing your breath and heart rate while also using your breath as a catalyst to shift and alter your heart rate, therefore impacting your nervous system.

Try this practice with an open mind and try it a few times over the next week or so to explore how it feels depending on your mood, time of day, etc.

This is a simple breathing practice that will guide you through how breathing can be impacted by our posture. We'll end with a breath practice geared towards creating strength and steadiness in your core as you breath. This breath practice is not meant to be how you breathe in daily life but rather a practice done for several minutes each day.

As we breathe in, our core and pelvic floor gently widen and stretch. As we exhale, our core and pelvic floor gently engage and draw together.

This practice is a simple awareness practice in how we breathe. Practice this while seated in a chair and feet flat on the floor.

Breath practice begins at 3:18

As we build our core and pelvic floor strength we must also take into consideration our inner strength.

Our physical strength and inner strength are dependent on one another in many ways (see: Breath + Nervous System video). So this meditation practice is all about connecting to your inner courage and strength, noticing where it lives in your body, how it expresses itself, and how to harness it.

You are so strong and capable.

This practice is for those days when you've been stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, etc. It's for those days when you've been clenching your jaw or glutei. It's to release and restore your pelvic floor and psoas muscles. These practices are MORE crucial than the engagement practices for your pelvic floor.

We cannot engage our pelvic floor muscles if we don't first release them.

Breath observation is a beautiful way to connect to your pelvic floor and to release tension it's holding.

Many people approach postpartum pelvic floor therapy with an idea that they need to strengthen and engage their pelvic floor muscles. However, we actually also need to release these muscles.

And for those that have experienced trauma, or tend towards high anxiety, pelvic floor release is likely crucial to their ability to find pelvic stability. (Refer to the Pelvic Floor Basics Video to learn more).

This audio practice is full of several simple pelvic floor practices that you can do anywhere! Find the one practice that resonates with you right now and continue to practice it throughout the next week (please please don't forget to practice the release as much as the engagement).

Then once you feel comfortable with that practice, try the audio again, choose another practice to work on for a week or so and then repeat until you feel confident with all of the practices.

The fast twitch muscles of your pelvic floor are the muscles that engage automatically when you move.

They are the muscles that create pelvic stability and bodily stability so that you can gracefully move and move without emptying bowels and bladder.

After pregnancy and birth, sometimes these muscles can be challenging to access, that's not abnormal, or bad, it's just something that happens and we can use bodily awareness, movement practices, and breathwork to gently rebuild the neural pathways that activate these muscles when they are needed.

Enjoy this practice!

Grab your favorite oil (I love jojoba oil and argon oil). A towel underneath your bottom or do this in the bathtub. And lay in reclined cobblers post (supta baddha konasana) for this practice.

You have the option to just listen and not do anything with your hands. Or you can do only the external part of the practice. Find what works for you. And if this feels a bit uncomfortable for you, I encourage you to listen to the practice a few times before doing hands on connection to your vulva and vagina. This is intimate work with yourself AND it's your body. It's crucial for you to know your body AND it's crucial to not go beyond your comfort levels. Trust your body if it's asking you to stop or slow down or change what you're doing. Your body is right :-)