I was so excited to interview my colleague and dear friend, Suzannah Neufeld, MFT, C-IAYT, about her book that is JUST OUT: Yoga Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Pregnancy and Early Motherhood! Hot off the press, this book adds to the gaps that are there in resources for new moms that are, well, awake at 3am.
Why did you write this book?
I started out with the idea of writing a book on mindfulness and yoga for all new moms--not about anxiety and depression. But because I had experienced anxiety and depression when I was a new mom, and because I was working as a therapist and yoga teacher with so many moms who have perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, my writing kept centering around those issues. Eventually I realized that to write in my own authentic voice, I had to speak directly to the mamas who are having the toughest time. So much of the messaging about pregnancy and new motherhood has to do with it being blissful and only full of love, and I wanted to write something that could hold the messiness and complexity. I wanted to write about how you could love your baby so intensely and also wish you never had a baby at the same time. I wanted to write about how you could feel exhausted and desperate, and yet still feel so sad that time with your baby is moving by so quickly.
I also felt that it was important to write about the messiness of motherhood in the context of yoga. Pregnancy is a great doorway into yoga--many moms who have never practiced yoga before start when they are pregnant, perhaps because it's easier to do something for your baby than just for yourself! And more and more research is supporting what many of us knew from experience: that yoga can help prevent and heal perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Yet, very unfortunately, the American yoga world right now has messages that can be harmful to new moms. I wanted to dispel some of those messages so that these yoga tools could feel accessible to all moms.
I wrote about letting go of the idea that yoga is only for people who are skinny, flexible, or already calm. I wrote about letting go of the idea that yoga means you must parent in some prescribed way. There is nothing in the yoga sutras that says you have to have a certain kind of birth, feed your baby only organic food, or avoid any medications you might need in order to do yoga. I also wanted moms to learn that yoga doesn't have to fit into the studio model of yoga to be useful. You don't need a 90 minute class, a special yoga mat, or any fancy clothes. Yoga tools are available to moms to use for free, anytime, anywhere--even with a crying baby in your arms.
I wanted moms to know that yoga doesn't have to be another thing to do fix or improve themselves, but that it can instead be a balm, a source of comfort, or what I call in the book my "well of sanity."
How can it help recovering moms?
As a therapist, my two areas of practice are with new moms and with people with eating disorders. So I think you'll find a lot for recovering moms sprinkled throughout this book. Yoga is a wonderful tool for supporting eating disorder recovery in general. It helps foster a peaceful relationship with your body and gives you time to really feel into and live in your body, rather than viewing it from the outside.
Yoga helps you understand and feel your body's signals--what feels good, what hurts, where to push, when to ease up. This can translate into having more access to and respect for hunger and fullness cues. I remember that I was surprised and confused at how much harder it was for me to listen to my body about eating when I was pregnant or had a new baby. Exhaustion can feel like hunger to me, and overwhelm can feel like fullness. I always found it difficult to eat in any kind of mindful way when I had a baby in my arms--so it was harder to feel satisfied by my food even when I did eat what my body needed. In the book, I share practical ways to deal with food when your signals are harder to read.
I also found that postpartum body changes were very challenging for me, and I think this is so for many recovering moms. This book shares tools to be present with the body you have right now, just as it is. Yoga helps you move your body in ways that feel good and care for it now, rather than waiting until it magically changes or becomes what you wish it would be. Yoga philosophy also teaches us to honestly examine our attachments and identifications with things that change (like what our body looks like), peeling those attachments back, again and again, and then learning to live with impermanence.
There's also so much in this book that offers compassion, understanding, and acceptance of what can be hard in the perinatal period--and these are things that all recovering moms need!
What would you have wanted to know when you were a new mom?
I wish I had known that I was doing okay, or good enough, that I was a good mom, and that my kids were going to turn out to be wonderful humans. I wish I had known that all my feelings made sense, and that it was okay that they were there. I wish I had known my own strength.
On the other hand, I think there are a lot of things that you can't know until you move through them. I am not sure I could have known those things then. I'm sure in those early days of being a new mom that people who loved me said those exact things to me, and I just couldn't take them in. In fact, maybe someone saying those things would have annoyed me when I wanted to have my struggle be seen and accepted. It has taken--and still takes--time, space, and practice for me to really feel that compassion and strength inside myself.
Suzannah Neufeld, MFT, C-IAYT, is a licensed psychotherapist, certified yoga therapist, and mother of two who has specialized in supporting people coping with eating disorders, body image concerns, anxiety, and pregnancy and early parenthood since 2003. She is a co-founder of Rockridge Wellness Center, a counseling and health collective in Oakland, CA, where she has a private practice and leads yoga therapy workshops. Awake at 3 a.m. is her first book. Learn more at www.suzannahneufeld.com.
Book available on Amazon, Parallax Press (my publisher), Indiebound, or your favorite online bookseller.
