The postnatal body is a vulnerable place, and yoga therapy can be deeply nourishing and healing from after birth, throughout the years of early parenting. The newborn baby can be nurtured, held and supported through appropriate yoga practices, that can adapt and change as that baby grows into a toddler, For the precious early years from birth to four, both mother and baby can be truly nourished by playful, healing and rhythmic yoga practices. This unusual course teaches you the techniques, skills and subtle understanding of group dynamics that make it possible to share yoga for mothers and babies, and mothers and toddlers together. Established in 2003, this is a powerful experiential training packed with practical exercises and excellent learning resources. It is suitable for yoga teachers, yoga therapists, and those working with mothers and babies who wish to integrate helpful yoga practices into group sessions, mothers with children from birth to four are warmly welcome.
About the Mother and Baby Yoga Teacher Training
This integrated yoga teacher training course brings together material from the postnatal yoga teacher training course and the early years teacher training course. It is open to yoga teachers from all traditions, who are already teaching pregnancy yoga and who wish to teach baby-friendly postnatal yoga classes. It covers the period from birth to age 4 and will fully integrate mother and baby yoga (from birth to walking) and yoga for toddlers and their parents together.
This course shares yoga practice in the broadest sense, as a way of life and relating: it is all about the application of yoga to promote joy in family life through the conscious and positive use of physical and emotional contact between mothers, babies, parents and children. It trains yoga teachers to run sessions for mothers and babies together in a variety of modes and contexts, and to share (through modelling and teaching) the yoga approach to ethics, respect, kindness and harmony in family life. It also provides a comprehensive yoga therapy programme for postnatal recovery from birth to four years.
As the mainstream popularity of yoga grows, and many more yoga practitioners start families, there is an increasing demand for an approach to yoga which attends to the needs of parents and children together. The UK is well-supplied with training courses for teaching yoga to children in classes apart from their parents, and some of these courses include elements of practice for adults and children to do together, but as yet there are only very few courses that specifically aim to train yoga teachers to work in a fully integrated way with postnatal mothers and babies together and in family groups, and to share effectively the practical benefits of the yogic approach to family life in the wider sense (outside of the class). Rare also are courses which equip parents to learn how to share yoga with their children within the family setting, or in informal groups, where adults and children can practice together. Unusually, this course offers a sustained examination of the needs of older babies, toddler and pre-schoolers, and gives detailed attention to the physical and emotional needs of the parents (or carer) doing yoga with their babies. The course also provides theoretical and practical training for understanding and handling family dynamics within the class and promoting the application of yogic approaches to mothering and parenting outside of the class.
The course will cover
- Group dynamics, the use of language, yoga games and songs and pair work in family yoga sessions.
- Asana, pranayama, mudra, meditation and deep relaxation for each developmental stage during the early years together with sample class plans.
- The conscious and positive use of yoga to build physical and emotional contact between parents, babies and young children and how yoga can be used to promote joy in family life.
This 6 day course designed by Uma Dinsmore-Tuli is the UK’s first fully comprehensive training for yoga teachers to teach family yoga classes from birth to pre-school. The training will be highly practical, providing a sound foundation in the yogic understanding of ethics, respect, kindness and energetic harmony between adults and children. The course will include short written assignments and case studies within a fully supported framework for study.
The aims of the course are
- To provide a cogent and effective system of yoga therapy for postnatal recovery.
- To provide an holistic approach to the practical application of yoga for families of parent/s, babies and children from birth to four.
- To enable students to re-consider pertinent aspects of yoga philosophy in relation to this major period of change in family life, and offer a practical framework for the integration of these philosophical and spiritual approaches to the teaching of family yoga both as a ‘class’ and as an approach to family life and parenting.
- To encourage a critical awareness of a range of different attitudes to postnatal, baby and family yoga practice (both within different traditions of yoga practice, and in a wider cultural sense) in order to empower students to evaluate others' perspectives and develop a clear rationale for their own approach to the uses of yoga for mothers, babies and family groups.
Course objectives are to enable students to:
Students will be able to:
- plan and teach postnatal yoga and family yoga courses, classes (and individual sessions) which promote postnatal recovery and support infant and child development from birth to four, in a context of positive parent and child interaction;
- teach holistic postnatal, baby and family yoga courses and classes which include asana, pranayama, relaxation, nada yoga, meditations, narrative yoga sequencing, and yoga games; also to share the yogic foundations for promoting harmony, respect and positive relationships in family life;
- plan and teach (groups and individuals) yogic approaches to postnatal recovery and physical and emotional contact with children, including handling and carrying newborns, toddlers and young children, with an informed understanding of their impacts upon the dynamics of parent / child relations, and parental posture, strength and vitality;
- demonstrate an appropriate understanding of the key principles of anatomy and physiology relevant to postnatal recovery, infant-child development and the impact on adult bodies of parenting (including e.g. lifting, carrying, comforting and lactation) such that yoga can be taught safely to these students;
- demonstrate an appropriate understanding of the key social and psychological changes characteristic of the transition to motherhood and parenthood, and from infancy to pre-school;
- teach with an informed sensitivity to the emotional and spiritual experiences of mothers, parents, babies and young children;
- teach within appropriate safety guidelines for this type of yoga practice.
History of the course
The course was developed out of an amalgamation of the previous Postnatal Yoga Module which Uma designed for the British Wheel of Yoga, and the Early Years Yoga training course which she ran for Yogacampus. The newly integrated Mother and Baby Yoga course brings together the best of both of the previos courses in a more integrated, and uniquely mother/baby conscious manner, wherein every aspect of yoga teaching is understood to relate to both the mother AND the baby together.
