What. A. Week.

Five full days in the friendly home of an absolute wonder of a woman (and her doggy).

Pregnancy yoga training. It’s good to have, right? Keep your pregnant yogis safe. I’ll be honest, since I trained as a yoga teacher…

This month we’re catching up with one of the newest members of the LushTums teaching family, Candy Myhill. Candy has recently completed her Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training with us and will soon start teaching LushTums classes in Chichester , West Sussex.

When I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter the fear I have lived with for years about giving birth raised its head again. I have no idea where this fear stems from, I haven’t been exposed directly to any difficult births, or heard that many 'bad' birth stories. Perhaps it was from looking at some hippy birth books of my Mum's with some rather graphic pictures when I was only very young...maybe that didn't help, ha ha! But honestly, I was simply terrified. How on earth would I get a baby out of there!

Dear Clair,

Hi, so it’s me… well, you, five years from now.

Firstly, congratulations! You are pregnant with your first baby, and I know how excited you are. You are finally going to have a baby, the one you have wanted for as long as you can remember. All those hours spent playing with dolls, babysitting and watching Supernanny on TV have definitely fully prepared you for being the world’s most awesome mother (ahem)…

I took my first yoga class when I was 19 years old, but If you’d told me then that I’d be teaching yoga in my thirties I’d have struggled with the idea! My yoga journey has been a very subtle process of undoing, letting go and finding stillness, and it’s shaped my life profoundly. 

What I find most amazing about yoga is that it starts out, at least for me, as being this thing you do for an hour or so, once a week until, at some point, you start to feel something from your practice. I distinctly remember a moment in class when I experienced a feeling of inner space expanding between my shoulders, it felt really extraordinary at the time. For others it might be the feeling of relaxation, the quiet, the feeling of being present, the sense of well-being after class, or simply being able to touch your toes for the first time.