Sarah Ezrin, E-RYT 500, is the award-winning author of The Yoga of Parenting: Ten Yoga-Based Practices to Help You Stay Grounded, Connect with Your Kids, and Be Kind to Yourself. She is a freelance writer, yoga educator, and content creator based in the Bay Area. Her willingness to be unabashedly honest and vulnerable along with her innate wisdom, make her writing, teaching, and social media great sources of healing and connection for many people.
Sarah brings a wide spectrum of life experiences into everything she does. She is unafraid of sharing all sides of herself. She does so in the hope of permitting others to be their most authentic self. At this time, when honest self-awareness is so important, Sarah is an essential and exemplary voice.
Sarah writes extensively on the subjects of yoga, parenting, and mental health, often interweaving these themes. Her work ranges from heavily-reported assignments to personal essays to blog content for brands. She is a regular contributor to Yoga Journal Magazine, Motherly, Yoga International, Healthline, Yahoo! Parenting, Scary Mommy, Mind Body Green, Mantra Magazine, and LA Yoga Magazine. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Bustle, LA Weekly, and NBC News.
Sarah is a well-respected yoga teacher and a leader in the wellness community. A world traveler since birth, she has led trainings, workshops, and retreats locally and across the globe.
Women Fitness brings you an insight into the life of yoga & parenting coach, Sarah Ezrin.
Namita Nayyar:
You are an award-winning author, yoga educator, maternal mental health advocate, and content creator. Please share the series of events that led you to take up yoga, as a way of life.
Sarah Ezrin:
Full disclosure, I was first attracted to yoga for the physical benefits. I mean, I also loved that it was calming, and needed that chill-out time to counter my high-intensity Hollywood job, but I was way more concerned with getting my leg behind my head and folding in half than working on my inner peace. Or perhaps, more accurately, I thought those poses would give me the peace I needed. It took time (I’ve been doing yoga for 25 years!) and a whole lot of life experiences, such as loss, relationships, marriage, love, injury, pain, disconnection, and of course, parenthood, for me to fully grasp that my yoga practice is how I show up in the world, not what I can do with my body.
Namita Nayyar:
Parenthood is one of the most rewarding journeys many of us will ever embark on. Being a yoga trainer and mom to two boys what is your piece of advice for women who find motherhood as a challenge?
Sarah Ezrin:
You are not alone!!! Motherhood is hard after all. Period, end. Yes, it’s incredibly rewarding and our hearts grow to sizes our heads could never have imagined, but that doesn’t take away from the very real struggles most moms face. This is true here in the United States, where there is a huge lack of governmental systems in place to support parents and where most of us live far from our own families and thus our village. As uncomfortable as it is, ask for help. Make your own village. Lean on other moms.
Namita Nayyar:
How do you go about counseling your clients in healing and gaining inner peace? Share 5 tips for women to practice every day.
Sarah Ezrin:
Well, the first thing I remind clients is that as wonderful as peace and grounding feel, we need other emotions to be a part of this dynamic and vibrant world. There’s a lot of misconceptions in spiritual circles that the goal is to be happy all the time, but without sadness, we’d never know joy. Without loneliness, we’d never know what it feels like to be in community. So maybe that’s tip #1, ha!
- Practice spacious observation: Practice observing your emotions in the same way you would objectively notice a physical item in your surroundings. Honor the beautiful spectrum of emotions that you get to experience as a human being.
- Name 3 things you’re grateful for: This is a great practice to do right before bed because it puts a cap on your day and helps you go to bed on a spiritual-emotional level.
- Move your body: You don’t need to do a two-hour yoga practice or hour-long cardio to get your workout in. Just five minutes of movement can make a huge impact. And bonus points if you can get outside.
- Take breath breaks: Our breath is cool because it’s one of the few things in our bodies that is both automatic and conscious. Our breath cadence is a direct line to our nervous system. Pausing to breathe can change the trajectory of your whole day.
- Journal: Reflection is a powerful healing tool. It allows us to process aloud things that might be jumbled in our brains. You don’t need to write a page-long entry either. Just a few sentences can be a helpful way of taking the proverbial lid off the boiling pot. I also love looking back on old journals to see how much I’ve healed.
Namita Nayyar:
According to you “I have a long history with grief, anxiety, eating disorders, obsessive behavior, and postpartum mood disorders.” How did yoga help you heal and cope with the trauma?
Sarah Ezrin:
Your advice on how one can use it as a tool. For a long time, I thought yoga was the foundation for everything I do, but recently, I had a light bulb moment where I realized: No, mental health is the foundation for all my teachings! Yoga is simply a tool. It’s my favorite tool, but my practice was born out of my desperation for clarity and grounding.
And P.S. When I say “yoga,” I mean the whole gamut of contemplative practices and physical poses, including meditation, selfless service, and prayer. Yoga brought me into my body in a way that I’m not sure I ever was. I had spent most of my teenage years and very early 20s trying to get out of myself. It was incredibly uncomfortable to be in my anxiety and feelings. Yoga fortified me against that discomfort. It gave me anchors to find presence (as so much of my anxiety is future-tripping). One of my favorite practices is standing barefoot and feeling my feet on the earth. There is trust in letting the earth hold you. I also love feeling my body calibrating for balance. It’s a wonderful reminder that everything is temporary and we’re all just doing the best we can.
Namita Nayyar:
Mental Health issues are becoming increasingly common in young adults, pregnant women, and the elderly. According to you what are the reasons for the same? Please share your expert input on identifying and managing symptoms.
Sarah Ezrin:
Let me begin by saying, that I’m not a trained therapist nor a doctor, so if you are feeling overwhelmed or having thoughts about harming yourself or someone else, please seek help from a professional in your area. My theories on this come from my 42 years of lived experience with mental health struggles. A huge factor in the upsurge is that we are all so disconnected. Disconnected from each other, disconnected from the natural rhythms of our bodies and nature. These devices in our hands (which are amazing don’t get me wrong!) offer zero break from the incessant news cycle. If you’re on social media, your feed can go from a funny cat video to a horrible personal story about trauma, and our hearts were just not meant to hold this all. Yoga at its root is about connection. The word yoga means to connect in Sanskrit. It is incredibly healing to reclaim the connections we have lost.
Namita Nayyar:
Yoga asanas you practice every day? Tips to become more flexible.
Sarah Ezrin:
I do cat/cow every day. I’ve come to respect our spine as the most important part of our whole body (it’s the highway for our nervous system!) and so I try to move my spine in all directions every day. I will also get upside down in some way. Whether, I’m standing and folded forward, or my legs are up a wall, I instantly feel better when my legs are above my pelvis. I think the best way to get flexible is to make plans that fall through or travel during the holidays. Flexibility is a mind approach more than a body experience!
Namita Nayyar:
What kind of diet do you follow? How significant is one’s eating habit related to good health?
Sarah Ezrin:
Food is medicine so I revere food as a big part of my healing. That said, given my long history with disordered eating, I try to avoid restrictive diets or doing things like intermittent fasting. My diet is intuitively eating what my body desires. This is a yoga practice too. You need to slow down enough to listen to what you need. Like, am I truly hungry right now? Or am I thirsty for water? Or am I hungry for connection? Our bodies are so wise when we give them the space to communicate with us.
Namita Nayyar:
How do you like to kick-start your day?
Sarah Ezrin:
My kickstart is more like a long and slow sputter. I wake up at 430 a.m., before the rest of my family, and spend a good hour on contemplative practices, such as meditation, breathwork, and journaling. I am most creative in the morning, so after that, I work on any writing assignments I have or study from one of the many courses I’m enrolled in. I love learning and I’m a forever student! There are two gigantic cups of black tea, as well! The kids wake up around 630a/7a and then it’s gone time, but taking that extra time in the morning helps me not feel like I’m playing catch up all day. I start the active part of the day grounded and ready.
Namita Nayyar:
5 Tips for mom-to-be to handle various issues related to pregnancy and childbirth?
Sarah Ezrin:
- Shore up your support team! We focus so much on the new baby and all the cool gear, but other than a bassinet, diapers, and a whole lot of burp cloths, you don’t need all the latest and greatest stuff. Instead, channel your resources into prenatal postpartum care: acupuncture, doula, night nurse, meal service, housecleaning
- Seek out pelvic floor support. Even if you have a c-section, you need pelvic floor healing after pregnancy. Honestly, we need it before too!
- If your provider isn’t listening, FIND ONE WHO WILL. You can switch providers up to the moment you’re giving birth. Yup, you can be in labor at the hospital and ask for a different provider.
- Trust your body. The forums and boards and providers may tell you things that don’t feel right according to your body. Trust your body’s innate wisdom above all else!
- “It’s all temporary” My favorite mantra for all things parenting (and life) is ‘It’s all temporary.’ No matter what you are facing, it will pass. This doesn’t mean we plaster a smile on our faces and grit our way through. It’s just a gentle reminder that the hardest moments will come to an end. But also the most beautiful ones. Can you be equally present for it all?
Namita Nayyar:
5 Parenting myths that need to be done away with and why?
Sarah Ezrin:
- Anything to do with “bouncing back”: There is no such thing as bouncing back. Our DNA changes upon conception, whether we carry to term or not and there are cells in our body that replicate daily. Even if we can look the “same” after birth (which is mostly based on genetics), we are not the same. Motherhood is one of the most profound transformations of our lifetime.
- That mom gets it all done because they’re superheroes: Real quick: Moms ARE ABSOLUTELY superheroes, but that’s not why we get it all done. We get it all done because we have to. There’s a profound lack of systems in place and an unsustainable cadence of work in our society that are forcing moms to “do it all.” Imagine what superpowers we could have if we had more help. Or equal pay? Or affordable childcare????
- That we’re meant to put our family first: This is a recipe for burnout and resentment. We learn it on planes, you MUST put your oxygen mask on first to help another. We must do things that fill us up, to have anything to give.
- Self-care is an overt experience that takes you away from your family: Nope, self-care is the little things we do every day. Sure a girl’s weekend or spa day is nice, but are they truly restful if you spend the whole time feeling guilty? Or if you come in so burnt out, they barely move the needle? Yoga teaches us that little rituals done throughout the day will fill our tanks sustainably. It’s tiny acts of kindness for ourselves.
- Women are innately maternal: Okay stay with me. There is an outdated and oppressive assumption that women are evolutionarily and genetically designed to be mothers and modern mammalian research and neurobiology have proven that mothers are not born, they are made and that any primary caregiver (male, nonbinary, grandparent, adopted parents, other extended family), show the same brain changes that women experience. Meaning we can all be mothers. It’s not in-built and therefore it’s so normal if it’s hard and unnatural.
Namita Nayyar:
Share input about your book, The Yoga of Parenting.
Sarah Ezrin:
My book, The Yoga of Parenting: Ten Yoga-Based Practices to Help You Stay Grounded, Connect with Your Kids, and Be Kind to Yourself guides parents on how to bring the wisdom of yoga into their parenting journey with 34 practices to find more presence, patience, and acceptance–with our kids and ourselves! be purchased wherever books are sold! I intended to give parents a permission slip to be in the struggle and a light to find the path to their solutions. I have had numerous people tell me that my book is helpful in non-parent-child relationships too! I hope it’s helpful and just remember, you’re not alone.
Namita Nayyar:
Quote, you live by.
Sarah Ezrin:
“Listen–are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver
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