2023 National Parenting Product Award Winner
Bring the wisdom of yoga into your parenting journey.
Mom and yoga teacher Sarah Ezrin offers 34 practices to find more presence, patience, and acceptance—with your child and with yourself.
“I can say without a doubt that the most advanced yoga I’ve ever done is raising a child,” writes Sarah Ezrin. While many people think of yoga as poses on a mat, The Yoga of Parenting supports people in bringing the spiritual principles of yoga into their lives—particularly their families. Ezrin, a longtime yoga teacher, supports readers and practitioners in slowing down, becoming present with our children and ourselves, and acting with more compassion.
Each chapter highlights a yogic posture and theme and explores how it relates to parenting, including presence, boundaries, balance, and nonattachment. Chapters include prompts such as intention setting, breathwork, and journaling. Ezrin also features the stories and insights of a wide range of yoga practitioner parents whose experiences include single parenting, grandparenting, and passing on intergenerational yoga traditions. In addition to the opening posture, each chapter includes:
- “Breath Breaks” invitations to mindfully breathe.
- “On the Mat” practices to show us how we can apply the lessons on our yoga mat in a more general sense.
- “Parenting in Practice” offering and advice from parents in the US and abroad.
- “Off the Mat and Into the Family” fun exercises to help us bring the work off the mat and into our homes.
Practicing yoga can help us become kinder to ourselves, more aware of our thoughts and actions, and more present in our lives. What more important sphere to want to become kinder, more aware, and more present than with our families?
This book gives us permission to know that we are not perfect, and that our time is valuable as well! It also helps us to guide our children a little differently than perhaps, we were guided.
I am excited to give this gift to my children as they begin to enter Parenthood and plan to also gift it to any new parents that I come across!
I learned so much about myself and my parenting! I can’t wait to practice the exercises again now that I’m done with the book. A must read for any parent and especially parents who love yoga.
Sarah writes in a clear and engaging style, and shares her own personal experiences as a parent to illustrate the principles she discusses. She also includes stories from other parents, including the father of her children, as well as quotes from yoga teachers and philosophers. The book is full of practical advice that parents can use to improve their parenting skills and well-being.
As she states “Parenting is Yoga”, but even if you’re not a regular yoga practitioner, this book can help parents/caregivers to learn on becoming more present, patient, and compassionate, while developing a stronger sense of self-awareness and self-acceptance. It also provides tools to help parents/caregivers to build stronger relationships with their children and cope with the stress of parenting.
If you are a parent who is looking for ways to improve your parenting skills and well-being, I highly recommend reading The Yoga of Parenting. It is a valuable resource that can help you to become a more mindful, compassionate, and effective parent.
I gave it 4.5!stars rounded up because sometimes I found it a little wordy, and also because while I was pretty sure I knew what the yoga move looked like based on the name and description from years of yoga classes, I would have loved a few photo sprinkled in to help aid the instructions!!
Some of my favourite parts of the book are;
- the ten takeaways at the end of each chapter for busy parents (VERY HELPFUL!)
- the really neat yoga references and definitions (such as the definition/ meaning of vinyasa - you’ll have to read the book to find out!)
- each section starts off with a really good thought quote not by the author, thereby she incorporated relevant thoughts outside of her own.
My fav quote included is: “ Parenting isn’t about what our child does, but about how we respond. In fact, most of what we call parenting doesn’t take place between a parent and child but within the parent. —Dr. Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids”
- the concept she introduced of LA PAUSE.
All-in-all though it was a great book I’d recommend, and I think there is something for all parents to get out of this book. Thank you NetGalley, Sarah Ezrin and, Shamblahala Publishing for the arc copy to read and provide a voluntary review. All thoughts and opinions are mine.