Chapter 10
Savasana

It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.

—Cheryl Strayed

You did it. You have taken care of your baby outside your body for as long as you cared for her inside. And now both of you are fully here, together and separate. You are two human beings engaged in the mother-child relationship. And you are also a woman engaged in her own unique experience of life with a child, knowing now that this life has it all: joy, chaos, pleasure, annoyance, satisfaction, boredom, and deep, deep love.

Now it’s time for you to rest. To really rest. Even if it’s only for a moment! Because now you know that a moment of rest can change everything.

As you rest, this is what we hope for you:

We hope you allow yourself to pause and re-center as often as you like, to return to yourself by tuning in to your body, breath, heart, and mind.

We hope you allow yourself to be kind—to yourself and to your baby—in easy pose.

We hope you allow yourself to be free of blame for your child’s crying, sleeplessness, tantrums, and inability to share the shovels at the playground. We hope you give yourself the gift of warming up to new experiences and developmental phases; we hope you allow yourself to take child’s pose whenever you need it. And to enjoy the sensual pleasure of a slow cat/cow whenever you feel stiff.

We hope you move forward in your own time, when you feel ready, and that you take breaks from Instagram and the doctored images of motherhood. We hope you keep in mind that important decisions take time. Becoming aware of your feelings and motivations takes stillness and time. We hope you can give yourself some breathing space and the permission to “not know, yet.”

We hope you can give yourself permission to feel ambivalent forever, without the goal of resolution. We hope you remember that ambivalence is about having love on both sides. And we hope you continue to discover what’s important to you so that you can stand strong in mountain pose.

We hope you give yourself permission to ease up when things get strenuous and then return—softer, stronger, and more resilient—to the awkward poses of motherhood.

We hope you give yourself permission to experiment with schedules and routines, to find freedom in structure, and to improvise until you find your flow, not too tight and not too loose.

We hope you give yourself permission to love your baby and your life, and to forsake the pressure of balance for the grace of wobbling in tree pose.

We hope you give yourself permission to open your heart and live your life in the face of uncertainty, the same uncertainty that all mothers experience, and to know that you are not alone in your worries. We hope you can remember that right now, all is well, and you can soften your guard because of your own strength in bridge pose.

And, most of all, we hope you can give yourself permission to rest. To pause, restore, integrate, and applaud yourself for all the ways you have navigated these months of motherhood with love and grace.

Savasana

It’s time to do nothing in savasana. Just let your body melt into the bed or floor, follow your breath, and maybe whisper “I did it” on each exhale a few times. Some women find it helps to inhale and hold the breath while you contract muscles, and then exhale with an audible sigh and relax your muscles, just melting into the floor. Without doing anything at all, your nervous system integrates your practice as you surrender to gravity and melt. In the same way that your body breathes on its own, when you are resting, your body is integrating all the practices that have come before. Let go and do nothing for a few minutes, as often as you can.

The Ten-Minute Practice

We have combined all One Minute Yoga asana practices into a short but full practice. By all means play around with them. Improvise! Do what feels good when it feels good. Sometimes all ten practices will be the right amount of yoga, and sometimes you’ll just want child’s pose. Or tree pose. Or mountain. You’ll do what feels right, and good. And then you’ll get back to the raucous and complicated and mundane business of motherhood.

Remember: there’s no rush. It’s all waiting for you.

We have illustrated the full practice here, and an audio guide can be found at http://breathingspacefornewmothers.com.

Illustrated Practice