Hello,
Hello and welcome.
My name is Anja Simmons and I'm a Yogi Parenting Coach.
And as we all know,
Parenting is really busy and really quite hard.
And I wanted to give you a little acronym,
A little exercise to take the yoga that you learn on your mat off your mat and to use it in your parenting.
It's kind of like the whole transition from when you get on your mat to how you leave your mat in four easy steps.
Who doesn't want that?
I noticed in parenting,
I have two adult children now,
That I realized it was actually more about me than about them.
And that they did not need fixing.
It was I that had to work on my energy,
My language,
Filling my own cup and that my kids were not here to fulfill me.
We were actually being raised together.
If none of that makes sense to you,
This next bit of information may be not for you.
Otherwise,
If you're like,
Yeah,
That makes sense,
I'll continue.
So let's take the acronym of STOP.
S T O P.
OK.
And this is something I recommend you do before you go downstairs,
Perhaps in the morning,
Maybe before you get your kids out the house,
Maybe before you pick kids up at the end of the day or the bedtime routine.
Wherever it is that you find the most struggle or the most chaos or strong emotions coming from your children or coming from you.
If we can include STOP,
The acronym,
In our process,
I think we show up as different parents.
We show up more aligned with the parent we want to be.
We also have have room then to really listen to our intuition.
OK,
So let's start.
So S represents stillness.
We need to get still.
We need to freeze.
Even if you're in the midst of speaking or shouting and you're angry and you are have tuned in and notice,
Oh,
My goodness,
I don't want to speak like this to my children.
I don't like what I'm saying.
You have permission to stop mid-sentence and just get still.
I've even been known in the midst of a rant to put my hand over my mouth to remind me,
Like,
Stop.
This isn't what you want,
How you want to show up.
This isn't how you want to parent.
This isn't how you really want to talk with anybody.
Right.
So we first is S,
Stillness.
OK,
T is the tune in.
Let's tune in and notice how do we feel?
How are you feeling in at this time?
Right.
What's really going on?
And we want to name that feeling.
Are you overwhelmed,
Angry,
Mad,
Frustrated,
Tired?
Any number of things from your day,
From your relationship,
From society,
Whatever it is,
Name that feeling.
That's your tuning in.
OK,
We're going to get still.
We're going to tune in.
And then the third part,
A bit more familiar with yoga for here,
But that's observing.
S T O.
O is observe.
So we want to now observe how our body feels and how our breath feels.
OK,
One way to do that is simply to place a hand on your chest and a hand on your belly and start some conscious breathing.
You might notice from there that you haven't taken a decent breath all day,
Taken little shallow sips.
You might notice your jaw is tied or your shoulders.
OK,
So observe how you are feeling right here,
Right now,
Where it is in your body.
And the final one,
S T O P is present.
When we've done all the other things,
Can we now be present?
Present to this moment,
Present to seeing our children in the light of love,
Present to really feeling and seeing what's going on,
The truth of where we're at.
You know,
Our children live in the present moment,
And it takes a lot for us as adults to actually meet them there,
To join them there.
We have to join them for long periods of time,
But we do need to make that connection and be present to them.
So I hope this has given you a little bit of information,
A little tip on how to sort of change some of the behaviours we have off our mat and bring it into raising beautiful people,
Beautiful children.
OK,
And I'd love to hear from you if this makes sense to you,
If you'd like any more talks regarding this,
I would love to hear from you.
Thank you so much.
And again,
My name is Anya Simmons.
