Photo: lil omm with permission

Conscious Community

Friends practice solo, pregnant, with babies,
with kids, with partners

BY LIL OMM YOGINI MICHELLE

Every Monday I prepare to leave the house 45 minutes before I actually do. With a two and a half year old and a five month old, no detail can be left unattended to without dire consequences.

Diapers? Check. Sippy cup and snack? Check. Alternate outfits? Check. Nursing cover? Check. Favorite truck book? Check. And that’s just the diaper bag, never mind actually preparing the kids for departure. The fight to put on shoes can take 10 minutes alone!

Family isn’t just first, it’s everything

But all this hoopla and harriedness is worth it because I’m going to teach. More specifically, I’m going to teach a kids yoga class at lil omm, a yoga studio focused on creating a community dedicated to engaged, inspired, and connected families.

To be able to bring my kids with me is a privilege, a joy and also what lil omm is all about. Family isn’t just first—it’s everything. Seamlessly integrated into all that lil omm offers, both students and staff can find peace in parenthood while finding some serenity on their yoga mat.

You can practice solo, pregnant, with babies, with kids, with partners, (or with the whole crazy lot of them!) through a wide variety of classes offered at the studio.

But the real work comes when we step off our mats

Any yogini parent knows this to be true. Can I live and breathe my yogic ideals when my kid is screaming in my face? When my baby has been up all night? When I feel I have no more of myself to give?

lil omm provides the space and supportive community for us parents to meet these challenges with grace. So many of us crave a conscious connection to ourselves and to our children. At times, it feels we are one and the same, and at other times we know we need some serious separation.

There is a welcoming, gentle holding

of all the emotions of parenting that we hold sacred at lil omm. Most of my yoga teacher colleagues are moms. We pitch-in. We help out. We commiserate and we don’t judge. Most importantly, we try to serve as positive examples for our own children and each others’.

And when we fail, we encourage each other to soften, and try again.

Every Monday, I look forward to my 45 minutes of chaotic preparation because I know that no matter what kind of day my boys or I are having, we are welcomed at lil omm. It’s a place that allows me to be a mother, a friend, a yoga teacher, a yogi, a conscious community member—in a word, just me, just as I am.

Yoga and The Business of Life Profile: lil omm Part 1

Yoga and The Business of Life Profile: lil omm Part 2

Also read yesterday’s companion piece to our profile of lil omm, A Small Slice of the Universe.

lil omm yoga: 4830 v street, nw washington, dc 20007 (behind blacksalt)
phone: 202.248.6304
email: info@lilomm.com
lil omm on the web

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.