One of the first of its kind, this is an authoritative and professional yoga therapy text offering a comprehensive overview of postpartum conditions and guidance on how to manage them using yoga therapy as both a lens and a toolbox. Rather than focussing on returning a woman's body to its pre-birth condition, this guide recentres emphasis on the mother's healing in body, mind, and spirit and guides practitioners in how to facilitate this transition. This book is centred on the pancamaya model which views the individual as a composite of five separate but interrelated layers including the physical, the breath-energetic, the psycho-emotional, the capacity for discernment, and awe. Split into five sections based on these layers, this guide will cover common postpartum issues alongside contemporary supporting research, as well as the best yoga therapy tools to address each concern. This evidence-based resource is invaluable for practitioners who want to help facilitate the postpartum healing journey.

A unique way to see and process the motherhood experience through the lens of yoga, Whole Mama Yoga covers all phases and stages of becoming and being a mother or birth parent—offering a way to extend yoga’s gifts and tools for all who parent. . Women are drawn to yoga for its physical benefits, its ability to induce calm and presence, and its offering of spiritual depth. Whole Mama Yoga offers a way to extend yoga’s gifts into the motherhood experience and offers guidance that eases not just physical discomforts but existential ones. Many moms and birth parents balance boundless love and boredom, overwhelming joy and moments of isolation, self-confidence and self-doubt. Yoga provides an opportunity to practice the much needed body love and self-connection many parents need. Accessible to new yoga students, advanced yoga practitioners, and yoga teachers alike, Whole Mama Yoga is for parents with children of all ages. It is for those just thinking about beginning a family, those in the early stages of pregnancy, those getting close to labor and delivery, and for those new moms, who often feel harried and overwhelmed. This is a book to reference as children grow, change, and become little (and big) people. With yoga poses at the core of the text, yogi moms and instructors Alexandra DeSiato and Lauren Sacks offer helpful information in movement offerings that meet all moms and birth parents where they are. Organzied into sections titled Relate, Move, Reflect, Wisdom, and Breathe, Whole Mama Yoga provides breathing techniques, suggestions for meditation and mantra, inspiring tidbits of yoga philosophy, funny and uplifting stories from yoga-moms, and journal prompts that allow readers to reflect on their own experience of parenthood.

A women's mental health specialist introduces yoga therapy techniques to provide solace, steadiness, and ease during the difficult stages of pregnancy and new motherhood Pregnancy and new motherhood are often thought of as the most joyful, exciting, and blissful times in your life—but they can also be difficult and overwhelming. Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are the number one “complication” of birth. They not only affect the mothers who suffer but also the families who care about and rely on them. While there is robust support and treatment options for other illnesses, moms who suffer emotionally are rarely acknowledged and often handed platitudes like, “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” and, “Just enjoy every minute because it goes by so fast.” This can be a lonely and confusing place to be—suffering profound fear or sadness at a time when your friends and family expect you to be happy, radiant, and beatifically calm. As a therapist supporting women's mental health and recovery from PMADs since 2003, SuzannahNeufeld is keenly aware of the special needs of women during pregnancy and the first year of motherhood. Synthesizing modern psychotherapeutic research with practical yoga therapy, Neufeldoffers a compassionate, acceptance-based approach that meets women (and their partners) wherever they are. Awake at 3 a.m. contains short, digestible chapters that are perfect for when you are feeling exhausted or overwhelmed. Neufeld skillfully dismantles the myths and internal beliefs that contribute to the suffering of new mothers and tells her own story with honesty and humor. From breathing techniques to mindfulness exercises, the yoga practices here are designed to fit into your life as it is now—no flexibility, mat, special clothes, or 90-minute yoga class required.

Focusing on women's pelvic health through yoga therapy, this evidence-based resource covers the intersections of biomechanics, self-study through yoga philosophy, emotional resilience, pain science and dynamic strategies for pelvic embodiment. Integrating pedagogical frameworks that differentiate yoga therapy from pelvic floor physical therapy, the book demonstrates how they can work together by including somatic education and case studies. It also covers breath patterns, mental constructs and conditioning, and baseline body awareness - taking the practitioner through the journey of self-assessment, building the therapeutic relationship and ongoing embodied practice. Looking at the individual rather than pelvic health as a sole diagnosis, Yoga Therapy for the Whole Woman is an invaluable guide for yoga teachers, yoga therapists, movement and fitness professionals and healthcare professionals working with women with pelvic floor challenges.

Drawing on her experience as a mother, a yoga teacher, and a physical therapist, author Judith Lasater, PhD presents a comprehensive and easy-to-follow program of yoga poses and breathing practices. These will help the mother to stay flexible and healthy throughout the pregnancy, remain present during the challenges of labor and delivery, and care for herself during the postpartum period. In addition, the author has created a special section called "Mantras for Mom and Baby," where the mother can explore heart-centered practices, one for each month during pregnancy and baby’s first year.

Drawing on her experiences as a mother of three, a longtime yoga teacher and physical therapist presents easy-to-follow programs of yoga poses and breathing techniques to help a woman stay flexible and healthy throughout pregnancy and the postpartum period.

In this book, Lee Majewski and Ananda Bhavanani define yoga and yoga therapy as a whole person practice, demonstrating how it can help the individual to heal through their own mechanisms. The authors bring yogic concepts from theory into everyday life, exploring how yoga therapy can work with all levels of a human being at the same time (physical, energetic, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) and demonstrating that, when applied correctly, it can assist healing and facilitate an improved quality of life. The book covers deep yogic work and how it applies to cancer patients, as well as a range of other chronic conditions including respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. For each of these conditions the authors explore how yoga therapy can go beyond alleviating symptoms and work to heal the whole person.