Diary of a Mama-Yogi
Verena Primus - Ayurveda Yoga Coaching
8. Holistic Tool Kit for Mothers
Read time – 3 minutes
Stay Mindful, Stay Healthy: Your Holistic Motherhood Toolkit 🌺
Discover a reservoir of strength and resilience for you and your family.
Hi ,
Today, I am going to write about the unique challenges and needs of mothers and why a Holistic Tool Kit is essential to have as a companion on your life and motherhood journey.
A daily toolkit for connecting and taking care of ourselves in a holistic manner can be the cornerstone not only for maintaining our equilibrium, but also for laying the foundation of our children’s robust self-esteem and future joy.
The challenge, however, is that we are often caught in a whirlwind of demands, which is why holistic practices and self-care routines are somewhat challenging to fit into our daily lives.
And yet, a child’s arrival changes our whole life.
During every stage of motherhood, we notice that old habits lose their place, demanding a fresh set of skills and tools from us.
What I share in this issue draws from my personal motherhood insights and my dedicated practice as an Ayurveda-Yoga coach and educator.
What we'll cover:
- A Recap on Holistic Health from Our Previous Issue
- Insight I: Mothers' Unique Challenges
- Insight II: The Essentials for Women
- Insight III: The Indispensable Holistic Toolkit and Its Components
- Insight IV: How Mothers and Their Families Immeasurably Gain
Without further ado, allow us to revisit holistic health and its implications for your family’s happiness.
A Recap on Holistic Health from Our Previous Issue
In Ayurveda, the Sanskrit word for health is swastha, which means “established in the self/Self.”
o So, in other words, holistic health is when you are connected with who you are and express that out into the world.
o Your actions reflect the wisdom of life (ayu: meaning life and veda: meaning wisdom) and you know what is good for you at a certain time and what not.
o Holistic living meanings living in harmony with nature, which means living by the principles and laws of nature and not against it.
It is living in consonance with your intrinsic values, individual constitution, acknowledging your complete being, and seeing this unity in others, particularly in children who are here to shape us rather than to be shaped.
To venture on this holistic path is not a pursuit of transformation into some idealistic self; it’s rather a return to your truest self. Indeed, the essence of this journey is to recognize and honor your individual truth, and discovering what that means to you.
Insight I: Mothers' Unique Challenge
I am a mother like you, and I write from my own experience and my experiences as Ayurveda-Yoga Coach who has been working with clients over twenty-five years now. I see one trait most of us women have in common: we put the needs of others before our own. Yet, we often fail to deeply connect and be present with ourselves and our children.
Too often, we are pulled into too many directions and are so busy with meeting inner expectations and outer expectations that the most essential way of being gets side stepped: to be fully present in the moment. For that skill, we need to nurture the physical-emotional-mental-spiritual connection to ourselves and our children.
Babies and children not only need feeding, save-keeping, and entertaining, but in all this physical care taking they need a deep emotional and spiritual bounding with the mother.
Mark Wolynn, Director of The Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco and author of the bestselling book IT DIDN’T START WITH YOU:How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Viking/Penguin), says that a mother’s attunement to the child and a child’s attachment to the mother begin and are most important in utero and in the first year of a baby’s life. Yet, in the first seven to ten years, a child stays strongly connected to the mother and her state of emotions. The mother’s attunement to the child – her ability to intuit the child’s emotion and see, know, and sooth the child’s terrifying emotions – is curial because only then a child feels safe and can form a resilient inner core that supports the child for the rest of her/his life.
If a mother is not feeling well and happy, and most of all if she is not connected to her own inner core, how can she be fully present with her child? How can she be attuned to what her child feels and needs if she is not attuned to herself first?
The unique challenge of a mother: it is continuously rocking the family boat and taking care of the gazillion things a mother needs to take care of in the household and family management, while often holding a job or having a business on her on, and yet she needs to be rooted in her own health, values and clarity so she can be a pillar of strength, comfort, and support for her children and everybody else. But there are only twenty-four hours a day and there never seems enough time for everything, the least of all for herself.
How to add one more thing to an already busy schedule often seems impossible. Even if this thing is something pleasurable and is called taking-time-for-me.
Yet, once we have become a mother, many of our old habits won’t serve us any longer. It is time for a whole lifestyle and habit upgrade. The old software is outdated and won’t help us with our new situation any longer.
It is time to upgrade our lifestyle, health, nutrition, mindset, and time management so we can deal with what is often revered to as the “motherload.” We need new skills, not only at home and at work, but also in the way we relate to ourselves, our child, and our partner.
When a child is born also a mother and family is born, and for this new life we need a whole new skill set and tool kit.
Insight II: The Essentials for Women
From my daily work with clients, here is a list of what I see women need once they become mothers:
🌸 Holistic Motherhood Checklist 🌸
- Nourishing the Body:
🥦 Our bodies require extra nutrients and self-care rituals to recover after pregnancy and childbirth and to guides us through perimenopause and menopause.
- Emotional Resilience Tools:
😴 We need additional tools to cope with the emotional challenges that arise, especially when we are sleep-deprived and lacking downtime.
- Relationship Support:
👫 Extra relationship tools are essential to prevent neglecting our relationships with our partner, family, and close friends, who can either be a source of stress or incredible support for us.
- Empowering Exercise Routine:
🏋️♀️ A proper exercise routine is necessary to feel physically strong enough to handle the extra weight (the child, groceries, the trolley, etc.) and the stress from multitasking.
- Mental Clarity Tools:
🧠 Mental tools are needed to prevent our minds from slipping into a foggy state, focusing only on diapers, potty training, and later on, playdates, soccer, ballet practice, and school homework.
- Spiritual Connection Practices:
🌈 Spiritual tools are necessary to keep us in the present moment, connected to ourselves and our children, fostering gratitude, balance, peace, and clarity.
- Understanding Your Constitution:
🤓 Understanding our physical, mental, and emotional constitution is crucial to navigate the requirements and occasional stresses of everyday life while still savoring the beautiful moments.
- Time Management Strategies:
⏰ Time management tools are essential to help us focus on the essential values and priorities we want to live by, avoiding getting lost in a sea of small to-dos and losing sight of the bigger picture of our life and dreams.
- Inner Navigation System:
🗺️ Tools are needed to constantly connect to our own inner navigation system. We want to be plugged into the life source and universal principles that guide us in ordinary moments and moments when we need to make quick decisions.
- Holistic Motherhood Toolkit:
🧰 A holistic toolkit is essential to assist us in all areas of our lives, from daily tasks to life’s bigger dreams, as we’ve never had so much to do and take care of since becoming mothers.
- Building New Skills:
👩🍳 Acquiring new skills and tools starts with the simple skill of cooking nourishing meals for ourselves and our family, extending to more complex skills such as running a business from home or showing up at work with a clear mind and no bags under the eyes while maintaining a happy and fulfilled marriage or partnership.
That is a lot, isn’t it? And this is where Ayurveda, Yoga, and Meditation come in handy because the combination of these ancient sciences with modern research tools form the perfect mix of tools we need as mothers to navigate through this maze of multiple tasks we are required to master.
Our end goal or let’s rather say, the ongoing process we find ourselves in, is to run a family, a business, a partnership, while staying connected to our own true nature and to our own perfect state of health in body, mind, and spirit!
Insight III: The Indispensable Holistic Toolkit and Its Components
Since the day I found out I was pregnant, well actually since the day my husband proposed to me and I knew we would soon form a family, there hasn’t been a single day when I haven’t been benefiting from one or several practices that Ayurveda and Yoga can offer. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without it.
The masala or mix of Ayurveda, Yoga, and Meditation became my indispensable toolkit to navigate the new road of motherhood and it can become yours as well.
The Holistic Tool Kit for Mothers consist of:
- Ayurveda, the road map howto live your health and highest potential.
- Yoga, the road map of howto connect with your true nature.
- Meditation,your ultimate goal to be present in everything you do.
Ayurvedic wisdom, Yogic practices, and meditation techniques in combination with modern coaching tools, serve as perfect tool kit for us mothers. These methods and practices have a collective name and are known as sadhanas or spiritual practices, that we can do daily to connect back to the present moment, attuned to our children and to what is required of us in each and every moment.
The Ayurveda-Yoga Toolkit is a collection of:
- Health and life principles
- Dietary and lifestyle recommendations
- Physical fitness and self-care routines
- Herbs and oil treatments
- Specialized Ayurveda-Yoga sequence
- Meditation and visualization for mental and emotional clarity
- Spiritual practices that connect us with a deep sense of self
- Added Medical Qigong to support Ayurevdic principles
- Added Pilates to workout routines
The Ayurveda-Yoga Coaching Toolkit is a down-to-earth, practical guide to understanding ourselves wholly and it can be our very personal toolkit for every situation in life, no matter how rough it sometimes can get.
I know this to be true because I live what I teach every single day and I see how it transforms client’s lives in my practice.
What Will Happen If You Don’t have a Toolkit?
From my own experience, everything will be simple much harder and take more time and effort. Being so busy with meeting every day’s demands, we often lose touch with the big-picture life we had in mind.
Like a tree that stops growing, slowly dies from within, our goals and ideals slowly die when we don’t continue to water them and let the internal seeds, we have been born with, grow with life experience.
Insight IV: How Mothers and Their Families Immeasurably Gain
Why strive for holistic well-being? The simple answer is the profound ripple effect it has on ourselves and our families.
When we get to know ourselves and our own needs better and start to nurture our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions, we become reservoirs of strength and resilience. Our families, in turn, experience the positive outcomes.
From increased patience and vitality to a harmonious home environment, to a better running business or career, the benefits are far-reaching.
- Imagine you are being in a good mood most of the time, feeling empowered because you live the kind of life you want to live?
- Imagine you feel attuned and connected to yourself, your children, and partner while actually doing what you love and earning the kind of money you were told only men can earn.
- Imagine you are who you know you can be and live health not only on the paper of a labour test but in every moment, even when it gets tough.
How would you feel? How would your life look like then?
Much like happiness, holistic health is a personalized journey of authenticity, where you need not fit into predefined roles or conform to external expectations. You don’t have to be a Yogi, martial artist, meditator, or guru—what matters most is being true to yourself.
And most importantly:
As we cultivate our holistic well-being, we gift our families the best version of ourselves – a compassionate, present, and empowered mother and partner, who sails the ups and downs of life gracefully and with compassion, knowing she can always get back on board when she occasionally is thrown off kilter.
In Conclusion
Thank you for joining me in this enriching journey. I hope you’ve found the insights shared in this issue useful and inspiring.
Our next issue promises to be just as informative, where we’ll delve deeper into this holistic toolkit and explore how to practically implement these tools into our everyday lives as mothers. Together, we’ll learn to better balance our responsibilities and aspirations, while nurturing ourselves and our families.
But before we go, I want to leave you with a challenge: choose one point from our Holistic Motherhood Checklist and commit to focusing on it for the next week. See how it impacts your life and family. Feel free to share your experiences and thoughts with our community – we’re here to support and learn from each other.
If you found this newsletter beneficial, don’t forget to share it with your fellow mothers who might also need these insights. Let’s spread the joy and power of holistic living.
Remember, as mothers, we’re not just nurturing our children but also shaping the future.So, let’s make sure we’re doing it in the most nourished, balanced, and fulfilled way possible.
Until next time, remember – you are stronger than you think, wiser than you know, and more loved than you can imagine.
Stay healthy, stay mindful, and stay attuned!
Much love and light,
Om
Verena Gayatri
Ayurveda-Yoga Coach and Teacher
Whenever you’re ready, there are 5 ways I can help you:
- Guided Ayurvedic Home Cleanses: Your Spring and Fall Reset and Rejuvenation Learn to conduct regular Ayurvedic Cleanses followed by Rejuvenation Periods from the comfort of your own home and within your usual schedule, making it a consistent practice, instead of a onetime experience. Clear your slate and start anew!
- Ayurvedic Constitutional Assessment: A Gateway to Transformation
Join over 3000 health-conscious clients and beginn your journey with a 3-part Ayurvedic Constitutional Assessment Package, where we identify your unique constitution and develop a tailored roadmap to guide you back to balance and optimal health.
- Ayurveda-Yoga Coaching Program: Your Journey of Ongoing Transformation
The Ayurveda-Yoga Coaching Program is the continuation, and it teaches you how to slowly incorporate Ayurvedic principles and Yogic practices into your daily life, leading you back towards your roots, life goals, and true nature
- Private Ayurvedic-Yoga and Meditation Program: Practice Yoga and Meditation at Their Peak
Join a community of over 10,000 students I have taught and learn the secrets of incorporating Yoga and Meditation into your everyday life, experiencing the rewards of a personalized practice that nurtures your body, strengthens your mind, and balances your emotions.
- Preconception-Pregnancy-Postpartum Holistic Motherhood Programs:
Start and navigate your Motherhood Journey with ease, confidence, and continuous support. Join fellow mothers at various stages of my motherhood and learn to increase your fertility and prepare yourself for conception, pregnancy and birth. Create an essential postpartum toolkit to support your bonding and recovery period and during your First Year of Motherhood, learn how to care for your baby and yourself, while gently aiding your body’s return to vitality and adapting your mind to your new life. Feel self-confident, and nurtured as you embrace motherhood!
Live your health. Live your truth. Be a Mama-Yogi.
Freedom to own your health and truth.
Start here.
Share this Article on:
Karrierecoaching und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung
Join the readers of The Diary of a Mama-Yogi for exclusive tips, tools, and resources to discover, nurture, and live your health and truth in everyday life.
