Baby and Me Yoga - Tree Pose

Angela Cerkevich: Hi! My name is Angela Cerkevich and Im a yoga instructor at Yoga Tales in Bethesda, Maryland, and this is how to do yoga with your baby. Were going to do simply standing tree pose with your baby. So, were going to work on our balance, which can always be improved and incorporate baby into that. Now, Jossline here is getting a little tired, so if you can do a little balancing tree with a tired baby, you can work on your balance and help relax and sooth your child. So, lets go ahead and shift our weight on to our left foot, you can turn it out just a little bit, and then bend the right knee, place the right foot upon the right thigh. Now, for a lot of us, we need to stick to just the kickstand, which is right here, because so much of this pose is about opening up the hips. Others of us we can take it up to a shin.

Maybe if you are really comfortable with it, you can take your foot all the way up on onto your thigh alright. Now, once your foot is up there, you want to think of pressing your thigh, that will be relaxed thigh, the one that the foot is on, back behind you a little bit. Your rear is going to stick out somewhat. Once your rear is sticking out, you bum is totally relaxed, not squeezing at all. Draw all your tailbone down, and let that lift your chest up, nice and high. Draw your shoulder blades down your back, keep your gaze steady on something in front of you thats not moving, stay here and breathe. Now, there is another option, if your baby is a little bit more squirmy than Jossline, you can even place your baby on your leg facing out. You can use that as a reminder to broaden the color bones, relaxing the shoulders, swallow to relax in the back of the throat and breathe.

To come out of it, hug your baby nice and tight, slowly lower the leg down. Should we take the other side, so shift your weight into your right foot, place your left leg, either open your kickstand, the shin all the way on to the thigh. Once again, spiral the thigh back by pressing the foot into the thigh, and then drawing your tailbone down; feel the low belly lift, as your heart opens the lifts. Holding your baby in here or placing your baby on your leg, especially if your baby is little older than Jossline, youre going to want to put your baby on your leg. If you feel really, really comfortable, you can place one hand right here, center of your chest as you hold on to your baby with the other one. Again, find a focal point that you can ground the eyes through to help keep you steady and breathe. Great. Go ahead and shift your baby back and lower your leg down. Alright. Now, we are going to move to baby on the ball.