Here’s quick tips to teach your client, and more if you have time to read the full blog.  These are good supports, and important preventives.  This first is free and she can do this while baby is falling asleep in her arms – “alternate nostril pranayama”.   More tips below are low or no cost choices also.

This breath practice balances the hemispheres, calms, freshens, and brings peace and contentment.  Yoga teachers, Ayurvedics and Doulas – be sure to teach your client the gentlest form of this yogic technique at this time.  It helps so much for life force purifying, freshening, moving and balancing.

Here’s instructions for your client:

1. check which nostril you are breathing from now.  Right is solar and heating, left is lunar and cooling.  Let’s balance first, then can do more cooling “lunar pranayama” if you know it and need it.
2. sit comfortably upright or in whatever rocking chair is comfortable.
3. use your free hand (right if there is a choice); thumb is used for closing one nostril, ring/little fingers for the other, when it is time.
4. breathe in and out nice easy and full.
5. close one nostril with thumb and breathe in the other.  Naturally full breath in.
6. switch to close other nostril and breathe a Naturally full breath out, then in on that side.  No strain or holding.
7. switch using thumb.  Out, then in.
8. Switch,  Out/in.    Switch Out/In …
9. Continue, for 10 minutes.

When we get stressed and tired, it is so easy to loose it.  How many mamas have not experienced this?!    It is common and natural to snip or even have thoughts of hurting someone – our baby! for a few moments when we feel trapped in overwhelm.   Yet consistently negative emotions are the highest risk for baby – and for mom.  They can, left to grow, become life threatening, as we all know from the news*.

“Type A” – “pitta” mamas especially – and – at the end of pitta season all of us,  which is right now creates  special call to attend to such conditions.  Overlay the astrology if you believe in it, which says especially until the 23rd of this September, there are extra influences to promote short fuses.  Here’s some tips for your clients.

Postpartum mothers are on duty 24/7, no matter what help they have.  Think about the many bodily changes – tons of invisible work Mama has to do in addition to being on call for Baby.  Do I need to elaborate on other responsibilities?  We do what we can.  And we see the need for a better way!

This is where DOOOOLAS can dooooo so much in such simple little things ways, to prevent problems.  We mother the mothers at this time with the umbrella of love, wisdom, timely guidance practical supports. – Ayudoulas are specially trained for this work.  Or call on whatever friends and family and other helpers are there, under organizing guidance of an Ayurvedic who understands the special management of this “42 Days for 42 Years” window.

Let’s start with what Ayurvedics know as Vata dosha – the air and space element metabolic functions in the body.  Yes, even with high pitta (fire/water) dominant in a mother’s constitution, vikruti (imbalance) and summer to fall seasonal exacerbations, we have to look at calming vata after birth.  It can push the pitta overlays to flare up quickly.  And vata needs warmth among other things.  How to?

Avoid energetically heat producing foods and favor the season’s coolers – succulent sweet fruits and vegetables, coconut, some pomegranate and grape is great, gently cook more coriander and cilantro into foods, and organic milk rather than yoghurt or cheese helps.  But take them room temp or warm, not cold, to prevent gas, bloating and even colic contributing influences.

Also very important – enough good fats, carbs and snacks promote much needed stability and rebuilding.  At this time of year, favor clarified butter (“ghee”) and coconut oil, for their cooling properties.  Ghee not only cools, it strengthens digestive enzyme functions, and helps carry out impurities from the cells better than butter right now.

Many common chill out measures especially pitta dominant mamas will call on – can be shifted.  Most of her chill down choices make her feel more dry, brittle, fragile, emotionally chilly, ungrounded and fearful, ie, vata exacerbated.  Minimize and replace things like

Dietary

• cold temperature foods and drinks – replace with thermous of cooling but digestive and lactation supportive weak herbal teas kept in a thermos for easy access.  Fennel, cumin, coriander, fresh ginger are good helpful – 1/2 tsp of the mix to 1 quart of hot water!  Cooling grains, like basmati (not brown) rice, quinoa and oat are preferred; cooling diary – clarified butter and organic cream top milk vs other forms, and taken warm temp cools; cooling or make the most of it – iron rich – sweeteners vs honey; cooling proteins include easy to digest small legumes, or poultry for non vegetarians.
• bland foods – add “middle of the road” enzymatic seasonings which don’t spike heat but help digestive “fires” and make the food tasty too – food needs to be appeetizing!
• Cucumber – and salads in general – by my experience is guaranteed gas for mom and baby used raw – I’ve cooked and seasoned it to delicious satisfaction, or you should avoid these.  Try steaming asparagus or another vegetable on the “foods to favor” list in our cookbook, and serve with a lime not vinegar vinaigrette with well roasted garlic.  This will probably satisfy salad desires for now.
• dry quick foods like toast and crackers constipate and don’t satisfy – serve flat breads with soups and lots of ghee or other suitable fat to ground and nourish.
• high sugar low fat sweets hit fast and hard and though even this is preferred to nothing when tempers flare – give her a little to keep blood sugar up then make a sweet with lots of butterfat, coconut, cacao butter, nuts or full fat dairy – you see adding protein and fats gives startup fuel from the sugars and carbs last a little longer, then the fats give stable long burning fuel.
• chocolate has sweet, oily and bitter taste.  Good change she needs more of all, but craving chocolate let’s look at adding more bitter taste appropriately  – turmeric, fenugreek, and maybe a little well seasoned and cooked dandelion may crowd out that craving.
• leftovers or pre-prepared foods to save hot kitchen time are generally devoid of prana – life force – and we say, are tamasic.  This means heavy, dulling, depressive, frustrating energies prevail with these.  Use easy cook methods and make smaller portions.

Lifestyle

• Eating out gives probably GMO and free radical producing fats and other non-rejuvenating foods, though it gives her a break from the kitchen.  Ask if you can work with her best friend to renew the food chain a little longer if that is what’s needed.  Use this budget towards a postpartum home spa treatment instead.  Three in a row can really not just safety net but reverse many in free-fall emotionally.
• An intense, distracting movie increases the fire element – singing or story time with family at night, more sattvic (light, love and peace filled) movies, like that are best.
• Skipping naps.  Guess what……..this is high risk emotionally.  Need help fitting it in?  Let’s talk about the many factors, and who/what might best help.
• Spending hours talking, processing your emotions – usually means you skipped your naps, as well, and probably ate fast food.  Can your friends value their time with  you at even $5 or $10/hour in contribution to your care at this time?
• There are many ways to think creatively and each situation needs it’s own TLC this way.  AyurDoulas are trained to apply the needed principles to whatever resources are at hand to make the most of a mother’s experience.

Moms need to feel growing stability and rejuvenation, as well as fresh qualities in their early postpartum, even though many foods and lifestyle things that give these can complicate there are many which help.  For both hot tempered impatient or blaming moods,  and fearful, depressed and anxious moods settle, we see them settle down much with simple measures.

Stability and tissue rejuvenation are among the top priorities for mothers after childbirth according to the ancient Ayurvedic medical textbooks.  We see that the psychology, the heart and mind can be saved from self or other’s blame and most efficiently addressed taking proper care of her body’s needs at this time.  Such a blessing!

* Those mothers, whose anger or negativity became so serious we heard about them  in those very sad news stories, were all on some mood medicine cocktail inappropriate for them, according to Dr. Ann Blake-Tracey, and her website, Drug Awareness.

Of course – many mothers have pushed the envelope too far or have such fatigue their genetic predispositions are giving serious conditions beyond the scope of a general article.  We can’t presume to diagnose, treat or cure in this piece or as Ayudoulas in practice, and must encourage appropriate consultation for a client’s primary health care provider.  Postpartum mood disorders can be life threatening.

These simple supports are likely to still be helpful under this greater umbrella of licensed medical care, and for some clients, their path takes them out of our hands.