Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

The Pibler has been especially cute today, full of smiles, laughter and jokes. He is now able to identify and name body parts - eyes, ears and nose - on both himself and his teddies (well, Eeyore and Pooh). 

Even without a historical context, he seemed to enjoy the little bit of the Royal Pavilion Tour that he, along with me and my sister, saw today (he slept through most of it). He pointed at and named the chandeliers and the fire, looking with interest at the paintings and elaborate wall designs.

I came away from last night’s sangha meeting feeling renewed. We did a lovely Kundalini Yoga meditation for communication, and I think our group is developing in a very positive direction. We have ideas for ways of bringing the tools of the yoga to the community, and have decided to meet more often, including a mantra session before each meeting.

Tomorrow I will be attending the Hanover Stops for Tea charity event to raise money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I’ve been inspired by the efforts of my fellow moms to organise this event, and tomorrow look forward to catching up with them there, and introducing my sister. I hope the noise of many toddlers is not too overwhelming for her! There will apparently be a ‘rock and rhyme’ session for the little ones too.

It’s half-term this week, so no writing course, but I’m going to try my best to get some more fiction writing done. It’s proving challenging without my own study space to write in, now that the Pibler is temporarily sleeping in my room and the TV in the background in the front room is so distracting. Still, I’m managing to write more in my journal which I had been neglecting lately, submitted another paragraph - on ’snow’ - to Paragraph Planet today, and managed to complete an article on toddler rainy day activities for Suite 101 yesterday. 

I’m enjoying that quiet time of the morning before the other adults in the house get up - yes, quiet because the Pibler is industriously ‘mopping’ with his toy mop around the lounge. I managed to do some yoga this morning although I have developed an awful cold. Yesterday I started a 1000-day Kundalini Yoga Sadhana meditation  which Yogi Bhajan called ‘Meditation for An Invincible Spirit in the Aquarian Age’.

Yes, this literally means doing the same 11-minute meditation for 1000 days - I think that’s about 3 years! I’ve done 40-day and 120-day meditations and yoga sets (kriyas) before, but this is the longest one I’ve attempted by far. Since it’s only a short one, I thought I could manage to fit it in, especially considering that I find time to write on here nearly every day.

Tonight I have a sangha meeting with some other members of the Kundalini Yoga community - teachers and teacher trainees. We have monthly meetings to discuss whatever concerns we have, issues and questions around teaching, and to meditate and connect with each other. The Kundalini Yoga community in Brighton is quite small, certainly far smaller than the London one, but that does mean that most of us get to know each other well.

Most if not all spiritual traditions emphasise the importance of the sangha (Sanskrit word for ‘community’) to keep the connection with the spiritual teachings of one’s tradition and support and motivate one another. I have found it to be crucial to access this ‘field of blessings’ as the sangha is known in the Buddhist tradition, and even more so today when facing the challenges of motherhood.

The only thing I find a little difficult is that very few Kundalini Yogi’s (that I’ve met anyway) are mothers themselves, at least in the literal sense, which can make it difficult for us to relate to each other’s challenges. After all, without parenthood responsibilities, the time to devote to spiritual practices has far more scope, and going off on retreats or weekend workshops is a more likely route to deepening the practice. Also, being a stay-at-home parent means a lack of money to do these things. That’s why I’m grateful for these sangha meetings, because they are free, and over time I hope we can build the sense of belonging and acceptance that I’ve experienced during my teacher training and at festivals such as Buddhafield.

A freezing cold blue-sky walk along the seafront with the Pibler today yielded an unexpected visual pleasure: an exhibition by photographer Gill Copeland. I was captivated by her photographs of the coast: they seemed to tell a story that lures one in, and takes the imagination on a journey. My favourite was the pictured ‘Follow Your Heart’.

I miss taking photographs myself: I did a short photography course years ago, back in Cape Town, and had a great time taking psychedelic pictures at psy-trance parties and photo’s of township children clamouring to be included in the shot. Lately, my partner has been taking most of the photographs of the Pibler, including some stunning black and white ones. I have yet to get around to labelling and archiving all the photo’s from the first few months of his life, and would love to get a chance to do some scrapbooking some day!

On the yoga teaching front, a yoga teacher mentor of mine has asked me to cover some of her pregnancy Kundalini Yoga classes - to be her back-up in case she is called away to a birth (she is a doula, or birth assistant). I jumped at the opportunity - I’ve covered classes for her before and enjoyed it, and now that I’ve actually experienced pregnancy and birth I think it will be even better. I’m seriously considering starting my own pregnancy yoga class, encouraged by this teacher, as it has been an interest of mine for a long time.

My sister arrived in the U.K. today and is at a family friend’s. She is coming to my place tomorrow. Even though I spoke to her on the phone, it still seems unreal that she is actually here for the foreseeable future. I’m so looking forward to her and the Pibler meeting for the first time and getting to know each other. She hasn’t met the Pibler’s dad either!

Yesterday I was ’stuck’ upstairs breastfeeding my toddler for what seemed an interminable time, having been interrupted from tidying up when he woke up from a nap. I really wanted to be downstairs doing something else. Inspired by ‘Buddhism for Mothers ‘, I tried to watch my thoughts as they became more and more frustrated, and decided to change tack: I did a three-minute Kundalini Yoga meditation ‘for a calm heart’. It has a simple hand posture, or ‘mudra’ (possible even when nursing!) and the breath is to hold both the in-breath and the out-breath for as long as possible without straining. By the end of the three minutes I felt in a totally different mental and emotional state: I was enjoying myself instead of wishing to get on with something else, I felt peaceful and expanded. If only, I thought, I could remember these little tools on a more regular basis!

As a busy mother of a busy toddler I have no choice but to keep my serenity by opening up to ways of integrating my spiritual practice with all the little moments of my everyday life, rather than waiting for a swathe of time - much like I’ve done with my writing over the years: take what you can get, and make the most of it.

That’s why I enjoyed Kundalini Yoga teacher Gurmukh’s brilliant book ‘The Eight Human Talents ‘ which I refer to every now and then: unlike most Kundalini Yoga books, it doesn’t have complete ‘kriyas’ or sets of exercises, but includes short exercises that can be done in as little as one minute. What’s amazing is that, due to their effect on the glandular and endocrine systems that govern our emotional state, we can feel a difference from even a tiny time committment.

Today I felt a bit like screaming as the Pibler wouldn’t come to get into his pyjamas (he was very tired but fighting going to bed as he often does) and wanted to romp all over the bed instead. I’d had a very long day with him and needed him to just go to bed in the foreseeable future. I find honesty rather than suppression is best in parenting as in most endeavours. So, I told him that Mommy was feeling a bit irritated and needed to take a few deep breaths. I was inspired by a thread on the “Mothering” forums that discussed how to model ’self-soothing’ for young children, how to show them the way to constructively deal with anger and frustration. So I took a few deep conscious breaths and although I felt rather silly, it did snap me out of a downward spiral and re-focused me on my intention of being loving and patient towards my son. 

I’ve stopped teaching the yoga classes I was doing, and am thinking of taking a different tack: gearing my classes towards mothers and helping them find little tools to use at home, to help them with stress and the feelings of lack of control that,I know from talking to lots of other moms of toddlers, can be overwhelming at times. 

A couple of days ago I watched a few excerpts of talks by American spiritual teacher Gangaji, and it uplifted and inspired me. She teaches about self-inquiry and truth, being completely honest with yourself about what your life is about. It started a reflection in me on what, exactly, I am trying to bring to life here: what values do I live out day-to-day, what values do I teach my son by example, and how do the activities of my life reflect that?

My week has been busy so far. Describing what I’ve done wouldn’t convey the completely wiped-out feeling I’m left with at the end of each day, of having worked very hard indeed. It’s the feeling I sometimes got after a twelve hour shift as a support worker, working with people with learning disabilities and mental health problems. It’s a similar sense of non-stop negotiation, constantly juggling my own needs with someone else’s, and not having enough space, silence, solitude. As exciting and precious as it is, it’s undeniably draining to be the life support system for a newly developing person. Even as he is becoming more independent, he is still very much a ‘baby’, which can be easy to forget when I’m around newborns and he looks so grown up!

In the midst of all this action it’s all the more essential to stop and take in the perfection of everything, stand as the stillness within the movement, and appreciate the ever-flowing nature of life. Within that, I am still working out what my truth is, moment by moment, and often it can be so confusing! Being a mother, being a writer, a yogi, a lover, a friend, a volunteer, all these things - all are part of me and yet none define me. Gangaji’s teachings left me with a deep feeling of stillness within the activity, and the question she poses - ‘What does my life stand for?’  - is certainly an inspiring one to contemplate.

After an exhausting day yesterday I decided to treat myself to curling up with a DVD: ‘Closer’, a film with Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman. As depressing as it was about the state of modern relationships, I enjoyed the movie and felt well-rested from doing nothing but lie on the couch all evening!

Rarely, the Pibler slept three hours solid thus allowing me to watch most of it undisturbed. As usual, though, I first had to deal with the guilt of not doing any writing or anything productive. I decided at the last minute on Sunday night not to go to the breastfeeding counselling diploma course on Monday. A conversation with a good friend helped me realise that I was over-committing myself again, and that I had been ignoring my feelings of not feeling ‘right’ about leaving the Pibler for six hours without breastfeeding him. I felt a huge sense of relief once I made my decision, although I hope that I can still do the course in the future. I think I have been operating under an assumption that ‘more is better’, when in fact I have enough going on as a mother-writer-yogi! I need to relax into that more and allow more spaces in my life. It’s an ongoing process and my attempts to bring more balance into my life often feels like ‘two steps forward, three steps back’.

As my partner has not been enjoying our pots and pans being tossed about (and one sieve broken) by the Pibler’s attempts at ‘cooking’, I bought him two pots at a charity shop yesterday, as well as a whole toddler tea set. Even so, dinner preparation time last night was extremely fraught as no matter what I tried, he was cranky and whiny! It was so frustrating: he’d only napped for a measly half an hour during the day, so was over-tired, but we’ve realised that too-long naps impair his sleep at night, so it’s a Catch-22. 

I tried putting him in his booster seat so he was closer to my level to see what I was doing as I cooked, giving him a carrot or two to ‘chop’ with his safe knife, and so on. He had been quite happy playing next to me with washing-up water before dinner while I washed the dishes, but by the time I was cooking he had had enough. We’d had a busy day of me volunteering at the breastfeeding drop-in while the Pibler played around and alongside his ‘friends’ (he seemed mildly disconcerted by me holding a 2-week-old baby whose mom had gone to the bathroom - I couldn’t believe how light he felt!), then going to a meeting where I helped set up (where he had his brief nap), and then some grocery shopping. 

Although I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed by it all again lately, I’ve had a week of unexpected abundance: receiving two parcels of clothes and books for the Pibler (from my mother and his other grandmother), a vegetable stall worker giving me some basil and a banana for free (for no particular reason!), finding an unexpected 50p, and the bus driver letting me have a free ride up the hill at the end of my long day yesterday. People seem to be kinder, lately, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve been practicing the ‘Metta’ (loving-kindness) Buddhist meditation, both as a sitting practice and just walking around during the day. This is one where you cultivate feelings of wishing people well, wishing them to be happy and free of suffering. So I think I’ve possibly been giving off a different vibration than usual.

My ribcage, stomach muscles and legs still ache after the strong navel set I practiced at sadhana on Sunday: it’s called Nabhi Kriya and it’s hard to believe I once did it as a 120 day practice (the same set every day for 120 days). The Pibler likes to climb on top of me and poke me in the exact spot of the ribcage where I am sore!  Today we are having a more relaxed day with no plans as such, and tonight I’m teaching my Kundalini yoga class.

Sadhana ,or ‘daily spiritual practice’, is a central part of Kundalini Yoga. It involves 2 1/2 hours of prayer, yoga, and chanting meditation at the ambrosial, sacred hours of 5-7:30 a.m. Yesterday I joined a sadhana session in Brighton with the new Kundalini Yoga teacher trainees.

It was the first group sadhana I’ve attended in a long while. It was raining heavily and very windy, but fortunately I had only a very short walk to do. I took the Pibler along to occasional sadhana’s as a newborn, but yesterday I went alone, the experiment being to see if his dad could manage him between four thirty and eight a.m. He apparently woke up a lot, but was okay, and a bit later we all napped in relays, which was very much needed!

There’s something so special about sadhana. It sounds totally crazy to the un-initiated, but being up at that time of morning, and sharing spiritual practice with other people, brings a sense of peace and belonging that sustains you through the day and keeps you connected to your higher truth. I used to go to daily sadhana at my teacher’s house for a few months, who luckily lived only a couple of streets down from my house. This was in my pre-baby days of course! My sadhana now is obviously a great deal shorter than the full 2 1/2 hours, but the idea is that while full sadhana is ideal, any effort on a daily basis has a beneficial effect.

Here is a quote from Yogi Bhajan, who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West: “Sadhana is a conscious activity. We consciously choose to rise up, to exercise the body , and to meditate. Each day is different. Each day, we are different. every 72 hours all the cells of the body totally change. Sickness comes and goes. Motivation waxes and wanes, but through all the flux of life, through all the variations of the mind and heart, we consciously choose to maintain a constant and regular practice.”

January is turning into a month full of reconnecting with old friends. My life-long best friend is visiting along with her mom, an old family friend, this weekend, and tomorrow one of my best friends, who I met at university ten years ago, is coming down from London.

Today, I enjoyed catching up with my ‘mom friends’ who I’ve not seen over the Christmas period, at the breastfeeding drop-in where we volunteer or attend. A newcomer to the drop-in, mother of a tiny one-week-old, remarked on how comfortable the toddlers all looked playing with and around each other, in the space at the Hanover Community Centre. Taking a good look for the first time, I saw that it was true. My little one loves it there and now plays for long periods with only occasional ‘touching base’ with me. The minute he arrived this morning he started asking for ‘ball’, and I realised he remembered a particular ball from playing with it on past occasions at the drop-in. Every day there are new insights into what he remembers, knows and thinks.

A bit later I bumped into one of my newer Brighton friends, who I met before we both became mothers, but who is now also a mother. We chatted about how it is to make the transition from each stage of your baby’s life to the next: my friend is currently navigating the stretch from relatively passive baby to ‘the interactive model’, who at six months is much more insistent about what he wants and needs!  Meanwhile, I recently crossed over from baby land to the world of the toddler. We talked about how it seems that we are always one step ‘behind’ them, and have to catch up, learning new ways of relating to them as we realise that their needs have changed, and that the old ways don’t necessarily work anymore. It occurred to me that I seem to have ‘caught up’ with the Pibler temporarily, at last, and his stage of toddler-dom is not feeling quite so daunting anymore. But no doubt soon I will be scrabbling to keep apace with the developments as he moves into yet another phase!

I feel so lucky to have friends that cover all aspects of my life: my writing friends (one of whom is away travelling, but we’ll reconnect when she returns), my ‘mom’ friends, my ’spiritual/yoga’ friends, and the friends who tick all those boxes, who I can really talk to about all of me. Without this sense of community around me, however fragmented, living in the city can be an isolating experience.

Trying to meditate while lying down feeding the little one back to sleep is just impossible - I’ve tried! One of my new year’s intentions is to put more time into meditation, which has, understandably, fallen to the wayside quite a lot this past year. So tonight I was sitting there, meditating by candlelight in front of my altar, and it was getting quite wonderful when after about 20 minutes, he woke up.

Lately, possibly unsettled from our time away, the Pibler seems to be sleeping in 20 minute segments rather than 45 minutes to an hour, (as if that wasn’t bad enough). So, I got up from my cosy position, swatting away thoughts of irritation, and resolved to keep meditating…but inevitably, lying there, my brain just started whirring again. I suspect I’ve trained myself to the sitting cross-legged position (or ‘easy  pose’ in kundalini yogic terms, but often anything but easy as back pain sets in!),  and anything else is far more conducive to sleep and worrying!

I got him back to sleep, went back to my mat, and fifteen minutes later he got up and walked into the bedroom! It was quite cute - as was his hugging (or giving a ‘cuggle’ as he says) my stone Buddha yesterday, and asking me to ‘cuggle’ it too! But I gave up and took him downstairs, put him in the sling and he’s back to sleep now.

I seem to be in a cycle of not writing very much at the moment. I’m still doing a fair amount of ‘free writing’ , but nothing structured. I like this blog by a lovely writer, Heidi, who shares about her journey to be more in tune with the cycles of life, and not force herself to keep being ‘productive’. It’s so true that we often define ourselves by how much we have to show for our day. I’m grateful to motherhood for giving me so many opportunities to learn this lesson, of being gentle to myself. Right now, it feels like a time to go inward and meditate more, try to find clarity on my path, rather than busily creating outward things.

Happy New Year! Last night turned out to be rather lovely - the Pibler and I went to a good friend’s house for the evening and saw the new year in with her, together with two other friends. There was a good view of the fireworks over the city, and we enjoyed salmon and cream cheese canapes!

I like it when things are impromptu, as this was only arranged a few hours before. It means there’s no undue pressure to ‘have a good time’, and the evening can unfold in a natural way. It felt good to be spending New Year with two of my best friends. My partner stayed home with flu but I was glad I took the Pibler along - he ended up staying up till 12, even though I had put him to bed initially at 8! Right after midnight he crashed out, as if he had been waiting for the new year. Today has been rather uneventful - we lounged around most of the day and then I took the Pibler for a walk to Queenspark, where someone had thrown two rubbish bins into the partially frozen lake. Then we returned and he crashed out for a 3 hour nap!

During which I was lucky enough to be able to read more of a fascinating book called ‘After the Ecstacy, the Laundry’ by Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. It’s about the spiritual journey, based on the author’s talks with spiritual masters and teachers of many different inclinations. I like it because it’s very honest about the spiritual path and how difficult it is to integrate it into day-to-day life. There are these epiphanies and realisations - and then, yes, you still have to come home and deal with the dishes and the laundry. It’s something I’ve always struggled with - having amazing experiences on  my yoga teacher training or at retreats and magical festivals such as Buddhafield, and then returning to a job where I felt deeply unfulfilled.

Reading this book is helping me to understand that in a way, being a mother is a spiritual initiation, and I feel very privileged to be given this opportunity. I don’t have to pay hundreds of pounds to go and listen to masters and meditate, I can learn patience and compassion and in-the-moment-ness right here and now from my own little teacher. I still wish I had more time for the internal sustenance side of spirituality - it’s great having the practice and integration element, but there is a need for solitude, reflection and refreshing one’s spirit.

One thing I notice from the book, is that many of the stories referred to could not occur for a mother of a dependent child - often they are the stories of fathers, who are referred to as ‘raising a family and having a career’. My cynical mind thinks, no, you mean they had children and their wife was raising them while they were off at meditation retreats!