The Yoga Sessions: Yoga for Tired Moms
with Caroline Williams
8 Sessions | Daily Emails
You’re not stuck. You’re just carrying a lot.
Motherhood has acquainted me with many things I thought I knew but didn’t really. Things like grief, joy, and presence. But the hardest thing motherhood has confronted me with is my limitations.
My body is not my own.
My time is not my own.
My dreams are not my own.
And my energy is consumed by meeting the very real needs of those in my care.
No wonder women describe “losing themselves” in motherhood.
But here’s the problem: where on God’s ever-lovin’ earth do we find the time for anything else?!?!?!
Gone are the days when we can enjoy a long, uninterrupted conversation or even finish a thought. All of this gets processed in the margins, in stolen moments where we can pause long enough to notice how unrecognizable we are and how far God feels.
Yes, motherhood initiates us into a kind of death we never would have willingly embraced. But it also extends the invitation to rebirth.
There’s no going back to the life we had before or to the woman we were before we became mothers – there’s only the mucky, slow, hidden, sacred work of becoming.
Let’s tend to this woman you are becoming amidst all the limitations of your current season of life in my new upcoming series:
Yoga for Tired Moms
A 4-week yoga + journaling series
These yoga sessions are for mothers of all ages and parenting seasons longing to connect with Jesus in their current, exhausting season. These sessions are for women wondering to themselves while brushing their teeth, “Who am I? What do I really want? Is this all there is?” These sessions are for mothers feeling crushed under the weight of all they carry and the shame that they’re not doing any of it well.
I see you constantly bumping into your limitations as you try to juggle it all, so I’ve designed these sessions to be short, sweet, and deeply nourishing.
Imagine a counter full of your favorite nutrient-dense, filling, grab-and-go snacks:
30-minute gentle yoga session designed to help you tap into movement that feels good in your body, leaving you feeling more grounded and strong in body, mind, and spirit
30-minute guided prayer and journaling session to help you notice, reflect, and connect the dots
Daily emails (5 days a week) featuring a short but rich reflection that you can read or listen to in under 5 minutes.
Cultivate a greater understanding of what uniquely fills your cup and how to make the time and space for this kind of essential self-care.
Each week, we’ll consider a different limitation of motherhood and use movement, prayer, and reflection to soften our approach to it.
How is God meeting me here, in this limitation?
How can I embrace it rather than rage against it?
And where is the possibility for new life within it?
As we consider these questions, we’ll work towards creating a supremely practical and tangible picture of individual self-care.
Week 1: Blessing Our Time Limits
Prayerfully inventory your schedule and rhythms
Sure, we all agree that self-care is important. Spending time with Jesus matters. Moving our bodies feels good. But when do you possibly make the time for any of that?!
My mentor once reminded me that so much mental, emotional, and spiritual processing in motherhood happens in the gaps. It’s voice texts sent while waiting for your groceries to be loaded into your trunk. It’s “Hey Siri, remind me to…” It’s sinking into bed at the end of the day, running through the mental list of all that’s left undone.
During our first week, we’ll lean into this very real limitation and take a prayerful inventory of our daily and weekly rhythms to get a clearer picture of where and how we’re spending this precious resource.
Week 2: Blessing Our Physical Limits
Prayerfully listen to the sensations and needs of your body
Motherhood is extremely physical. The bending, lifting, rocking, schlepping, and carrying of children, laundry, backpacks, and groceries is endless. As a very physical home base for our children, our bodies take a real beating. Sometimes, this leads to pain or injury, and other times, it feels like constant low-level soreness, numbness, or disassociation.
This week, we’ll turn our loving attention to our bodies and make space to listen with tenderness and curiosity about what they may be telling us.
Before jumping into an ambitious exercise plan or holding ourselves to a pre-motherhood body expectation, we’ll consider the stories our bodies are telling today.
Week 3: Blessing Our Energetic Limits
Craft a “What Makes Me Feel Like Me” List
After considering how our days are spent and how our bodies are doing as we move through them, we’ll turn our attention to our energy – what drains and replenishes us.
There is no escaping the demands of motherhood. The laundry must be folded, and the meals must be made. But these tasks do not fill our cups. They do not (usually) bring a smile to our faces, cause our shoulders to relax, or leave us feeling both lighter and more grounded at the same time.
So what are the things that do that for you?
This week, we’ll lean into the one exercise that had the biggest impact on me when I became a mother. I’ll guide you through making your own list of things that help you feel like YOU. This is true self-care (not spending a day at the spa, as luxurious as that is). Self-care is tending to those practices that help to restore the depleted places within you.
We’ll use our time inventory and body awareness from the previous two weeks to build a highly practical and immediately implementable self-care list. You’ll finish this week knowing what you can do when you have 10 minutes of alone time or two hours (so you don’t spend that time just scrolling).
Week 4: Blessing our Seasonal Limits
Craft a vision for who you are becoming
For our final week together, we’ll lean into God’s sacred invitation to dream with heaven. Dreaming with God is not an escape into a mental fantasy land and it’s not consulting your favorite influencer or your pre-children self about what you should aspire to.
God meets us here, now, in the midst of our very real limits. It’s here, in the crucible of motherhood, that God reshapes our desires and dreams. Who am I now? Who am I becoming? Together, we’ll listen for the One who is Faithful to speak to the longings within us that are being born again.
“The one who calls you is faithful.”
– 1 Thessalonians 5:24
REPLENISH BODY, MIND & SOUL
Yoga for Tired Moms Sessions
$160 {$120 for Members}
- Four 30-minute gentle yoga sessions to find movement that feels good in your body
- Four 30-minute guided prayer and journaling sessions to help you notice, reflect, and connect the dots
- Daily emails with short but rich 5-minute reflections
- Create a supremely practical and tangible picture of self-care for you
- Access to the session recording(s) forever!
All purchases are final.
Not a Yoga Abbey Member yet?
Click here to join and get instant access to hundreds of yoga practices + exclusive savings!
Have a Question?
How will I access the sessions?
The session videos will be in a private dashboard you can log in to and access anywhere, anytime. Upon registration, you’ll receive an email with your login information to the dashboard.
What equipment do I need?
You’ll want to have a journal and pen, yoga mat, blanket, and any other props you like