Book Review: Yawning Yoga

When my daughter is 16, I hope for a few things:

1) For shorts to be longer

2) For less time online and more time outside

3) For teenage girls to care more about how their bodies feel than how they look

Is it silly to hope that a new bedtime book for my 22-month old daughter can actually help with that lofty #3 goal? (I’m afraid there’s really no hope for fashion or Facebook).

I was recently given a copy of Yawning Yoga: A Goodnight Book for a Good Night’s Sleep ($17.95 at amazon.com) to review, and was super excited because V has not always been the best sleeper. I know from personal experience that I always sleep best after yoga, and it was also always a struggle to keep V awake on the car rides home after her toddler yoga classes at Yoga Yoga (which I reviewed in this blog). I assumed it would outline a few asanas to practice before bedtime, which it does, but I had no idea how beautifully and creatively it would do so. Each page contains both a rhyme and a colorful, imaginative illustration describing a certain practice (whether a simplified moon salutation (“Greet the moon!”), forward fold (“The monkey”), or even meditations (the rhyme “Ocean breath” shows kids how: “Tuning in means tuning out/ the sounds and distractions noising about . . .”).

I won’t lie, I honestly thought it might be a bit advanced for my almost 2-year old. When we first read it in place of Goodnight Moon one night, I quickly learned this was not a cuddle and read in my lap kind of book. It was also not always a read-the-entire-page kind of book, especially for the meditation pages, at least at her age. But that is where the beautiful images come into play. For the rhymes she tuned out, she was fascinated by the illustrations, pointing out the whale or dolphin or planet or, well, you get the picture: it has great pictures. Whether with those illustrations, poems, or deeper concepts, it seems to be a book that will really grow with children rather than quickly being outgrown by them.

The next day, I asked if she wanted to read it again and she said “Yayyyy!” (which might just be the cutest sound in the world, by the way). She didn’t even mention the moon book at all. That day I was more prepared and we settled on her snuggly soft rug to read and move. She was still mostly interested in the pictures, but I was able to get her into downward dog, which she already knew, and “the monkey” (forward fold) which was new. Every time we have read it since- and she now runs over to get it before bed– she seems to be more willing to read the pages and then get into the postures. It is pretty darn precious. After transitioning from the busy day’s activities to getting those last wiggles out and calming her mind with Yawning Yoga, we then grab her other favorite nighttime book Good Night, Sweet Butterflies and settle in for our cuddle-and-rock reading selection. 🙂

So what does any of this have to do with my lofty goal for her teenagehood, that she care more about how her body feels than how it looks? One of the beautiful things about yoga is the way it teaches, like the Bible does, to honor your body as a temple; to simply meet yourself where you are with kindness and acceptance. Yawning Yoga lays that foundation for children by focusing on gratitude: “So give thanks to your body/ for all that it’s done/ from the moment you woke/ ’til the day’s setting sun.” The author, Laurie Jordan, is a New York-based yoga instructor who created this “Yawning Yoga” sequence to help children establish a relaxing bedtime routine, and she mentions in the introduction how it is a “great opportunity to teach kids to respect and listen to their bodies.”

If it can help my toddler sleep, and hopefully lay the foundation for respecting and honoring her body, then I am all for it.

And remember how I said “Yayyyy!” might be the cutest sound in the world? Not true. That honor now goes to the final greeting in yoga and in the book, “the light in me sees the light in you,” Namaste. Or actually, how V says it: “Mama stay,” with her little chubby hands and wrists at her heart.

Mama stay, y’all!