Soul Searching with Yve

Parenting is the most rewarding and challenging job we could do in our lifetime. Raising our next generation just right and fixing what our parents got wrong seems easier said than done sometimes. I started out doing what most other women my age were doing, working full-time and juggling being a wife and mother. After all, I should be thankful that I have the right to work 40 hours a week and struggle to bring home enough to live paycheck to paycheck and raise my children at the same time. I applaud those women who can juggle all those responsibilities, but unfortunately, I am not one of them. Since I have been a stay-at-home mother and student, I have heard it all. I am home all day, so what do I do? Why don’t I have the time to take everyone wherever they need to be because I’m not working so I mustn’t be very busy. Certain people continuously put pressure on me to pick up extra responsibilities when I just removed a load to put myself first for once in my life. I’m the type of person who cares too much and tries to do for others as much as I can until one day, I’m spread too thin and crash.

I’ve always had trouble with anxiety and sleeping because I can never turn off my mind, so I began a daily meditation practice to try to calm myself down. As I was looking up information on meditation, I found Guru Jagat and RAMA Institute on YouTube and began taking her classes from there daily. Within three months my life was changed. I was able to physically and mentally do things I hadn’t been able to do since I was a kid! I learned how much I really could push myself and what I was capable of. Before meditation and kundalini yoga, I was always sick, mentally frazzled, and easily overwhelmed, and did not feel like the best mom for my kids. Unfortunately, I was yelling a lot and had very low patience. After my first 40-day sadhana, I was no longer yelling and was able to calm my knee-jerk reactions to everything and listen first. This changed my kids’ behavior tremendously. They were listening to me, following the rules that we had set, and much more respectful since they were being treated with respect. My health was improving immensely, and I was able to get off of all of my medications for hypothyroidism, depression, and anxiety, and was no longer pre-diabetic. I also went from 228 pounds before starting daily practice to 150 pounds.

When I got pregnant with my youngest, I continued to practice daily even if it was a short session which helped me keep the positive momentum until I got bigger and more tired with uncontrolled diabetes and I let it all slide. After his birth I was even more exhausted and full of fluid, swollen just about everywhere, and just not motivated to do much of anything. I let myself make excuses to not make the time for at least some meditation and short 10–15-minute yoga sessions which would have at least kept my routine going. Almost two years later and I’m still struggling to make the time to practice which needs to be a priority for my self-care.

Since I haven’t been making the effort, I have been feeling pretty terrible. During my pregnancy, I was put on insulin to control my gestational diabetes since diet and exercise weren’t getting my numbers low enough and I gained so much weight! I went from 158 pounds at 20 weeks when I started the insulin to 245 pounds when I delivered! I felt so disappointed with the whole situation, but I was beyond exhausted and exercising felt impossible. I was so depressed about letting myself get to this point after doing all the work to get the weight off before and I gained it all back and more. I kept telling myself that I would get back to where I was and at least I got a healthy baby boy out of the whole experience.

I have finally started to practice again at least a few times per week. I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things, and I can tell the difference on the days that I practice. Sometimes there’s just not enough time in the day to do it, and that’s ok. This season of life is a busy one with my three beautiful children and one day I will have plenty of time to practice daily when I have an empty nest, but for now, I will continue to fit it in where I can and enjoy watching my children grow. I have learned so much about myself and my children by changing my mindset with Guru Jagat’s practice and I will forever be grateful to her wonderful spirit for spreading the teachings of Yogi Bhajan and Kundalini yoga.