✨Permission to Exhale✨
The sun has set on our Thai get away, and Summer 2024 is ending. Cars are pulling up school gates throughout the 🇦🇪UAE 🇦🇪.
...inhale to exhale
No doubt in the coming days, social media will start to bombard us all, reminding us of how many summers we have left until our offspring fly the nest. I know in summers gone by this would trigger my Mummy guilt, and a stray tear to roll, and it still can have that effect, if I am caught unawares.
I know such posts make me question each time I lost my patience with my children, let a terse word fly, resented another slop of sun cream going on, and hid from the 100th “Mummy” of that day.
From an expat Mama perspective, I dreaded the inevitable pack up and pack down, as we raced from one family member to another, the inevitable tetras of packing up the hire car which never seems big enough no matter which model we select.
Managing children on different time zones, their natural child exuberance, versus relatives who are just not use to such high energy levels in such short-sharp bursts.
Fast forward to the mixed feeling of the first day back at school, their excitement and nerves of their first day, the re picking up of the threads of their friendship groups, sharing their summer adventures. Your straining parental ear, trying to hear little snippets to see if half the plethora of activities you provided resonated.
After that first school drop, inevitably you find yourself in their little bedrooms and hear the prayed for, now unwanted silence, and again the questions reverberate… Did I do enough? Why wasn’t I more patient? Did I make the most of the opportunities we had?
In the ‘7’, so called summers I have left with them, will this be one they look back on fondly. Or will they only remember their mother roaring around their uncle’s garden, trying to convince them that of course a paddling pool is warm enough, whilst rain is torrenting down on them, whilst reminding them that British Country air is a wonderous thing!
At this stage, I would like to add an aside, even in my middle age, I still do occasionally holiday with my parents, so I really do find this social media tugging of our heart strings, whilst clearly effective, very misleading, it is like saying you will not have a relationship with your adult child.
So why, am I sitting here pouring my Mama guilt on to a page, because of my mat, my practise has given me the permission to exhale, and simply say, its OK.
Getting to this point is why I am so passionate for others to join me and so that I can share and teach you how to permit yourself to do the same.
I regularly have to actively engage to fully realise the yogi idea of living in the moment, but what I have found easier and easier since taking the time for a daily practise is to say, “it’s OK”. OK, to feel frustrated, a busy Mummy life is hard and a constant juggle…
Helen’s Happy Yoga was created with the intention to give you the tools to develop your own practise. To allow you to quieten the noise. Let the voices in that you want to and need to hear, and shrink the triggers that are doing nothing to serve you!
Yoga rituals count!
