Mindful Parenting

Devotion Yoga, Hoboken NJ

Coming this Fall...

The Mindful Parenting series aims to enhance your joyfulness as a parent and increase connection to your child. It is intended to facilitate your self-awareness, mindfulness and intentionality in responding to your child’s needs—at all ages. We will use yoga philosophy to turn fear-based belief systems into love-based parenting behaviors that look for the highest and best in ourselves and our children.

This ongoing series will be an interactive discussion and exploration on the following principles:

·         We cannot eliminate conflict, but we can change our response to it. Conflict is a part of nature and serves as an essential component of human relationships. To be a mindful parent is to neither resist the conflict or overly attach to the moments of ease and joy in our everyday interactions with our children. We ride the wave of their development.  

·         The Law of Attention - Parenting can often feel like a struggle. The Law of attention teaches us that what we focus on we get more of. When we assume positive intentions to our children’s behavior, we can remain calm and use that stability to respond peacefully.   

·         Staying the Present Moment - So much of our struggle comes because we are resisting what is happening in the present moment. This resistance only creates added conflict.

·         Lifting Maya – maya is the “veil of illusion” through which we see the world. We each carry around an image about how things “should” be. When reality does not affirm our image we often feel powerless and blame ourselves and our children.

As we work with these concepts we become more empowered. This inner power as opposed to “power over” allows for modeling more self-control to our children. When we are less reactive we can truly express unconditional love and non-judgmental empathy. Parents become are the living values that we are teaching to our children.