Yoga and Family Life

I remember the point I got to when I couldn't have another baby.

I'd experienced IVF. It failed many times. Then I conceived naturally and had a miscarriage. The devastation of this nearly obliterated me. But I had a six-year-old and yoga students to show up for.

It was at this point that I started scrolling the internet, talking with women in Eastern Europe who were professionals, well-educated, had their own families, but were interested in egg donation. I didn't go there, and it raised a lot of ethical questions for me. Nonetheless, I do see how we view sperm donors and egg donors very differently—for some good reasons, and some not very good reasons.

Anyhow, I was wondering if I was going to Chennai to meet a Ukrainian woman and take this step. I was a little out of my mind with grief.

Fortunately, I had my practice to take refuge in.

My practice changed immensely with my first pregnancy, IVF, and pregnancy loss. I also started to get a little disinterested in what male teachers might have to teach me without this same sort of embodied experience.

So I didn't meet this woman personally and buy her eggs.

Then I got pregnant, miraculously, after the miscarriage and seven years of infertility. Again, my practice shifted, but it stayed ever-present.

Along the way, we taught our kids yoga.

At first it was messing around while we practised, and them attending Kids yoga with us. When we first opened, Rob was our extraordinary kids' yoga teacher, playfully creating sequences integrated with the curriculum and strumming his guitar to send the kids into a blissful savasana.

Our teaching with our kids progressed to now helping them learn yogic practices to manage their trauma after our car crash. We are lucky these practices have been so deeply embedded in our lives.

Our marriage, parenting, and navigation of the inevitable loss and joy being human involves has been deeply supported by these practices.

Twenty years ago, we had a full program of family yoga: Kids Yoga, Pregnancy Yoga, Parents & Bubs, and Postnatal Yoga.

Now, finally, years after COVID, we have a full timetable of these classes again.

Because these are crucial transition times in many people's lives.

Whether you choose to have children, are able to have children, have supported or loved people who have children, or perhaps have opened your heart to a child or another person in the way a parent might—these experiences ask a great deal of us.

Yoga transforms these experiences into a deep sadhana.