Axis Yoga Teacher Training students are able to choose any topic for their final experiment. Through insightful observation, this student chose to focus on using Yoga to help calm the children at bedtime. The results were rewarding for the whole household. This account stands to be useful for any parent!

So my finial experiment came to me through several different influences.  First was my boyfriends : daughter, a very spirited and rambunctious 6 year old who really didn’t like going to bed.  Second was my children who started having aliments (my son was having migraines, and my daughter had gone through a bought of being sick and missing school).  Third was my job.  I am a massage therapist and recently I have had a flood of teenage athletes coming in with some pretty severe body conditions that are going to give them major issues as they get older if not addressed.  Fourth was my own recent injury, that I am being told stemmed from my hyper flexibility and my constant participation in sports year round from a very young age.  So we see a theme emerging.  I need to focus on yoga for children.  If I had known what I do now through my massage, yoga, and Ayurveda training, or even just had someone who could guide me in these directions when I was a child, I wouldn’t have the issues in my body and mind that I now do.

So I initially set out to do an asana practice with my children daily to try and work on their issues.  Well four children, school, homework, very different dosha’s, holiday, etc.  The daily asana sounded good, but wasn’t very practical right now.  So back to drawing board, which brought me back to bedtime.  It had become a very large ordeal at night, three of the kids went to bed fine but our spirited 6 year old not so much.  It reached a point to where it was keeping not only us up but the other children too.  I decided to use the Mahamrtanjaya Mantra with each child every night.  This mantra was simple, melodic, calming and healing.  Perfect! It fit what each child needed.  So my boyfriend and I set out to spend 5 to 10 min every night one on one with the kids individually. We started with our little one.  We had her lay down in a restorative yoga pose on her back with a blanket under her to help open up her chest.  Then we had to teach her how to breath slow and calmly.  That alone helped to slow down her energy.  Then we started the mantra on the Ipad ( i found a nice 5 min session of it on youtube ).  I held her feet and my boyfriend took her head and we just focused all of our energy and attention on her.  She lasted for about 3 min perfectly still, which for her was a tremendous feet! Then she just softly asked when she was done.  We told her in 2 min, and she quieted back down.  Her total energy was calm for the rest of the night.  We then proceeded to do this with each of the other children, giving them our full undivided attention for that 10 min.  The oldest finally started to take a full breath,  the 2 middle children fell asleep fully relaxed, and it helped to calm us down as well.  The little one still was awake when we finished with the other children but she was calm.

Over all it has been a great success.  The kids now remind us if we got busy and forgot, and love the individual time with us.  It has totally changed our night time routine and has helped everyone’s attitude during the day as well.  My son has also started to see images in light while we are with him doing the mantra.  He is drawing them for me. His migraines have subsided when we are consistent with this routine.  My daughter is not sick anymore, and growing pains have started to subside.  And in my opinion, most importantly, it has brought a calmness and peace to our home, and a bonding experience one on one with each child.

I look forward to continuing this with my children and sharing my experience with other parents.  Once I have healed from my injury I will continue to expand in this practice and hope to work with children and their families.

During the Aurveda portion of the Axis YTT program, many students make significant changes to their daily routine in order to experiment with the power of this ancient system of health. The student account below details a vata-pacifying routine that lead to very optimistic results.

My second kidney stone, this year, came to say hello or rather came to scream hello as we were beginning our Ayurvedic portion of the program. I called one of our teachers, Susan, crying in tremendous pain; and she came to bring me ayurvedic herbs that instant. I felt so grateful for level of care I received.

I already felt taken care of on deep level, deeper than physical. I felt ready to trust this ancient medicine. So, as we came up with our experiment I was willing and utterly excited to do a cleanse. My eagerness was tamed my Susan. She suggested that in my recovery I should do something more gentle, a self care practice. I decided to follow a vata-pacifying routine created through the resources provided for us: notes in our manual for asana, Susan’s suggestion of ingesting warm foods and liquids, and the structure of my morning from Vasant Lad’s book, The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies (1998). If I could not do a cleanse, I would do many little things (Note: some of these practices I had already started before the experiment, but the experiment helped me make the ritual more concrete and specific, which held me more accountable). My morning was structured as follows:

Bedtime between 10-11.

Rise between 7-7:30. Before the experiment, my sleeping patterns varied widely. I loved to be social and carefree which involved being available for people late at night. I generally went to bed between 10:30 and 1:30 with no consistency and would rise anywhere between 8 – 10. The worst part was I felt tired all day. After speaking with Beth about prakruti and vikruti, she came to the conclusion I am vata imbalanced. I agreed. A regular sleep schedule was a must. This seemed like a reasonable change. What I found was getting up at seven condensed my tiredness to the first ten minutes of the day (that part is still very difficult) but for the rest of the day I had more energy!

Prayer. I slowly and intently said the prayer in the book as if it were my own words. Some words I changed to make it be more of my own voice. This helped me to set a kind loving intention for the day.

Splash. I would splash my face with cold water, swish with cold water, massage my eyes, blink and look up, down, left, right, diagonally, and rotate my eyes clockwise and counter clockwise. This helped wash away sleepiness.

Water. I drank warm water instead of cool.

Squat. I sat on the toilet, Indian style and wiped with water. This is a bit of a challenge due to my tight calves.

Brushed. Flossed. Followed by tongue scraping. I used a spoon to perform this. I noticed a white film concentrated on the back of my tongue every morning. Also, there was scalloping more on the left edge of my tongue.

Swish with oil. I found that gargling would make me gag. I just stuck to swishing. Lots of white goo would came out with the oil.

Oiled my body. This was my favorite part, a practice I had started before the experiment. I warmed the sesame oil and lathered it on. This felt nourishing.

Oiled the nostrils. I did not notice anything significant about this exercise, but I have grown rather fond of the smell of sesame.

Bath. I would just let the water warm me up and not use soap. A yoga therapist suggested this. My skin felt very lubricated and ready to be stretched in asana.

Asana. I made up a routine for myself each morning which included the following poses in various orders: Tadasana (mountain), Uttanasana (standing forward fold), Dandasana (Staff), Paschimottanasana (seated forward fold/western stretch), Janu Sirsasana (head to knee), Upavista Konasana (open angle), Triang Mukhaikapada Paschimottanasana (three limb intense stretch), Vrikshasana (Tree), Navasana (boat), Sarvangasana (shoulder stand), Halasana (plow), Apanasana (knees to chest), and Savasana (corpse). And a few vinyasas. This practice felt calming and grounding.

Pranayama. I completed Nadi Shodhana. This felt balancing.

Meditation. This was the other practice I had started before the experiment. For meditation, usually I would concentrate on my breath, specifically the sensation of movement it created in my body in the nostrils and belly. Sometimes when I did not feel up for meditating I would chat OM or a mantra to get me into a more meditative space.

Breakfast. I ate warm foods mostly. Steel cut oats with apples cooked in. Eggs. Quinoa.

My experiment was successful. When my day finally started 2 to 3 hours after rising, I felt a steady stream of energy. My lethargy lifted. This was the most significant result from my self care practice. Overall, I felt well cared for, nourished, and replenished. As I stepped into the world, I had more to offer to people because I had taken the time to offer to myself. I continue this self care practice every day. I omit asana, pranayama, and meditation on the weekends because we do them in training. I intend to continue this practice of self care and integrate more ayurvedic practices to have a healthy life. Maybe, one day do a cleanse! Also, I am predicting that the kidney stone dissolved.

Many Axis YTT students choose to experiment with taking a physical action to balance their dosha during the Ayurveda portion of the training. These include changes to diet, completing a cleanse or changing their asana practice. This student took a different approach by changing her mind set in order to find balance.

When I first began learning about Ayurveda, I was astounded to see how much sense it made.  Reading about vata dosha was like reading a handbook on my life.  Physically, I am the vata poster child.  I have dry skin, hair, lips, a thin light frame and muscles.  I HATE being cold and LOVE being warm and have perpetually cold hands and feet.  My joints crack constantly and I always have lower back pain.  On top of the many similar anatomical attributes, I am internally also very vata.  I talk fast, think fast, understand fast, but forget even faster.  I am creative, intuitive, imaginative, love exercise but love traveling even more. What may have surprised me most are the imbalanced attributes of vata including anxiety, worry, insomnia, and fear, all of which I have struggled with since I was a child.  It was very clear from the beginning that my primary prakruti is vata.  However, not everything fit into the vata and my secondary dosha is pitta.

In a few major ways, I am more pitta than vata.  I am extremely driven, determined, ambitious, critical, goal oriented, confident, competitive, and a leader.  I also have (thankfully) regular digestion, which is not vata at all and much more pitta.  Due to the fact that I am so strongly vata, and vata dosha is the easiest to become imbalanced, I decided to focus my experiment on balancing vata.