Sarah Ezrin, E-RYT 500, is the award-winning author of The Yoga of Parenting: Ten Yoga-Based Practices to Help You Stay Grounded, Connect with Your Kids, and Be Kind to Yourself. She is a freelance writer, yoga educator, and content creator based in the Bay Area. Her willingness to be unabashedly honest and vulnerable along with her innate wisdom, make her writing, teaching, and social media great sources of healing and connection for many people.
Sarah brings a wide spectrum of life experiences into everything she does. She is unafraid of sharing all sides of herself. She does so in the hope of permitting others to be their most authentic self. At this time, when honest self-awareness is so important, Sarah is an essential and exemplary voice.
Sarah writes extensively on the subjects of yoga, parenting, and mental health, often interweaving these themes. Her work ranges from heavily-reported assignments to personal essays to blog content for brands. She is a regular contributor to Yoga Journal Magazine, Motherly, Yoga International, Healthline, Yahoo! Parenting, Scary Mommy, Mind Body Green, Mantra Magazine, and LA Yoga Magazine. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Bustle, LA Weekly, and NBC News.
Sarah is a well-respected yoga teacher and a leader in the wellness community. A world traveler since birth, she has led trainings, workshops, and retreats locally and across the globe.
Women Fitness brings you an insight into the life of yoga & parenting coach, Sarah Ezrin.
Namita Nayyar:
You are an award-winning author, yoga educator, maternal mental health advocate, and content creator. Please share the series of events that led you to take up yoga, as a way of life.
Sarah Ezrin:
Full disclosure, I was first attracted to yoga for the physical benefits. I mean, I also loved that it was calming, and needed that chill-out time to counter my high-intensity Hollywood job, but I was way more concerned with getting my leg behind my head and folding in half than working on my inner peace. Or perhaps, more accurately, I thought those poses would give me the peace I needed. It took time (I’ve been doing yoga for 25 years!) and a whole lot of life experiences, such as loss, relationships, marriage, love, injury, pain, disconnection, and of course, parenthood, for me to fully grasp that my yoga practice is how I show up in the world, not what I can do with my body.
Namita Nayyar:
Parenthood is one of the most rewarding journeys many of us will ever embark on. Being a yoga trainer and mom to two boys what is your piece of advice for women who find motherhood as a challenge?
Sarah Ezrin:
You are not alone!!! Motherhood is hard after all. Period, end. Yes, it’s incredibly rewarding and our hearts grow to sizes our heads could never have imagined, but that doesn’t take away from the very real struggles most moms face. This is true here in the United States, where there is a huge lack of governmental systems in place to support parents and where most of us live far from our own families and thus our village. As uncomfortable as it is, ask for help. Make your own village. Lean on other moms.
Namita Nayyar:
How do you go about counseling your clients in healing and gaining inner peace? Share 5 tips for women to practice every day.
Sarah Ezrin:
Well, the first thing I remind clients is that as wonderful as peace and grounding feel, we need other emotions to be a part of this dynamic and vibrant world. There’s a lot of misconceptions in spiritual circles that the goal is to be happy all the time, but without sadness, we’d never know joy. Without loneliness, we’d never know what it feels like to be in community. So maybe that’s tip #1, ha!
- Practice spacious observation: Practice observing your emotions in the same way you would objectively notice a physical item in your surroundings. Honor the beautiful spectrum of emotions that you get to experience as a human being.
- Name 3 things you’re grateful for: This is a great practice to do right before bed because it puts a cap on your day and helps you go to bed on a spiritual-emotional level.
- Move your body: You don’t need to do a two-hour yoga practice or hour-long cardio to get your workout in. Just five minutes of movement can make a huge impact. And bonus points if you can get outside.
- Take breath breaks: Our breath is cool because it’s one of the few things in our bodies that is both automatic and conscious. Our breath cadence is a direct line to our nervous system. Pausing to breathe can change the trajectory of your whole day.
- Journal: Reflection is a powerful healing tool. It allows us to process aloud things that might be jumbled in our brains. You don’t need to write a page-long entry either. Just a few sentences can be a helpful way of taking the proverbial lid off the boiling pot. I also love looking back on old journals to see how much I’ve healed.
Disclaimer
The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
